The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 59: Money is not spent

One hundred and eighty yuan is the salary of an ordinary worker for half a year without food or drink. After deducting the expenses, many families cannot save enough money for a set of furniture in a year.

Zhu Lan continued talking with Jiang Cheng. They just agreed on the wages. Some skilled masters could not be hired just for wages, but also had to provide meals.

"Sister Zhu, can you bring the carpenter to my house for lunch at noon? I've brought my wife here, and I may have to go racing tomorrow and won't have time. Find a way to go to the sawmill with the carpenter in the afternoon and buy all the wood." Jiang Cheng had no objection to the wages and meals. He just wanted to finish the furniture as soon as possible and have the same look at home.

"No problem. I'll ask the carpenter to come to your place after get off work." Zhu Lan said as she packed some of the things Jiang Cheng wanted to buy.

Jiang Cheng bought ginger and garlic, which were in limited supply, as well as sesame paste, salt, soy sauce and vinegar. The soy sauce and vinegar were available in bottles and in bulk.

When buying soy sauce and vinegar, people usually buy them in bottles for the first time, and then they use the bottles to weigh them separately.

After buying the miscellaneous items, Jiang Cheng bought ten net bags. Net bags were cheap and similar to the bags used to carry things in supermarkets in later generations. There are no plastic bags now.

This trip also cost Jiang Cheng a lot of money. He didn't buy a particularly large rice jar, but it still cost seven yuan each. In fact, there are also wooden rice jars, which are even more expensive, about twenty yuan.

A large wooden basin costs eight yuan. This large wooden basin is available in almost every household in the city, at least in the south. It is used for bathing. There are bathhouses in the south, but not many. When it is hot, men can wash in the corners with their pants on, but how can women wash without going to a bathhouse?

They all use a large wooden basin to fetch water and wash in the room, even grown men do the same when it's cold.

This big wooden basin was bought for Zhou Lingying to take a bath. If she didn’t buy it today, she would have to use the basin to wipe her body at night.

The mosquito net cost fifteen yuan, and I also needed some cloth coupons. This thing is not something you can buy just by having money.

Two bottles of wine, which is also a well-known brand of Wuliangye in later generations. But in this era, the price is not as high as Fenjiu and Zhuyeqing. Two yuan and a half per bottle, two bottles for five yuan. The wine ticket was given to Jiang Cheng in the cigarette when he was delivering the wine on the truck.

In this era, Moutai is expensive, costing seven or eight yuan a bottle, and it is a high-end wine, so ordinary people can't get Moutai tickets. Jiang Cheng is a driver with a high status, but he is not so shameless that people will give him Moutai tickets just for transporting goods.

Counting the few items and miscellaneous items, Jiang Cheng spent 46.63 yuan. He had to pay another 20 cents to have a cart driver help him take it home.

Basically, if you buy anything, an ordinary worker will have to spend about one and a half months' salary without eating or drinking.

This was when I came back last time. I bought a batch of large ceramic bowls in Jingdezhen, and they gave Jiang Cheng some bowls. My neighbor across the street, Zhang Yang, worked in an enamel factory, and I could buy a few enamel plates from him without a ticket. I no longer had to buy bowls from the supply and marketing cooperative, which would cost 20 or 30 cents each, and I had to spend a few dollars to buy a bowl.

On the way back, Jiang Cheng handed a few cigarettes to the cart driver and asked him to help unload the coal. It was only a few hundred meters from where the car was parked to the yard, so a few good cigarettes were enough to help pull the cart.

"Zhu Lan, who was that just now? He bought so many things at once and even made furniture."

"My distant cousin is a driver at the transport station. The kelp and sea fish I got for everyone were all bought by him. You have to take care of him when he comes to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy things in the future."

After Jiang Cheng left, a colleague who was close to Zhu Lan in the supply and marketing cooperative came up to ask about it. Zhu Lan and Jiang Cheng did not avoid anyone in their conversation just now.

After Zhu Lan said this, her colleagues at the supply and marketing cooperative felt relieved.

Zhu Lan has been doing great recently. For some reason, she received praise from the director a while ago. And the day before yesterday, she even brought some sea fish over, which were all kept by the director of the supply and marketing cooperative in the name of the supply and marketing cooperative. Now they are stored in the warehouse and will be distributed to everyone as employee benefits when the salary is paid in a few days.

The deputy director of the supply and marketing cooperative is said to be transferred to another newly opened supply and marketing cooperative as director in the near future. If the vacant position is an internal promotion, Zhu Lan, as a salesperson in the supply and marketing cooperative for many years, is qualified for promotion. But to be promoted to director, not only does she have to compete with other qualified salespeople, but the real competition is for those in charge of logistics.

There are dozens or even hundreds of supply and marketing cooperatives in a city, and each of them has dozens to hundreds of employees.

The positions in the supply and marketing cooperative include director, deputy director, accountant, buyer, warehouse manager, salesperson, salesperson, statistician, logistics, and approval clerk.

Among the ordinary employees working in the supply and marketing cooperatives, those who are most likely to be promoted to deputy directors are those in charge of logistics, followed by more outstanding salespersons.

As a salesperson in a supply and marketing cooperative, she is so popular in society because she can use the resources of the supply and marketing cooperative, not because of her own ability. But now Zhu Lan can get the materials herself, which is much more useful to the leader than your own skills.

Those salesmen may have accurate hands and can grab a pound of goods at once without any deviation, which looks impressive. But at most, they are just skilled and excellent salesmen.

This is similar to the bank employees in later generations. You count money quickly and accurately like performing acrobatics. But what good is it? If you can attract a large amount of deposits, you can be made a manager. If you have a huge amount of deposits, you can be made a bank president.

As the deputy director of the supply and marketing cooperative, I assist the director in his work.

Zhu Lan is currently in this situation. If she can always get supplies by herself, the director thinks that letting her assist in the work may not be worse than finding someone with strong logistics management capabilities.

Zhu Lan couldn't hide the fact that she could get things, so she could only tell the director and colleagues that her relative was a driver at the transport station. And she felt that it was okay to say this even in front of Jiang Cheng, because she and Jiang Cheng were originally in a cooperative relationship. If she could become the deputy director, she would be able to cooperate with Jiang Cheng better.

Changcheng, Nanluoyuan.

Not long after Jiang Cheng left the yard, several women and aunties in the yard came to visit him. Before, Jiang Cheng was a single man, and the women wanted to get close to him, but they were afraid of gossip.

Now Jiang Cheng brought a girl here, and everyone knew that Jiang Cheng was married. Because many people asked about this, Jiang Cheng always said that he was married and would bring his wife here in a few days.

Now there is no need to guess, the girl who came with Jiang Cheng and is now busy cleaning up must be Jiang Cheng’s wife.

The older people in the yard call her Jiang's wife, and the younger ones call her Miss Zhou. They kept praising Zhou Lingying, saying that she was so diligent in packing things and busying around here. She was diligent and pretty.

But this is just a compliment. Some women actually think in their hearts that whoever marries a driver like Jiang Cheng will be lazy. If anyone is lazy, the woman's family will come to help discipline him.

Zhou Lingying asked her neighbors where she could dry the washed clothes. There were several bamboo racks in the yard, which were used by people in the yard to dry clothes.

Everyone was also very enthusiastic and found a place for Zhou Lingying to dry clothes.

But Zhou Lingying didn't know that this was the location where several families had quarreled over the clothes drying. If your clothes are hung here, and persuasion doesn't work, I will just throw them on the ground next time I see them.

Zhou Lingying felt that the neighbors in the courtyard were very nice, harmonious and enthusiastic. Jiang Cheng thought so too. Whenever they met someone, they would greet him and always ask enthusiastically if there was anything they could help with.

Jiang Cheng has not seen the so-called intrigues between neighbors so far.

(End of this chapter)