At nine o'clock the next morning, Fang Bai left home with a backpack on his back.
The backpack held five thousand yuan. He was going to buy a pager.
In this day and age, it was truly inconvenient not to have a decent means of communication.
Used to ultra-thin touchscreen phones, Fang Bai had no interest in brick-like Big Brothers.
If he spent twenty or thirty thousand yuan on a Big Brother, then with his perspective from the future, he would definitely think that person was a complete sucker.
Twenty or thirty thousand yuan could buy half a house.
Using the money for a house to buy a low-class brick—heh, how stupid.
Besides, Big Brothers were far too bulky. They were nowhere near as convenient as a compact, refined pager that could be slipped into a trouser pocket without drawing attention. Low-key.
All right, Fang Bai simply could not afford a Big Brother. Sour grapes.
Still, that said.
Clipping a pager onto his belt really did look stupid. Fang Bai would absolutely never do something like that.
Fang Bai rode his brand-new bicycle through the bustling streets with a sunny smile on his face.
There were no dedicated pager stores these days.
Electrical appliance shops, digital stores, and other malls or shops that specialized in electronic products, as well as service halls that handled landline applications, usually had a few pagers available for customers to choose from.
Fang Bai found a digital store selling pagers, but after asking, he learned they only had one style.
An alphanumeric pager. It could make a sound or vibrate while displaying letter and number messages.
With this kind of pager, he would have to call back to find out what was going on.
No Chinese character display?
The kind that could display Chinese characters, letters, and numbers at the same time.
With one of those, he would not have to search all over the streets for a telephone to find out the contents of a message. It was much more convenient.
"Miss, don't you have one that displays Chinese characters?"
"Sir, we don't. Quite a lot of people have asked, and you're not the first. The most advanced model currently available is this numeric display type. With the early analog-signal pagers, users could only receive the paging signal and had to call the paging station to check the callback number."
"..."
Fang Bai instantly felt miserable. Without Chinese character display, it would be much more troublesome to use.
Numbers had to stand for certain meanings. For example, 520 meant "I love you," while 101 represented the surname Li. He would have to look up code meanings for many of them.
It seemed Chinese character display had not been developed yet.
Since it was not available now, it would probably be out soon. Pagers had a very short peak lifespan; mobile phones would appear in a few years.
Should he buy one or not?
For doing business, he still had to buy one.
Fang Bai chatted with the sales staff for a while and ultimately paid for a Motorola pager.
The Motorola pager cost 1,380 yuan, the network access fee was 600 yuan, the number-selection fee was 300 yuan, and the monthly rental fee was 30 yuan. Usually, one had to pay a year's rental fee upfront.
Not counting the monthly rental fee, the whole set had already cost 2,280 yuan. Fang Bai felt a little pained.
The handset fees were about the same everywhere, but activation fees and monthly rental fees varied greatly. Sometimes there was no number-selection fee at all. Fang Bai did not fuss over it. As a businessman, he had to let others make some money off him.
Wasn't he making money off others too? A television that cost less than a hundred yuan to make was sold for over a thousand. He was squeezing people even harder than they were, practically running a business with no capital at all.
So Fang Bai merely grumbled a little about how inconvenient it was to use.
His pager number was "127-1009527." It used both automatic and operator services. A caller could use a landline to dial 127 followed by the seven-digit number, and the pager would directly display the landline number.
After buying the pager, Fang Bai left the digital store and clipped it onto his belt.
At first, he had thought wearing it on his belt looked stupid, but now it felt quite convenient.
And fashionable, too.
He just was not used to tucking his shirt into his trousers. It looked a little unfashionable.
If he tucked in his shirt, though, he could show off his pager. The air of a successful man would naturally emerge, making him look richer than someone wearing a Rolex or a gold chain. After all, ordinary people could not recognize a Rolex, but they could spot a BP Pager at a glance.
Wow, this guy has a BP Pager. His family must be in business.
That was what ordinary people generally thought.
After walking a few steps, Fang Bai felt that it was still better to tuck his shirt into his trousers.
He was not trying to show off his pager. He simply felt that once he tucked in his shirt, it became easier to blend into this era.
Everyone tucked in their shirts and clipped pagers onto their belts. He could hardly insist on being different and stand out from the people around him.
When doing business, one had to display one's strength.
Sure enough, after he tucked in his shirt, more passersby looked his way.
With a confident smile, Fang Bai rode his bicycle to Jiayu Processing Plant.
Qin Donghai was busy working. When he saw Fang Bai arrive, he wiped the grease from his hands with a rag and greeted him with a grin.
"Little brother, I haven't seen you for days. I couldn't find you even when I looked for you."
"I had some things to deal with these past few days. I just bought a pager, so write down my number: 1271009527. Call me if anything comes up."
"Not bad, it's Motorola too. Mine is the same." Qin Donghai looked at the pager on Fang Bai's belt. It was the same brand and model as his own.
The two exchanged pager numbers and chatted about production at the workshop.
Jiayu Factory would finish Hengli Company's order tomorrow, then begin work on Boli Company's order.
His father-in-law said it was hard to recruit people now. Every factory was competing for Skilled Workers, and even if he offered slightly higher wages, people still were unwilling to work night shifts.
At present, he had only recruited one driller and was still urgently looking for lathe operators.
"Listen to me. Spend more money on hiring people. Workers from out of town need room and board included, and you need to raise the pay for the Old Masters too. I estimate wages will rise sharply again after next year's Spring Festival. It's already the end of the year, so raising them a few months early is no big deal. If workers leave and you can't find anyone to work, wouldn't that delay us from making money? I'll bring in more orders, and we won't be able to finish them all."
Fang Bai advised him. Larger factories were all expanding wildly now, with more orders than they could complete and fierce competition for Skilled Workers.
Most Skilled Workers from Wen City worked for themselves and rarely worked for others. Factories generally recruited workers from other places.
His father-in-law had the stinginess of the local bosses in Wencheng. He paid wages in full, and they were somewhat higher than those offered by factories in other provinces.
But the other benefits were mediocre. Forget about two-day weekends; workers had to work overtime regularly.
It could also be said that among private enterprises throughout Jiangnan Province, workers rarely had two-day weekends. Being able to rest two days a month was already considered pretty good.
The only reason wages were high was that they could not recruit people, so they had no choice but to raise pay. It was not because they willingly wanted to give workers raises.
When production efficiency improved, they would lower unit prices. They would not give workers especially high wages, but neither would they suppress them too severely.
There were good aspects too. They rarely withheld workers' wages, the cafeteria food was comparatively decent, and they were willing to invest heavily in the factory.
But those were merely the most basic things a company ought to provide.
Fang Bai had also considered whether, if he started his own business, he should become a pure capitalist or a great entrepreneur who worked hard to improve employee benefits.
He would definitely lean toward the latter, but it would be very difficult to achieve. The company had to be highly profitable; otherwise, it would just be empty talk.
After hearing Fang Bai out, Qin Donghai thought it over and felt it made sense. "All right, I'll talk to them."
He was afraid that if he raised pay to recruit newcomers but did not raise the wages of the existing Old Masters, they would be unhappy once they found out and compared salaries. They might even jump ship.
Fang Bai was right. Since he could make money, why did he have to compare wages with other factories?
If an extra hundred yuan was not enough, then he could offer an extra two hundred. Someone would always be tempted to come work for him.
Each worker could create several thousand yuan in profit for him every month. Giving them a little more was nothing.
The more he spent, the more he would earn too.
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