Journey 1995:Non-Stop

Chapter 77: Construction is about to begin!
Fourth Uncle's factory is quite large, covering an area of ​​about 700 or 800 square meters. When Yan Hui came, Fourth Uncle was not there, and the person in charge here happened to be Brother Shan.

"You're definitely more comfortable here than over there," Brother Shan said, quite pleased to see Yan Hui. "So, you're not going back to live here?"

"Uh-huh."

Brother Shan was very satisfied when he heard this. After all, if Yan Hui didn't go back, that courtyard would be his own. After thinking for a moment, he pointed to Yan Hui's room: "There are three dormitories in total. Two of them are workers' dormitories, and they are quite crowded. There are four people in our dormitory. I basically don't live here. The other two are Brother Liu, the accountant here, and Brother Zhao, who is in charge of the machines. Brother Zhao lives here every day. He is from Anshan and basically lives in the factory. As for Brother Liu, it's not always the case."

"I've checked it out, the dormitory conditions are quite good." Yan Hui was naturally satisfied. According to Brother Shan, it usually just him and Brother Zhao in the room, and Brother Zhao should be a technician, so he should be easy to get along with.

As he spoke, Brother Shan led Yan Hui on a tour of the factory.

There were about 20 workers and porters in total. Almost everyone looked Yan Hui up and down. After hearing Brother Shan say that he was the boss's nephew, they all became much more polite, and some even came over to offer him cigarettes.

After just one round, Yan Hui understood Liu Fei's happiness!

When you're out in the game, connections really matter!
The job that Uncle Si assigned to Yan Hui was to be done by him alone, because there weren't many sawdust shavings. At most, a few dozen baskets of sawdust would be cut each day, and there wasn't even a rush to collect them. In other words, if Yan Hui had to go out in the morning, he could still collect all the sawdust in a few hours in the afternoon.

For someone who has been a mover for a year and a half, this job is really easy!
A salary of 1000 yuan was definitely a high salary in 1996. Most workers here earned 500-800 yuan. However, Brother Shan said that Brother Zhao's salary was 1800 yuan!

After going around for a while, Yan Hui only became a familiar face. He then followed Brother Shan to learn more about his specific job.

At that moment, Brother Shan suddenly saw someone, quickly greeted him, and introduced him to Yan Hui.

"This is Brother Zhao. If I'm not around, you can ask him if you need anything," Brother Shan then introduced Yan Hui to Brother Zhao. "This is the boss's nephew. He's been in the market for almost two years and has a lot of experience! He's usually in charge of cleaning up sawdust, but you can also ask him for anything else."

"Oh, oh, oh, the boss told me," Brother Zhao said. He wore glasses and looked somewhat cultured, but his clothes and hands were covered in black grease, and he wasn't even wearing gloves.

The three of them stood there chatting for a while before realizing that not all the machines were running yet; the official start would be tomorrow, and it would be very noisy inside then. In this factory, if you were to talk about mechanical experts, Brother Zhao would be one, and Brother Shan would be half.

Brother Shan's auto repair skills are quite good, and they can be used here as well, because in this era, the power systems of many devices are the engines of agricultural vehicles and some electric motors, and the mechanical principles are not too different.

“Our factory has a significant investment. Look at these machines, they’re mostly semi-automatic. This band saw, planer, and sander are all quite advanced. We might even get a coal-fired boiler later, which will be useful for drying the timber.” Brother Zhao is a high-achieving student and doesn’t care about saving face. When Yan Hui calls him Uncle Zhao, he just waves his hand and tells Yan Hui to call him Brother.

Brother Zhao used to work as a technician in a large state-owned factory. Because he wasn't very good at networking, he never really fared well. Uncle Si found an opportunity and poached him with a high salary.

Having seen the world, Zhao Ge saw many problems with his uncle's seemingly large factory. There wasn't a single CNC machine, no dust removal equipment, and the workers had little to no protective gear.

Regardless, he was satisfied that Brother Zhao would be in charge of all the machinery. In his view, dust removal and wastewater treatment wouldn't be a problem for this scale of production; the key issue was production safety. He had heard that the annual workplace injury rate in small workshops had reached 0.6%, meaning that out of 20 workers, on average, one would suffer a serious workplace injury every seven or eight years. While the probability seemed low, Brother Zhao was meticulous and frequently trained the workers.

"Of the workers here, only three have a junior high school education, so we can't afford to be careless," Brother Zhao explained again.

Although Yan Hui wasn't the boss, he came here with the mindset of one. He was very happy to hear Brother Zhao analyze the problem like this, and thought to himself that his fourth uncle had really chosen the right person.

Although work did not officially start today, everyone was very busy, and Yan Hui soon met with accountant Brother Liu.

Brother Liu was in charge of keeping track of the accounts; all the timber that came in and went out of the factory had to be registered with him. Although he was called an accountant, he did a lot of work. After a brief introduction to Yan Hui, he went off to work like Brother Zhao.

"So, after all this time, I'm the only one with nothing to do today?" Yan Hui asked.

“How can you be idle? You’re just like me, wandering around and looking at things. That’s work in itself. Look at that band saw over there. You’ll have to keep an eye on it and make sure the workers don’t operate it illegally. Brother Zhao can’t keep an eye on it by himself. Let me tell you, don’t expect those workers to always listen to you. There’s always some idiot who does something reckless, and who knows how much money you’ll end up losing.” Brother Shan instructed Yan Hui.

Yan Hui nodded seriously, took out his notebook, and jotted down some more things. He had written down quite a lot today, all of it new to him.

Fourth Uncle was absolutely right; he never imagined there was so much knowledge involved in the timber processing field. Moreover, because of Yan Hui's special status, Brother Zhao didn't hold back at all, saying whatever came to mind.

That evening, Fourth Uncle invited Brother Shan, Yan Hui, Brother Zhao, and Accountant Brother Liu to dinner. Since everyone had things to do early the next morning, no one drank alcohol. Fourth Uncle gave a long, fussy explanation, almost like a nagging mother. During the meal, Yan Hui learned why Fourth Uncle hadn't been there that day: he had visited many people, and some leaders and friends would be coming to support him the next day, making it a lively occasion.

At the end of the meal, Uncle Si encouraged everyone, saying that there were only four or five months left until the Chinese New Year. If things went smoothly in the next few months, he would definitely give everyone red envelopes during the New Year. This made everyone, including Brother Shan, very excited!

On the way back, Brother Liu told Yan Hui that the factory's orders had been placed a month ago, and that Uncle Si hadn't accepted many of them. Brother Liu was still full of confidence in the factory.

Everyone was quite enthusiastic. By the time they returned to the factory, it was already evening. The workers either went home or gathered in their dormitories to play cards, and the atmosphere was quite lively. This atmosphere infected Yan Hui, but he still wandered around the area, looking for some new business opportunities.

(There will be an extra chapter tonight)

(End of this chapter)