Chapter 025 Pressed into Service

It’s hard to say whether Lin Luyu was lucky or unlucky. She had been assigned to the women’s apparel category.

It wasn’t particularly difficult to break this category down into four or five levels. The real headache was the sheer volume of products in this category.

The moment she received her task and opened the Excel spreadsheet, her computer froze and turned white.

Looking around, she saw she wasn’t the only one experiencing such problems.

Women’s Apparel — Spring/Summer — Tops — T-shirts

Spring/Summer — Tops — Shirts

...

Splitting things down to the fourth category level was almost too easy for Lin Luyu. But the ease at the beginning only made the fifth-level leaf categories all the more tormenting later on.

After staring at the screen for ages, Lin Luyu felt as though she barely recognized the word “women” anymore.

“Come, come, everyone! Take a break—there’s afternoon tea ready in the break room!” Just as Lin Luyu was rubbing her aching eyes, a colleague’s voice rang out.

It was like salvation. Lin Luyu thought so.

Someone who could never part from her phone for even a moment, Lin Luyu hadn’t managed any proper phone time today. But right now, she didn’t want to look at any screen at all—she just wanted to close her eyes and rest.

“Let’s go, let’s go! Everyone, step out and have a break. Work and rest in balance!” The colleague responsible for the women’s apparel category stood up. Seeing the group of new employees behind her reluctant to head for afternoon tea, she gently coaxed and hurried them all out.

Standing up to work out her stiff old arms and legs, Lin Luyu felt the sunlight streaming through the glass window, warming her, as if she had just come back to life.

The long table in the break room was now piled with all kinds of snacks and drinks.

Unlike her best friend, Lin Luyu wasn’t picky about food and drinks. In her eyes, as long as it looked good, that was all that mattered.

So she casually picked up a drink topped with cocoa powder snow, simply because it was the prettiest of them all.

“Hey, I saw you just now,” Chen Man, sharp-eyed, spotted Lin Luyu leaning by the window. “Can’t believe that on our first day, we’ve already been drafted into other teams to help out.”

“Yeah, seriously. Honestly, I still have no clue about the projects in my own team...” Perhaps because Chen Man was the only one Lin Luyu had spent any real time with among the crowd, she mentally placed her in the category of acquaintance, friend—unlike the strangers around.

Since a familiar face was reaching out, Lin Luyu’s words came pouring forth. All the little complaints she’d been storing up since noon suddenly had a place to go, and spilled out in a rush.

“Haha, tell me about it!” Chen Man echoed, laughing. “My experience was exactly the same as yours!”

According to Chen Man, that morning, after the group had picked up their laptops, Wang Xi had just brought them back to their workstations. Suddenly, a colleague from the Product Operations Group appeared out of nowhere and immediately asked Wang Xi to lend some people.

“Do you think you operations folks have some kind of super senses? The news travels so fast! I was planning to spend lunchtime browsing the company wiki, but before I could even turn on the computer, I got hauled over.”

“You’re luckier than I am,” Lin Luyu whispered, turning her head. “I don’t even know where my team’s workstations are... Right after lunch, as soon as we came upstairs, me and another friend from our group were called over to help.”