Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 193 Sister Wu (It's so annoying for a bored person to look for books to read +10)

Upon entering, there was a small courtyard with a row of houses. The middle door was half-open, with a curtain hanging inside to keep out the cold. A few people went inside and found a long corridor with five or six doors in a row. They looked up and followed the signs on the doors to find the place: Donglaishun Processing Center Purchasing Department.

The second room on the left. Xiao Wei opened the door and went in. Inside, several desks were scattered haphazardly, with materials and items piled up on the desks and floor. A woman sitting there writing something looked up and asked, "Who are you looking for?"

Xiao Wei said, "Hello, I called yesterday to ask about the pallets. Your comrade Wu asked me to come over today to sign the contract for 500,000 pallets."

The woman stood up with an "Oh," and said, "That's me. How many kinds do you have? We have three sizes here." She rummaged through a mess of things and pulled out three trays of different sizes, large, medium, and small, and handed them to Xiaowei.

Xiao Wei took it, looked at it, and said, "It's all fine to make, and the price is a few cents lower than your original price. You want all three?"

The woman said, "We don't use the big ones much, we still have some in stock. These two are the ones we use the most right now. This one you asked about yesterday, 500,000 is no problem. We also need to make this smaller one, 150,000, how much is this one?"

Xiao Wei asked, "How much did you originally buy this for?"

The woman looked at Xiaowei with a half-smile and remained silent. Xiaowei said, "I didn't mean anything by it. I'm a salesperson and I don't know how to calculate this. Sister Wu, you mentioned 28 cents yesterday. I just asked the factory and they gave me 23 cents. That's about it. Tell me how much you originally paid, so I don't have to go back and make a trip."

Sister Wu smiled and said, "This originally cost 21 cents. How much are you paying?"

Xiao Wei thought for a moment and said, "How about Er Mao? We don't use much of it. If that doesn't work, just make what we talked about yesterday."

Sister Wu said, "Lower the price a bit more, I'll place an order for 200,000."

Xiao Wei shook his head and said, "This one can't be reduced any further. I know what I'm doing. Don't be fooled by its smaller size; the cost difference isn't that much. Sister Wu, you've been doing this all along, you should understand."

Sister Wu smiled and asked, "Did you bring the official seal? I forgot to ask you yesterday, which organization do you work for?"

Xiao Wei said, "I'm flexible here. I can sign it myself or have the company stamp it. I have a lot of freedom. But if you want the company stamp, you have to stamp it here, I'll take it back, stamp it, and then bring it back to you. There's no way around it. Our superiors are the power industry labor service department. You know, they're pretty strict."

Sister Wu asked, "The district's power company?"

Xiao Wei shook his head and said, "We are from the provincial power industry, not under the city's jurisdiction." Back then, regardless of the size of the unit or the level of the factory, there were labor service companies. The full name was XX Unit Labor Service Company, which was a tertiary industry unit in the logistics service sector. They were all set up to solve the problem of unemployed youth. In name, they all served their own units, but in fact, they took on outside jobs.

Sister Wu asked, "Why does your power company still produce this kind of thing?"

Xiao Wei laughed and said, "What we do and what we don't do is the leaders' business. We errand runners just do whatever we're told."

Sister Wu said, "Perfect timing, since you're in the power industry, could you help me with this? We've been wanting to get a dedicated power line and install our own transformer, but this place is a rented cold storage facility, and they told us to apply for it ourselves. We've been going there so many times, but it still hasn't been approved. You know, we can't do without electricity here; we rely entirely on refrigeration. If there's a power outage, the losses will be huge. The transformer here at the cold storage is underloaded, so we always have to ration the power. It's not a problem in winter, but in summer we can only operate at half capacity, which greatly affects our production."

Xiao Wei glanced at Chen Hui and asked Sister Wu, "What should we do? Is there any explanation?"

Ms. Wu said, "Fifty thousand yuan, and we'll handle all the other formalities as they come. Okay?"

Xiao Wei said, "Fifty thousand? Then why haven't you processed it yet?"

Sister Wu hesitated for a moment, then said, "It's a bit complicated here. Let me put it this way, the person in charge of the cold storage has changed, you understand?"

Xiao Wei said, "If you connect the electricity yourself, will that work? What can a cold storage room do?"

Sister Wu smoothed her hair and said, "That's alright, the contract is there, they can't find fault with us. Right now, they're the ones blocking us. They know their people, we're outsiders."

Xiao Wei understood immediately, thought for a moment, and said, "How about this, the longest-term purchase contract, worth 80,000 yuan, we'll handle it for you, no problems guaranteed, okay?"

Sister Wu glanced at Chen Hui and the others and said, "How accurate can it be?"

Xiao Wei laughed and said, "If the procedures are handled legally and reasonably, what's wrong with them?"

Sister Wu said, "The cold storage company and the power company here are very familiar with each other, so I'm worried they might cause some trouble."

Chen Hui interjected, "Didn't I tell you? We're from the provincial bureau. Do you have all the paperwork? Let me see it. If it's okay, I'll take it back for approval, and once the task is assigned, nobody here can interfere."

Back then, the cold storage facility was state-owned property, belonging to the State-owned Assets Management Bureau under the Municipal Finance Bureau, a deputy-division-level unit.

Sister Wu thought for a moment and said, "Wait a moment, I'll go tell them." Then she hurriedly went out.

As Sister Wu left, Chen Hui turned to talk to Xiao Wei, but Xiao Wei put his index finger to his lips and shushed him. Chen Xiao also tugged at Chen Hui's sleeve. Frustrated, Chen Hui lit a cigarette, found a stool, and sat down without saying a word.

About five minutes later, Sister Wu opened the door and came in, followed by a man who looked to be around forty years old.

Ms. Wu said, "This is our center's Manager Chen."

Several people nodded to Manager Chen, who shook the thick file folders he was holding and said, "All the documents are here. See if you can handle it. This is a big deal for us. If you can really help, I'll take charge of the contract. It'll be a five-year contract for 80,000."

Xiao Wei laughed and said, "So if the contract can't be processed, then it's gone?"

Manager Chen laughed and said, "No, your price is low, so we'll definitely buy. It's just that we can't sign a long-term contract, since the price fluctuates every year, right?"

Xiao Wei nodded, glanced at Chen Hui, and Chen Hui, with a cigarette in his mouth, came over, took the file bag, put it on the table, opened it, and took out the documents inside to look at. He just flipped through some of the text documents without looking at them in detail, mainly looking at some drawings and such. Anyway, Xiao Wei didn't understand them, so he just stood aside and waited. Manager Chen took out cigarettes to offer, and Xiao Wei and Xia Maosheng took them and lit them themselves, while Chen Hui, with his cigarette butt in his mouth, shook his head and didn't take any.

After about ten minutes, Chen Hui quickly flipped through all the documents, then put them back into a file bag and said, "There's no lightning protection or grounding grid, no power distribution room. It would be strange if this application got approved. These three things are essential. Even if I were to process it for you, you still need them. This is for your own good. The main equipment and distribution are there, but they're not clear. We need to redo it. You also need to design the transformer placement." He handed the file bag back to Manager Chen.

Another one paid off. Great!

(End of this chapter)