The New Coworker Is a Little Strange

He clicked the mouse with his right hand, pretending to familiarize himself with the risk-control system, while his left hand kept squeezing the grip strengthener.

The counter on the grip strengthener kept ticking up from zero: +1, +1, +1.

Since this was his first time using the thing, Chen Jue had gone too hard at the start and squeezed until lactic acid had built up in both hands. This time, he deliberately slowed down.

He had not only lowered the grip strengthener's maximum resistance from 60 kg to 30 kg, but also slowed his pace.

After all, he had eight hours of work a day. As long as he didn't injure his hands, Chen Jue could keep squeezing it until the company went under!

As for the work itself, it was child's play to Chen Jue.

As a master-level risk-control data analyst with over 10,000 hours of experience, he only needed to take one look at the system to know how to judge whether a customer should be approved or denied.

That was the value of work experience. He could start right away at a different company.

Many companies recruiting on the market preferred experienced workers like Chen Jue.

They didn't mind paying a little more, as long as the job got done well. That was better than hiring a bunch of fresh graduates and interns who kept making mistakes.

That was why so many university students graduated every year, only to get hit with, "Sorry, you don't have any work experience, so you don't meet our requirements," as soon as they started applying for jobs.

Without work experience, companies wouldn't hire you.

Without a job, you couldn't gain experience.

It was an unsolvable cycle: graduation equaled unemployment.

After squeezing for over an hour, the Attribute Panel still hadn't budged.

Chen Jue guessed that he'd lowered the resistance, and hadn't yet done enough exercise to meet the panel's threshold.

When he'd used it at 60 kg earlier, a prompt had appeared after about half an hour.

But Chen Jue wasn't in a hurry. He had plenty of patience!

While switching hands to rest, he glanced around.

Besides getting familiar with the office, he was also observing his new coworkers.

They were all risk-control staff who spent long hours sitting in front of computers. Not only were their postures crooked, but their glasses were all strikingly thick too—at least 500 degrees, by the look of them.

Still, these coworkers were all well-paid by ordinary standards. Their monthly income started at 20,000 yuan, and they spent about as freely as Chen Jue did.

None of them looked pale and sickly. They were either round and heavyset or had well-fed, prosperous-looking faces.

Apart from team leader Li Mo, whose lean build hinted that he exercised, five or six out of every ten were overweight.

Looking at them, Chen Jue felt as though he were seeing himself before he got the Attribute Panel.

"I've been sticking to my workouts lately. I must've lost at least a few pounds by now, right?"

"If I get the chance, I should make time for a body composition test."

Chen Jue found himself missing the 50,000-yuan body composition analyzer at Yilian Fitness.

Unfortunately, now that he worked in the CBD, he probably wouldn't have a chance to visit the Binjiang Industrial Park area anymore.

He opened Taobao on his phone and, as a second-best option, bought a bathroom scale that could measure body fat. It cost less than 30 yuan—cheaper than breakfast in Hang City.

Just then, Shen Shikun came back from the restroom. As he passed Chen Jue's desk, he took a few extra looks at the grip strengthener in Chen Jue's hand, then came over and asked, "Hey, what's that thing? Some kind of workout equipment?"

Chen Jue glanced at him. In the past hour, he'd already noticed that this pale, chubby man had gone to the restroom twice.

And he'd been gone for quite a while each time!

First to pee, then to take a dump. With paid bathroom breaks, half an hour could pass in no time. He was clearly a veteran at slacking off.

"It's a grip strengthener. It works out your fingers."

"Want to give it a try?"

Seeing how overweight Shen Shikun was, Chen Jue offered him the grip strengthener out of kindness.

Shen Shikun took it and squeezed it a few times. He even tried increasing the resistance, but once it reached 50 kilograms, he couldn't squeeze it anymore.

"Whew!"

"It takes this much effort after only a few squeezes?"

"I can't do this! No way!"

Shen Shikun let out a long breath and handed the grip strengthener back to Chen Jue, looking a little wary of it.

While zoning out at his desk just now, Shen Shikun had noticed that Chen Jue had started squeezing the thing as soon as he sat down.

He'd kept at it from a little after nine until 10:30—over an hour straight.

How much hand endurance did that take?

Chen Jue had switched hands midway, but for a 200-pound couch potato like Shen Shikun, it was impossible to understand how anyone's hands could be that patient.

Wouldn't they get sore after squeezing for so long?

"This guy's got a weird hobby, apparently," Shen Shikun muttered to himself.

Seeing that the chubby man wasn't interested in exercise, Chen Jue smiled, took back the grip strengthener, and continued practicing with the other hand.

At around eleven, the panel finally gave him a new prompt:

[ Ding~ ]

[You have completed one session of excessive anaerobic endurance training. Your finger, wrist, and arm muscle groups have been effectively exercised, improving your muscular endurance and grip strength.]

[Strength Attribute +0.01]

[Free Attribute +0.01]

[Friendly Reminder: Muscles, fascia, bones, and joints are not machine parts. Excessive endurance training can easily lead to tenosynovitis in the fingers. Please arrange your training time reasonably to avoid unnecessary physical injury.]

[Recommended Training Duration: 30 minutes/12 hours]

"Overdid it again?"

Chen Jue stopped squeezing the grip strengthener as soon as he saw the prompt.

Just like with the [Eye Health Exercises] earlier, he couldn't overdo it with the grip strengthener either.

As the panel had said, the human body wasn't a metal machine that never got tired.

Sensitive parts of the body, like his hands, had their own limits.

"I can only train for 30 minutes every half-day, adding up to an hour a day."

"Looks like I'll have to learn how to rest, too," Chen Jue thought.

With his hands aching, he put the two free attribute points he'd gained that morning into [Constitution].

A wave of warmth spread through his body, easing most of the lactic acid buildup in his hands.

The unfamiliar term [tenosynovitis] caught his eye, so Chen Jue took out his phone and looked it up.

It was a condition that often affected the hands and wrists, mainly caused by prolonged overuse of the fingers and wrists.

The tendon sheath, also known as the synovial sheath, was a tubular sac of synovial membrane surrounding a long tendon. It reduced friction as the tendon moved.

Put simply, it was like a ring of bearings around the muscles and joints in the hand. It automatically secreted lubricating fluid, so there was no problem when it wasn't moving much.

But if it was overused, the lubrication wouldn't be enough, and the friction would cause inflammation.

Chen Jue already hated the feeling of lactic acid buildup.

He didn't even want to think about training until he developed inflammation!

He could work on his attributes anytime, but never at the cost of damaging his body.

He put down the grip strengthener and saw that it wasn't mealtime yet.

So Chen Jue sat at his desk and looked up information about human movement. The office computers were high-spec, with reliable internet access. He could even switch tabs and play games without any trouble.

But playing games during work hours was no longer slacking off. That would be taking advantage.

However, after spending the past while away from his phone and computer, Chen Jue found himself unaccustomed to staring at a screen for so long. His eyes felt a little dry.

He took off his glasses and, without worrying about what anyone thought, raised his hands and started doing the [Eye Health Exercises].

He planned to massage the acupoints around his eye sockets and ease the strain.

But the sight left Shen Shikun staring in disbelief!

"Holy crap!"

"What's he doing?"

"Doing those eye exercises for kids?"

"If they actually worked, I wouldn't have become nearsighted so early!" Shen Shikun grumbled to himself. He thought his new coworker was seriously weird.

Playing with a grip strengthener right out in the open had been one thing. Now he was doing the eye exercises that elementary and middle school students did.

But Chen Jue was pressing away with such focus, and his technique and movements were completely different from anything Shen Shikun remembered—like "rubbing the Tianyin acupoint"—that he couldn't help taking a few more looks.

"What version of the eye exercises is that?"

"How come I've never seen it before?" Shen Shikun wondered.

He sneaked another glance at team leader Li Mo's desk in the distance, debating whether he should learn the moves too.

That way, he'd have another trick to help pass the time at work.

Before long, it was 11:30. People at nearby desks began standing up, stretching, and loosening their limbs.

Chen Jue also saw people in the newly created work chat discussing what to eat for lunch and what takeout to order.

For office workers, lunch and the break afterward were about the only parts of the day that belonged to them.

If you didn't treat yourself to something good then, you were just making yourself suffer.

"Chen Jue, want to grab lunch with me in the cafeteria on the first floor?"

"The food there's pretty good. I eat there most of the time," Shen Shikun suggested warmly as he came over.

"Sure!"

"Let's go together!"

Chen Jue nodded, picked up his employee badge, and followed him downstairs.

This time, though, they didn't take the stairs. Chen Jue had already climbed them once that morning, and he was worried that too much [Climbing] might hurt his knees.

While searching online that morning, he'd found out that, besides [tenosynovitis in the fingers], the knee could also suffer from a complicated condition called [knee joint injury].

And with a chubby man beside him, taking his 200-pound coworker up the stairs would probably make him look like an idiot.

They took the elevator down to the cafeteria. It was spacious, with two floors open to one another.

There was a wide selection of food, too. Besides Chinese food, there was Western food, as well as fast-food chains like KFC and McDonald's. The variety was on par with what you'd expect from a cafeteria contracted by the Huaye Building.

And nearly everyone who ate there worked for the Hengtong Group. They were all dressed in suits, and the place wasn't as crowded with all sorts of people as the Huaye Building. Chen Jue liked the atmosphere at first glance; it wasn't as noisy.

He topped up his employee badge with 500 yuan for meals, picked out the food he liked, and found an empty seat by the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Shen Shikun, meanwhile, came over with a whole fried chicken, two cups of cola, fries, and a burger.

"Isn't that a bit greasy for lunch?" Chen Jue asked curiously. He was beginning to understand why Shen Shikun was so fat.

"It's all right!"

"I grew up overseas, and I've loved fried chicken and burgers since I was a kid. I'm used to them, though I switch things up sometimes," Shen Shikun said with a grin. Then he complained to Chen Jue about the building's property management.

"See that fly?"

"It's already autumn, and there's still a huge green-headed fly in here! The property management's so stingy. They can't even spray a little insecticide. Seeing that thing while I'm eating really kills my appetite!" Shen Shikun said with a look of disgust.

"They really are stingy!"

"They didn't even turn on the stairwell ventilation this morning. It reeked in there," Chen Jue added.

The fly had probably come in from the stairwell, too.

When he'd climbed the stairs that morning, Chen Jue had noticed that the large trash cans on every floor were placed by the fire doors.

If they didn't turn on the ventilation, the smell would attract flies.

But as they ate, the fly buzzed over to their table, making itself a real nuisance.

Shen Shikun was a 200-pound chubby man whose arms weren't quick enough. He waved at the annoying fly twice but couldn't chase it away.

Seeing that, Chen Jue stopped him from wasting his time and said, "Let me," then picked up a toothpick from beside his tray.

"You?" Shen Shikun asked.

He paused mid-bite, still chewing his burger. He hadn't figured out what Chen Jue was up to when—

Chen Jue aimed with a bent finger. When the green-headed fly landed on the corner of the table and began rubbing its hands together, he flicked his finger. The toothpick shot across half the table and pinned the fly to the tabletop.

Shen Shikun's hand jerked when he saw it. The half-eaten burger dropped straight into his tray with a smack.

He was stunned!

He thought his new coworker sitting beside him was seriously fucking weird!