The Newspaper Boss's chat with Lin Qi ended before long. Lin Qi had filled his head with all sorts of interesting ideas, and he had grown eager to put them into action.
He felt that everything Lin Qi had said was absolutely right. Nothing was more important than dignity. Once a person bent their back in this life, they could never straighten it again. That was how he had been, and he was going to reclaim his dignity!
Watching the determination that seemed to fill the Newspaper Boss's departing figure, Lin Qi expressed his hope that he could successfully carry out his plans.
That afternoon, taking advantage of some free time, Lin Qi registered a commercial company called the "Great Empire" at the Sabine City Social Services Bureau. Its business covered the vast majority of fields.
In fact, the Social Services Bureau did not particularly care what kind of business a registered company intended to conduct. The reason they had this selection process was purely to establish a searchable system.
When some companies needed to cooperate with others, they could pay the Social Services Bureau to retrieve certain records. If a company had only one business scope, it would be considered its "primary business." If it had many business areas that included a particular field, that would be considered a "secondary business."
Whenever companies cooperated with one another, they hoped their partners would be professionals. That was why many companies registered only one business area.
Registering all this information cost Lin Qi one hundred dollars. Municipal halls had always encouraged entrepreneurship and offered entrepreneurs numerous benefits.
Starting a business could increase the number of jobs in society and ease the conflict between the unemployed and society itself. This was especially true where taxes were concerned. Basically, as long as a newly established company hired enough employees according to the rules, it could enjoy tax reductions or even tax exemptions.
For a relatively comprehensive service company like the one Lin Qi had registered, the capital was a pitifully small one hundred dollars. Yet as long as he hired three employees, he could apply for tax exemption.
Neither City Hall nor the Federal Revenue Service expected such a small company to become a main artery of the city's finances. The taxes paid by these small companies would never allow City Hall to launch any major projects, and without them, the city's construction schedule would not be affected this year. They might as well offer generous benefits and, at the very least, reduce the number of unemployed people who might cause trouble by three.
After completing the registration, Lin Qi did not immediately hire workers and begin operations. Instead, he found a print shop and had some small cards printed.
The cards listed Lin Qi's main services, such as exchanging small change, which was the most important service of all. He then bought a ledger and a book about standardized tax filing.
After spending the entire afternoon studying and researching carefully, he more or less understood the contents. He also clearly realized that even when something was extremely backward, it still could not necessarily be mastered with ease.
He envied those people who did not even need to read books. Relying on only a few vague concepts, they could not only write a flawless set of accounts themselves but also spot errors in someone else's books.
This also made him realize that he needed a professional accountant.
In fact, if Michael had not found him so quickly, he might not have established a company so soon.
In the previous world, he had chatted with some big shots during lunch and the occasional time outside his cell. Everyone in that dreary place had stories that could not be told in full, but most people were not interested in them.
For one thing, the people being held there were mostly in similar situations. They might not feel that someone else's story was more exciting than their own, nor did they feel any urge to explore other people's pasts.
For another, the guards could directly apply to view the files. The contents were more objective, fair, and closer to the truth, and the guards did not directly communicate with the detainees.
Lin Qi was different. From the moment he entered, he was like an inquisitive sea surface, tirelessly absorbing knowledge. Those who had been detained for a long time or would remain detained for a long time were also happy to tell their stories and search for the selves they had once been at their brightest.
From the experiences these people recounted, he learned one thing: he should avoid letting his trail appear too clearly in the authorities' sights.
In other words, it was best to wait until the fruit was fully ripe and fell from the branch, then walk into the orchard, pick it up, and leave—not tend to it like a fruit farmer and harvest it only after it matured. Every trace of your activities, your records, and your experiences would be recorded in certain files without alteration.
One day, when someone needed to find something to use against you, they could flip through your file and make you understand what true terror was.
Of course, if you could not accomplish that, then the difficulty of your game would increase several times over. You had to make every step flawless!
It had to be said that the place really was filled with highly talented people. There were people from every profession and every walk of life, and Lin Qi benefited enormously from it. He learned countless things he had never imagined he could learn.
The first step was to start by obeying the law!...
Sabine City had two places resembling talent exchange markets. One was the Sabine City Social Services Bureau Employment Center, where some business owners and citizens preparing to look for work gathered.
The other was not official. It was a sort of spontaneous hiring corner. In front of the vegetation wall beside the second fountain in Sabine City Central Park, there were many recruitment notices.
Of course, some community agencies also introduced job opportunities to people in their communities. Their role, however, was not very significant. Hiring companies were unwilling to pay additional agency fees, and applicants were unwilling to pay them either. This left the agencies at a loss. Everyone wanted something for free, so the information was updated very slowly.
Lin Qi went to the first place, the Sabine City Social Services Bureau Employment Center. He needed to recruit three employees for himself—employees with "cash" ability.
From the perspective of capital, exploitation and oppression had never been negative concepts or synonyms for ugliness and sin. One had to understand that even in modern society, merchants who were on good terms sometimes still gathered together to discuss how to oppress and exploit their employees.
Only the oppressed and exploited would consider such things ugly and sinful. As for why... everyone knew.
Lin Qi needed people like that: outstanding salesmen.
After paying fifteen dollars, he obtained a booth—essentially a long table with two simple wooden boards serving as partitions. His fellow recruiters sat on both sides, and the entire hall was extremely noisy.
His recruitment notice had already been posted on the bulletin board. Anyone willing to give it a try could follow the number to find him, chat with him, and then decide whether to accept the job.
After waiting for more than ten minutes, a young man wearing an old dress shirt, a suit, and a cheap new tie finally sat down across from Lin Qi.
The young man looked only twenty-four or twenty-five. He was also shocked by Lin Qi's youth. After sitting down, he even stood up again and looked once more at the sign before sitting back down.
"You're not the first. Let's get started, shall we?" Lin Qi prompted him. The other man immediately opened the badly worn briefcase he carried with him and took out a stack of documents, handing them over.
Lin Qi accepted them and looked through them. They were certificates from training schools, along with some awards he had received as a child.
He casually tossed the résumé aside, then interlaced his fingers and rested them on the edge of the table. "Mr. Richard, my company doesn't need these unconvincing things. I need ability. Do you understand?"
The young man Lin Qi had called Richard nodded nervously. "Yes, sir."
Lin Qi asked again, "Do you know what my company does?"
Richard nodded once more. "Yes, sir. I saw it on the poster. It says the job is as a salesman. For every successful deal, I receive a two-to-three-point commission. There is no base salary..."
He looked somewhat nervous. This was the fifth job he had sought. He had never lasted a full year at any of his previous jobs. Most had ended after two or three months, and the shortest had lasted less than a month.
The pressure of life and his dwindling motivation could no longer support him for much longer. If he failed at this job too, he might have to follow his father's wishes and enter a factory as a worker after a short period of training.
He did not want to spend his entire life dealing with dangerous machines. The moment he saw it, he had taken a liking to the recruitment poster for the Great Empire service company.
No base salary might be unacceptable to many people, but it also represented the future.
Everyone foolishly believed that they were the special one, the one who was different from everyone else, the one most favored by the Goddess of Fame, and the one with the greatest potential for success.
"You're saying I can't do it? Come on, let's fight!"