60s: I have a store

Chapter 315 Storing Vegetables for Winter

As everyone sat down at the table, the uncle stood up and said, "Everyone, listen to me first. I won't keep you too long."

Everyone put down their chopsticks, wanting to know what the old man wanted to say.

"Just now, Secretary Liao from the street office came over and said that we can go buy cabbage starting tomorrow." said an old man.

After hearing this, everyone present began to talk about it.

Buying cabbage is a big deal. If you can’t buy it, you may have no vegetables to eat the whole winter. The winter in Beijing is too cold and vegetables cannot survive at all.

Now, unlike the later times, we have greenhouses and transportation is convenient. Even in winter, we can eat fresh vegetables in the city.

Many people plan to line up early in the morning. The cabbages in the first batch are definitely better than those in the later batches. The cabbages in the later batches are getting worse and worse, as they are the ones left over by others.

Seeing that everyone was talking, the old man spoke again: "Everyone, please be quiet for a moment. In order for us all to buy good cabbage, I suggest that we send people to line up, the women will be responsible for selecting and buying the cabbage, and the men will be responsible for borrowing carts to transport the cabbage back."

"With the combined strength of our entire hospital, we will definitely be able to buy the best Chinese cabbage!"

The people present thought it made sense. This way, no one would suffer any loss and with so many people helping out, it would be easier to buy cabbages. Now when buying cabbages, people basically buy them in batches of several hundred kilograms.

If you want to store enough cabbage for a month at one time, if you don’t have more, it won’t last until the next spring.

The second uncle also spoke up at this time: "If everyone has no objection, then do as the first uncle says!"

"Eat the dumplings first, or they'll get cold."

Everyone started to use their chopsticks at this time, and the children couldn't help themselves and started eating.

Maybe it was because everyone hadn’t eaten dumplings for a long time, so they ate them with extra relish. A total of 30 kilograms of meat filling was completely eaten up, and some people even felt unsatisfied.

The next day, before daybreak, the women in the courtyard had already gotten up and lined up, trying their best to buy cabbage on the first day.

The women had already lined up, some of them even brought their children with them. Although it was not winter in the city yet, it was still quite cold in the mornings and evenings, with the temperature around ten degrees.

Some children do not want to leave their warm beds. Unless they have a "cordial" talk with their mothers, they have no choice but to get up and queue up.

These days, children also have to work, but there is no such thing as child abuse.

The aunt and her friends were considered early, but no one expected that there were people who arrived even earlier. Some people even started queuing up after hearing the news in order to buy the best cabbage.

Everyone tried their best, and we can only say that others paid more, so they could buy the cabbage earlier.

A long queue formed at the designated place, and staff from the street office also joined in. Seeing that the queue was too long, they could only direct the queue to turn so as not to affect others.

The cabbage-delivering truck has not arrived yet. People are waiting in the cold wind, hands in their pockets and feet stamping, eagerly hoping that the cabbage-delivering truck will arrive soon.

Just as people were hoping, the vehicles carrying the cabbages finally arrived, including trucks and tractors. The children in the queue rarely saw horses pulling the vehicles, so they were very excited and watched and talked about them curiously.

The adults' attention was not on the car, but on the variety and quality of the cabbage. If they caught a batch of good cabbage, they would be very happy, feeling that they had made a good fortune and would have good cabbage to eat during the winter.

If the quality of the cabbage is poor, some people will be frustrated. Some people even complain to the street office staff who distribute the cabbage, asking them why they don't buy some better cabbage.

But no matter how much you complain, you have to buy the cabbage no matter how bad it is. This time the cabbage is sold at wholesale price, only a few cents per pound. If you miss this opportunity, it will not be so easy to buy so much cabbage at one time.

Director Li saw that the street office staff alone could not handle the situation and had no choice but to ask for external assistance. All the security staff from the police station, except those who had to stay behind to be on duty, were called over by Director Li to help.

The public security is in charge of maintaining order and helping to carry the vegetables down. There is no other way. Many of the staff members of the street office are women. Although women can hold up half the sky, it is better to leave this kind of physical work to men.

To buy cabbage, you have to queue up twice. First, you have to queue up for invoices. The staff of the street office will check the non-staple food book and find that there is no problem. Then you will get the invoice to prove that you are in the area where cabbage is supplied. Then you have to pay the money, get the receipt recording the quantity of cabbage purchased, and then queue up again to get the cabbage.

However, as long as there is a receipt for the number of cabbages purchased by the leader, it proves that he will definitely be able to buy cabbages today. If he cannot get the receipt, then there is no need to waste time queuing.

Even if you queue up, you won’t be able to get it. You can only wait until the next time cabbage is delivered to the city and then queue up again.

So buying Chinese cabbage is not an easy thing.

Therefore, the workload of the street office staff is still quite heavy. Fortunately, there is help from the public security. Otherwise, if the street office staff alone want to complete today's task, they will probably have to work until the evening.

The security guards were on trucks or tractors, constantly unloading the cabbages from the trucks onto the ground. There was a scale next to them, and some staff placed the cabbages aside. Soon the cabbages were piled as high as a small hill.

After someone received the receipt, they came to Dabaicai Mountain and handed the receipt to the staff.

After the staff member took it, he looked at it carefully and said, "One hundred and twenty kilograms!"

Then a staff member skillfully put the cabbage on the scale and started weighing it. In order to save time, the number is definitely not so accurate and can only be an approximate number.

If no one weighs the weight accurately, I don’t know how much time will be wasted, and there are not enough people.

It was weighed in a short while. There was no help with packaging here, so it had to be transported back manually.

Transporting the cabbage back home is a big project that requires the whole family to work together, regardless of gender, age or status. The elderly and women will fill the bamboo cart with cabbage and slowly push it home.

Middle-aged people put the cabbages into baskets, and those who had bicycles rode them to carry the cabbages home; those who had no means of transportation had to carry them home in sacks, and children were too weak to carry much, so they carried the cabbages home one by one.

In later generations, various "fancy strategies" for taking leave became popular on the Internet, some wanting to travel, some wanting to be lazy, and some asking their children to help write leave notes.

But now, as long as you say you want leave to buy cabbage, you can ask for leave openly, and the company will not deliberately block you or refuse to approve your leave, and it will be approved within seconds.

(End of this chapter)