Chapter 22
At WG Food, employees received quarterly performance grades.
And those grades came with rewards.
The highest-ranked employees received incentives.
In other words...
Money.
A company already paid salary.
So when it also gave someone extra incentive pay, that was basically one of the strongest forms of praise it could offer.
But there was something even more important.
Promotion.
Naturally, employees who consistently received high grades had the best chance of being promoted first.
It meant the company believed they were more capable than the others at the same rank.
Quarterly incentives were valuable.
But for employees at the staff and assistant-manager level...
Promotion mattered even more.
Being promoted ahead of your peers meant many things.
The most capable employee.
The employee earning the highest salary.
The employee with the greatest growth potential.
That first promotion carried enormous meaning.
That was why people cared so much about promotion.
I was no different.
After joining WG Food, I had worked harder than anyone.
Not only for the rewards.
I had learned from childhood that I had to do my best at everything.
My parents never needed to lecture me about it.
I had seen it myself.
They had never stopped working hard.
They wanted me to eat what I wanted.
Wear what I wanted.
Do what I wanted.
They worked so much that most of my childhood memories were not with them.
They were with my grandmother.
That was how seriously they had worked for our family.
Even so, our financial situation had never changed overnight.
My parents were ordinary salary workers from an ordinary family.
No matter how hard they worked, sudden financial freedom did not magically appear.
That was reality.
Still...
Thanks to them, my grandmother and I had many happy memories.
Watching my parents live that way taught me to give everything to whatever I did.
School.
Part-time jobs.
Even when I had time to play...
I threw myself into it.
That was simply how I lived.
So when I joined WG Food, I did the same.
I gave everything to the work directly in front of me.
Naturally, results followed.
I became the first person among my intake group to be promoted from staff to assistant manager.
At the time, I was happy, but not completely shocked.
Part of me had believed it was only natural.
Looking around, I did not think anyone else worked as hard as I did in sales or cared as much about WG Food.
That was how dedicated I was.
I lived for work inside the company.
Outside, I constantly searched for new clients and promoted WG products.
My sales numbers proved the time and effort I had poured in.
Even in my first quarter after becoming assistant manager, I received an A rank.
Everything had felt rewarding.
If I worked hard, the results proved it.
Then...
Something had changed.
No.
Someone had changed it.
Lee Sejun.
The man standing beside me right now.
He had shaken my company life.
He had even shaken my values.
Using his parents' wealth to generate sales was not illegal.
His coworkers might hate him for it.
But that alone was not what made me suspicious.
“I'm asking whether those accounts are generating enough volume to make those prices profitable.”
I stared directly into his eyes.
Because I no longer thought his method was merely different.
I thought it was wrong.
Lee Sejun frowned.
Instead of answering, he raised his voice.
“What? You're looking down on me because you brought in a huge account while I only signed a small neighborhood mart?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That's exactly what you're doing.”
“You're picking a fight because I gave a low price to one small account.”
His mouth trembled.
“If your mart is the largest in Honam, does that automatically mean it'll sell well?”
“And if an account is small, are you certain it'll sell badly?”
I pointed at the monitor.
“This account.”
“And this one.”
“And this one too.”
“Every client here is receiving near-minimum prices.”
“I asked you whether all these clients are actually generating the sales required for those rates.”
“...What business is it of yours?”
His eyes shook.
I understood immediately.
Those clients were not generating the required sales.
Honestly, I had already suspected it even before confronting him.
I had never seen prices this low before.
Even Manager Kwon only had a few accounts receiving deals like this.
Prices that low were only given to clients bringing in enormous monthly revenue.
So how was Lee Sejun receiving those rates from the first contract?
That was what I wanted to know.
If the company had been deceived for his personal performance...
Then those were false quotations.
“...Do you think I set these prices by myself?”
Lee Sejun quickly looked around, checking whether other employees were listening.
Then he pointed upward.
“Obviously the higher-ups approved them.”
“Higher-ups?”
I leaned closer and whispered.
“So you're saying Manager Jang Woojin approved these prices?”
