“Let me tell this story using Wang Yi as a girl’s nickname.”
After Lu Yunyao said this, a whirlpool seemed to appear in front of Li Qianqian of the Three Bears Beauty Salon.
The whirlpool engulfed her and dragged her into it.
Li Qianqian began to recall the road she had walked.
Li Qianqian grew up in the mountains of Heijin Province. The village was extremely poor, and it took more than an hour to go to school. The only teachers left here were the original villagers, and there were no teachers who taught in the village. Li Qianqian did not have an outstanding IQ, and her grades were not very good, not enough to change her fate and fly out of the mountains.
After graduating from junior high school, Li Qianqian chose not to continue studying and went out of the province to work.
In big cities, it was different from small villages. She can make a lot of money, and the factory provides food and drink. Li Qianqian can save most of her salary. Like other girls in the village, she sends most of her salary back home every month.
On the assembly line, she became more and more skilled, but she also felt more and more inexplicably empty. Because of her outstanding appearance, many people in the factory showed interest in her and wanted to start a family with her, but she refused.
But what does she want? She doesn’t know herself. She always feels that if her life continues like this, she will be unwilling to accept it. But how to change it and where to change it? She doesn’t know. Occasionally, she heard students who graduated from college also lament how difficult to find a job now.
She only has a junior high school diploma. She should cherish her job more.
She worked on the assembly line for three years. She took the train back to her hometown during the Chinese New Year two years ago. After getting off the train, she took a bus and met Tao Jie, who had also returned to her hometown and escaped from marriage.
Tao Jie was a typical rebellious person in the village. She was completely different from her. Because she helped her, the two had a conversation in the second half of the journey.
Tao Jie chose the nanny industry at first, and the salary was higher than that of the assembly line. After that, she devoted herself to beauty. Her knowledge was much broader than Li Qianqian. Tao Jie has been married and divorced and is now single with a daughter.
Li Qianqian talked about her feeling of emptiness on the assembly line.
Tao Jie said: “Qianqian, working on the assembly line is not like a person, but like a tool on the assembly line, which can be replaced by younger boys and girls. Not only that, there is a worse possibility that the work on the assembly line may be replaced by machines. Have you ever considered doing a more growth-oriented job? I am a cosmetologist. If you are willing, you can follow me.”
“The salary of a beauty salon is not as high as the salary of an assembly line at the beginning, but if you are diligent and sweet-talking, it will increase quickly. This salary is different from the standard of the assembly line. You will learn a lot from me. Many girls love beauty in big cities. This line is promising, and you can learn a lot when dealing with different customers. Moreover, we are from the same hometown. If you do well, you can open a branch in the future and become a backbone. Think about it carefully.”
Tao Jie’s words entered Li Qianqian’s heart. During the Chinese New Year, she tentatively asked her parents, but her parents refused. They could not accept just one reason: the salary of a beauty salon is not as good as that of an assembly line.
Her mother said: “What is beauty? It’s just making a mask and then giving a massage. You can make a mask at home, and you can also give a massage. With your education level, you can give a message to others. If something goes wrong, you have to pay compensation. You have a good job now, so just keep doing it.”
Her father knocked on the chopsticks, and the chopsticks collided with the bowl, making a crisp sound.
“When are you getting married? You are 19 years old, and you are not young anymore. If you get married earlier, I won’t ask you for a lot of gifts. Just give you 100,000 or 80,000 yuan. If you have a child and start a family earlier, you don’t have to think about it so much. You are just bored. If anyone in the village approaches Tao Jie, that person will be ignored!”
As for the younger brother who was eating, he didn’t care about it at all. He continued to eat with his head down, and handed the empty bowl to his mother, asking her to serve the rice.
Because of her parents’ words, and because Li Qianqian was now a skilled worker and would get a higher salary on the assembly line, she didn’t think about switching to a beauty salon.
The opportunity that finally made Li Qianqian go to the beauty salon was that her workshop had achieved semi-automation, the workshop was disbanded, and she was assigned to another assembly line.
The workers were chattering about which workshop to go to, and they envied Li Qianqian. Their team leader in a workshop liked Li Qianqian and wanted to transfer her to that assembly line.
“Xixi, Team Leader Liu likes you, so just agree.”
Li Qianqian and her co-workers smiled reluctantly. On this day, she was lying on the bed, thinking about what Sister Tao said. Now that the machine has replaced one assembly line, wouldn’t the other place be replaced too?
She is young and beautiful now, and Team Leader Liu wants to pursue her, so he can be replaced on a new and better assembly line, but what about next time? If she was no longer young and was replaced on a bad assembly line, can she adapt? Or if the entire factory has achieved automated production, where will she go?
She thought of the aunt who swept the roadside for a while, and the aunt who cleaned the toilet for a while.
Li Qianqian felt that she could work harder when she was young because she needed to struggle when she was young. But when she was old, it would be too hard to survive like this.
Li Qianqian thought about it all night and called Tao Jie early the next morning. After confirming that the other party would want her, she left the factory without telling her family and began to follow Tao Jie for beauty treatments.
She absorbed knowledge like a sponge.
She learned that hyaluronic acid can keep the skin moisturized and smooth, and has the functions of anti-wrinkle and restoring the physiological functions of the skin.
She knew that the skin under her eyes was very thin, so she must not apply too oily cosmetics, and the technique must be gentle, which should speed up blood circulation and not pull the skin too much.
Some people are sensitive to pain, so you must be gentle when massaging them.
Just like Tao Jie said, they were very suitable for this industry because they come from the village. They have a unique sense of simplicity and will only massage hard and will not do too much sales. Compared with other employees, Li Qianqian has another greater advantage. Li Qianqian was good-looking enough.
The 20-year-old girl still has some baby fat on her cheeks, and her eyes are pure and clear, like a fragrant rose on a branch.
In just three months in the beauty salon, her skin was visibly white and smooth, which also made customers more confident to come to the beauty salon. A country girl like Li Qianqian can maintain such a good condition. It seems that the effect of the beauty salon was very good, and Li Qianqian’s commission has also increased.
Li Qianqian herself calculated that if she continues at the current progress, her salary level will be on par with the assembly line in at most three months, and there will be more breakthroughs afterward.
Recalling this, the 20 years she has experienced have already passed.
The female anchor in the [Doubt Solving Live Room] continued to speak, her voice cold and desolate: “When Wang Yi was doing beauty treatments that day, she heard that books were cheap in the second-hand bookstore near the university, so she went to buy books.”
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