Chapter 176. Job Market (1)
It was 8:50 AM. The employees were bustling, waiting for the incoming batch of new hires. Of course, there were also a few who had finished preparing to receive guests and were simply standing by.
“Wow, you’re actually working in the middle of all this?” someone asked.
Guk, who had been reading through the documents he had brought despite the surrounding noise, lifted his head.
“You’re Guk, right?” the man asked with a laidback, overly familiar tone.
The man in messy hair and a wrinkled shirt was Sun-Sik, a senior employee known as an outlier in the Sales Department.
After identifying who the man was, Guk gave a small nod and dipped his head slightly. “Yes.”
“You’re better-looking than I expected,” Sun-Sik said.
“Do you know me?” Guk asked.
“Of course! There’s been a lot of talk about the stiff, uptight youngest guy in the Audit Bureau.”
The stiff youngest guy?
Only chatty assistant managers with too much time on their hands would spread that kind of rumor even to other departments.
If they have time to gossip, they should work more, Guk thought, frowning slightly.
“Before the Hyungnim rookie arrived, you were probably the most famous one around, right?”
“Why is Lee Eun-Ho your Hyungnim?” Guk asked.
“Ah, because he’s just that amazing, so I decided to make him my Hyungnim,” Sun-Sik said lightly.
What?
Guk paused, wondering if he had misheard. A brand-new rookie was supposedly “that amazing,” enough to be treated like a superior. He had heard Sun-Sik lacked authority as a mentor, but this was beyond what he had imagined.
“What do you think? If you were in his place, you’d want a mentor who’s as easygoing as me, right?” Sun-Sik asked.
Half shocked and half bewildered, Guk nodded reluctantly. “Ah, yes.”
Just then, a girl who had been quietly listening to their conversation snorted and laughed.
“He doesn’t give a damn about stuff like that.” Harona shot Sun-Sik a scoffing look along with her words. “Lee Eun-Ho says everything he wants even to the department head. You think he’d care whether his mentor’s easygoing or not?”
“You never know.” Sun-Sik shrugged before asking with a puzzled look, “But why did you come out here in person, Harona?”
“Why? Am I not allowed to?” she shot back.
“It’s not that you’re not allowed, but wouldn’t it have been enough for Choi Seung to come out alone?”
It wasn’t an entirely strange question. At the so-called “job market,” guidance usually came from hands-on staff who later became their mentors. After all, the purpose was to see whether the rookie and the mentor would get along. At the same time, it wasn’t that strange either.
“I came because it was worth coming,” Harona said flatly.
Besides, it wasn’t that strange either. If there was someone they absolutely had to bring in, rank didn’t matter.
“Our manager said he’d come too,” Sun-Sik said. “He got called into an urgent report, so he’s running late.”
“What? Then I’m the only one here?” Sun-Sik exclaimed. “Should I call in some people from Strategic Planning or something? They literally worship Lee Eun-Ho!”
Harona snapped sharply at the chattering Sun-Sik. “Shut up. You’re being too loud.”
“Hey! Shut up is a bit harsh. I’m hurt,” Sun-Sik said, dramatically slumping his shoulders and putting on a dejected expression.
Harona clicked her tongue. “Guys like you really are all talk—”
“Shh! They’re here!” Sun-Sik said suddenly, covering Harona’s mouth as a group of new hires walked out past the gate.
“Huh?”
The reason why everyone had gathered here today had finally appeared.
“Hey!”
“Hey! Hyungnim Rookie!”
“You got the gift, right?”
Regardless of department or rank, greetings flew at him from all sides. Eun-Ho merely tilted his head slightly in response—an ambiguous gesture, leaving it unclear whether it was polite or rude.
Still, not a single employee there was foolish enough to lecture him on proper greetings. Most of them had received a direct order from their leaders to recruit Lee Eun-Ho.
“Is he the one? Employee of the Year?”
“So that’s him. He looks even better in person than in the interview photos.”
“Hmm, he doesn’t seem that intimidating up close.”
“Yeah, in the Hall of Fame video, he looked like some kind of demon.”
“I am...” Eun-Ho began, and a faint silence settled over the area. Then, he muttered, “Summon.”
A pure white crane appeared atop his open palm. All eyes immediately snapped toward it.
“What is he doing?”
Sarah approached, her tied high blonde hair swishing as she moved. “New hire Lee Eun-Ho has taken out his Department Selection Ticket! He’s not actually going to use it right away, is he?”
Complaints burst out from all directions at once.
“What? Already?”
“Hey, Rookie! You’re not even going to give us time to pitch?”
“My goodness, New Hire Lee Eun-Ho, why are you in such a rush? There are still three whole hours until noon!”
Traditionally, the first hour or two were spent walking around the booths. Even if someone already had a department in mind, they required time to plan a strategy and how many chips to invest in which department.
Due to the company’s closed-off structure, employees rarely had opportunities to interact with other departments. Hence, this event doubled as a chance to put faces to names through department briefings and short conversations with seniors.
And yet, Eun-Ho unfolded the crane as if strategy and networking could go to hell. “Activate.”
Rustle—
Then, the paper crane stretched its wings wide. It lifted its long neck toward the sky and opened itself. At last, a single sheet of blank white paper spread out.
Eun-Ho picked up a fountain pen, jotting something down without hesitation. “I’ll go with this one.”
The white sheet folded in on itself again and again, returning to the shape of a crane.
“Aah! He might be the most impatient top-performing employee in company history! So where did he choose?”
Flap—
The next moment, the paper crane rose into the air.
“Everyone knows how this works, right? Wherever the crane lands is the department he’s chosen!” Sarah reminded.
Where would he go? Which department would this rookie who’s already being called unprecedented no matter what he did choose? Harona thought.
Harona wet her dry lips, caught between curiosity and tension.
“Drum roll! The department Lee Eun-Ho has chosen is—!”
Rustle—
After a few beats of its wings, Eun-Ho’s paper crane descended and came to rest between the booths.
“L-Lady Harona!”
“What the hell? Why is it going over there?!”
“Huh?”
It landed on an empty lot.
“Did he write it wrong?”
“W-wait! There are letters there!” Seung shouted.
The sand covering the vacant ground began to tremble. Then, the paper crane vanished, scattering particles of light in all directions.
Fwooosh—!
Then what appeared were letters, nor rather, a department name.
[Labor-Management Cooperation Team]
“Wait,” someone muttered. “Did the company even have a department like that?”
***
“Lee Eun-Ho! Did you sign up for the labor union yet?” a manager had asked.
“Ssst! Manager, that was a slip of the tongue,” someone whispered urgently.
“Ah, sorry. Temporary contract workers can’t join the union, right?”
Eun-Ho had worked at companies both with and without labor unions. As someone who had always drifted from one contract position to another, it had never really concerned him.
“It's not that we can’t,” Eun-Ho had replied calmly. “Since our contracts end quickly anyway, there’s no real point in joining.”
“Ah, is that so?”
A labor union existed to protect workers’ rights, negotiate salary increases, and push back collectively when employees were treated unfairly within the company.
If he was being honest, in a normal world, unions were just loud people who didn't really give anything back. Now, the story was different. He realized they were necessary to survive in this godforsaken company.
Someone died because they missed stepping into the circle by just 0.1 seconds. Another died because they couldn’t bring themselves to kill people they had shared meals with just the day before.
Some died off because they hadn’t squeezed enough donations out of the bastards snickering behind the Eyes, and more died because the only reason to die was so their limbs could be dismantled and sold off.
Hence why Eun-Ho combed through every rule that existed on the company’s internal network over the course of a single night.
[Would you like to review the employment regulations?]
“Everything,” Eun-Ho had said. “The employment rules, the working hours and wage structure guide, the HR handbook, and the employment contract.”
No matter how hard he read, there was nowhere that truly guaranteed workers’ rights.
But I found something close enough.
If ten percent or more of the total employees agree on a specific agenda, the agenda may be proposed through a labor–management consultative body.
There was a clause stating that, with enough employee consent, a so-called “consultative body” could be formed to negotiate with the company. It seemed useless at first glance. No, judging by that clause alone, it really was useless.
But what matters is that I can create a group that represents the employees, Eun-Ho thought.
Even if it wasn’t a full-fledged labor union, gathering those dissatisfied with the company into a single body would clearly become a stepping stone for what came next.
An individual is weak, but a group is strong.
That was how he reached his conclusion. He wanted to create a new department that could negotiate with the company on behalf of the employees so their relationship would no longer be one of life-or-death coercion, but cooperation.
“Damn... You actually thought of all that?”
“Young Man, that’s really going to make you stand out! Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
It went against everything the company had pursued so far. Of course, the higher-ups wouldn’t just sit back and let it happen.
“It’s better than just following orders and getting crushed,” Eun-Ho said.
Even if he got beaten until he bled, even if his nose was broken, and even if his head was smashed into the ground, he was ready to fight on a ring of his own making.
***
“What?!”
Click. Click. Click.
Sarah approached in high heels, a faint, mocking smile flickered across her face before disappearing. “Looks like even our brilliant representative can make mistakes.”
“What mistake are you referring to?” Eun-Ho asked.
“You seem to be mistaken about something. There’s no such department in this company.”
Of course there wasn’t. If there had been, the company wouldn’t have gone this insane in the first place.
“There’s no rule saying I can’t write down a department that doesn’t exist,” Eun-Ho replied.
“What?”
“The Department Selection Ticket.”
[Department Selection Ticket(Single Use)]
- Write the name of the department you wish to join and submit it. Then, you will be assigned accordingly.
“That’s absurd.” Sarah’s expression stiffened, then quickly smoothed out. She hurriedly checked something, then said, “Please wait.”
She rushed off somewhere in a panic. At the same time, multiple sets of footsteps converged.
“Lee Eun-Ho!”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Harona,” Eun-Ho greeted.
“What the hell are you doing?! You’re supposed to come to our department!” she shouted.
“I thought about it a lot and this is what I decided.”
“No!” Harona’s twin ponytails bounced wildly, before sticking straight up in agitation as she yelled, drawing the attention of the surrounding managers, “Oh, come on! What the hell is a Labor-Management Cooperation Team supposed to be?!”
Her small face flushed red, then pale, then red again. She seemed genuinely furious. Well, Eun-Ho had given them a solid boost to their performance numbers as a parting gift, so there was nothing for him to feel sorry about.
“This isn’t a bad choice for you guys either,” Eun-Ho said calmly to the public.
“What?”
He figured he owed them at least a brief explanation. Regardless of his intentions, the fact that people wanted him was something to be grateful for.
“You all risk your lives for performance,” Eun-Ho said evenly. “No, things more valuable than your lives. You’ve all done the same, haven’t you?”
“W-well, that’s just how it is if you’re a company employee, isn’t it?” someone protested.
For those who had lived under the rule of the company and the system for an unimaginably long time, it probably felt unavoidable.
“If you have to break universal rules just to climb higher, then that organization is already sick,” Eun-Ho said. “In that case, I might actually be of help to all of you.”
Everyone’s mouths hung awkwardly open, but no sound came out.
With that, Eun-Ho tossed out his final line as if it were a joke. “So, I’ll drop by again sometime.”
“Huh?!”
“Ah, or next time, we could try a joint department meeting.”
“We don’t need that! We need you! The Director has been saying how much—” Harona shouted.
Realizing how that sounded, Sun-Sik stepped in. “That’s unbecoming, Harona.”
“Unbecoming?! You piece of half-chewed, fermented tofu, what the hell did you just say?!”
“Fermented tofu doesn’t actually look that bad,” the man replied mildly. “You didn’t know?”
“You lunatic! Anyway!”
“Anyway, you should learn to accept the outcome. Like I did.”
“Ugh!”
Eun-Ho watched quietly, trying to figure out what was going on, when Sun-Sik winked at him.
“Not only did you get me a new office, you also put that smug bastard in his place. Half the department is cheering inside.”
“I guess you had a lot of enemies then...”
“Yeah... Anyway, just ask if you need something. If it’s my little trainee asking, I’ll help without question.”
It seemed Sun-Sik was trying to back him up in his own way, probably because of what he had said earlier.
It’d be a waste to let it end like this, Eun-Ho thought.
Just as Eun-Ho stepped forward, the ground beneath his feet trembled faintly. It was just a thin, subtle vibration, too weak to be an earthquake.
They are here already, Eun-Ho thought.
They had arrived faster than he expected, which meant the situation was that serious.
“Hey!”
As people struggled to steady themselves and looked around in confusion, something appeared before their eyes.
A gate?
On the unpaved road packed with people, a wooden gate carved with antique patterns emerged out of thin air, opening.
A monocled man in a near-tuxedo-level full suit emerged. “Eun-Ho?”
He hadn’t lost his sense of style, but the air of experience around him placed him somewhere closer to middle-aged than young.
“I’m the head of HR, in charge of recruitment and placement,” the man said. “May I have a word with you?”
The one who managed the employees themselves had appeared.
“Hm... I see,” the HR manager murmured, adjusting his polished, gleaming monocle. “The system assigning a domain... Yes, that doesn’t violate company regulations.”
The Head of HR nodded, smiling kindly as he stopped closer to gently ask, “Eun-Ho, did you deliberately create a department that didn’t exist? Was it because you wanted to become a department head?”
Should I be honest? Or should I play dumb?
Normally, Eun-Ho wouldn’t bother drawing the attention or suspicion of people in high positions.
But right now, standing out a little is probably better, Eun-Ho thought.
Feeling the eyes of the surrounding survivors boring into him, he answered plainly, “I did it on purpose.”
Bewilderment flickered across Sarah’s face. Harona, Sun-Sik, and Guk each showed brief flashes of shock, followed by long-suffering resignation.
Then, with the most generous expression and voice imaginable, the HR manager said, “I’ll admit, it’s a novel way of exploiting a loophole.”
“Thank you,” Eun-Ho replied.
“However. You’re free to choose a department that didn’t previously exist, but whether that department is recognized as an official department is a separate matter.”
In other words, it was a rejection. No matter how powerful the Department Selection Ticket was, he could not just create a new department at will.
“This is a clear violation of HR guidelines. Please choose a different department.”
Fully expecting it, Eun-Ho asked. “Which clause of the HR guidelines does it violate?”
“... Pardon?”
“Are you perhaps referring to Article Seven, Clause Thirteen, the section on requirements for establishing a new department?” Eun-Ho asked. “That a department must have at least five members.”
“T-that’s correct, yes.”
“In that case, the relevant provision is Article Eight, Clause Nine,” Eun-Ho continued, “it states that within twenty-four hours of submitting a department establishment request, four additional members excluding myself must be recruited.”
Four people would be easy enough to gather. Just counting the people standing next to him, already lining up to become the first team members, easily cleared that number.
The HR manager blinked rapidly, like someone suffering from dry eyes. His monocle nearly slid off. “H-how could you possibly know that?!”
“I did some prior research.”
The HR manager then quickly regained his composure, adjusted it, and went on. “Ahem. Yes. In addition to that, you must submit the department’s core duties and this year’s objectives by today. However, I have external engagements all afternoon, so I’ll need them by ten o’clock to process everything.”
What?
“You do realize it’s nine thirty right now, correct?” Eun-Ho asked.
“That’s just how company work goes. Everything runs on tight deadlines,” the HR manager replied smoothly.
It was absurd. No one could possibly draft documents they didn’t even know the contents of in thirty minutes. However, if one had prepared all night, that was another story.
“Here they are. Five core responsibilities and this year’s objectives,” Eun-Ho said, handing them over. “I divided the goals into quantitative and qualitative targets for clarity.”
“This is insane—no, I mean...” the HR manager muttered. His monocle kept slipping, as if even his nose were breaking into a sweat.
“If we’re done here, may I get started?” Eun-Ho asked. “I need to run my booth as well.”
“W-wait!”
Panicking, the HR manager grabbed his monocle with one hand and hurriedly spoke.
“There’s still the most important requirement!”
“Yes, I thought there might be.”
“You must submit an operational plan for the next five years before the department can be formally recognized—”
“Here you go.” Eun-Ho presented another document, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Will five years be enough? I prepared a ten-year plan just in case.”
The HR manager’s mouth fell open. “But how?!”
The kindly smile he’d been wearing as a mask had long since vanished. His gently curved eyes now trembled, fear creeping into them. Watching him this shaken was oddly satisfying. All those hours spent grinding away at the documents hadn’t been for nothing.
“I’m rather thorough when it comes to preparation.”
“You are insane!!”
Clatter—
The monocle, having lost its place entirely, finally fell to the ground. “W-what... What are you, exactly?!”