I will never give in to Miss Death

"Is she okay? Tell me she just has a common cold, or I'll see another death pounce on her..."

"Don't worry, she's just too tired. She's far from being taken away."

Yin Xiamo trotted over and handed me one of the cups of milk tea: "Try what I made!"

"You didn't put anything weird in it?"

I tried to take the straw, put it in the cup and took a sip.

Hmm... the taste is a bit weird, but it's more or less drinkable.

"You added mango and lychee to the black tea?"

After drinking, I looked up and said, "Well done, don't do this next time."

Anyway, the milk tea on the workbench on the second floor is ready. No matter how bad Yin Xiamo's cooking skills are, at most she would just mix together various incompatible ingredients, and she wouldn't end up concocting a dark dish.

"Eh? Can't we add it this way? I think it should taste good..."

“It’s not good, but it’s not bad either.”

"Don't you like it, Noel?"

The girl next to me thought about it, and smacked me on the face at lightning speed: "Then change it to a kiss!"

"You're just looking for an excuse to kiss me right?!"

"No way! Nuoer worked so hard today, she deserves this reward!"

Yin Xiamo took out her phone and asked, "By the way, how many fans can we gain by promoting with that outdoor anchor today?"

"Now there are 104."

I took out my phone and opened Tongmeng.com: "Here."

"Then when will Nuoer post a video of herself wearing women's clothing?"

"This one……"

I smiled bitterly: "I'll think about it when I have some free time these days..."

"I've heard that there is such a thing as 'big data' in this world."

The girl sat down on the armrest of the massage chair and came close to me. "For a new account like ours, what will big data recommend? Will it detect the devil of death or something like that?"

"How can it be so magical? Isn't that almost like mind reading? Generally, new account big data will recommend things that everyone can generally accept based on gender and age, and then gradually improve..."

I switched to Tongmeng.com’s recommendation page: “For example… huh?”

The first video on my phone screen was——

"The latest slice of extreme adventure king Liu Ziyi: Kamijima's cute maid, super cute kitten! Cat Yin Nuoer"

What the hell is this!

"Wow, it looks like our live video just now!"

I was still in a daze, and Yin Xiamo next to me had already reached out and clicked on this recommended video——

"Noer meow!"

In the quiet coffee shop, the phone that had been ringing at the highest volume to alert customers entering the store was ringing with a lot of cute, soft voices that I was dazed by because of the catnip I took when I was interviewed in the afternoon.

"Virtual anchor meow!"

"Yes, we usually sleep in the same bed, and Nuoer is my pillow."

"Yeah meow!"

"Meow!"

"..."

"Ding Dong! Welcome!"

The worst thing was that at that moment the door of the coffee shop was pushed open, and Elodie, who was dressed in casual clothes, walked in from outside: "You two are here, where is the manager? I'm here to apply for the job."

"What was that sound just now? Why do I seem to hear Nuo'er acting cute?"

"..."

……

No. 107 wow cool wow cool

The coffee shop was bathed in the bright starlight of Kamihama City. As I hung a "Closed" sign outside the door, the transparent door in front of the house was slowly closed.

The originally bright incandescent lamps on the first floor have been replaced with stylish "candlelight dinner" art lamps, which are particularly beautiful when paired with the night view of the Shenbin River outside the window and the street lights on the roadside.

Chef Wang, the chef in charge, fried several dishes at once - blanched prawns, spinach in garlic sauce, braised pork with preserved vegetables, sweet and sour pork with pineapple, cola chicken wings, etc.

In order to take care of the girls, he also made an extra portion of Mala cake and the hotel's traditional delicacy, brown sugar steamed buns, paired with white fungus soup and some sliced ​​watermelons, and placed them on the largest table on the first floor. At a glance, it was a feast for the eyes, ears and lungs.

The smell of shrimp also attracted a few picky kittens, who kept meowing around the dining table.

"Young people nowadays don't eat until bedtime..."

After bringing the sliced ​​watermelon and corn juice to the table, Master Wang said with emotion: "It's nothing like when we were young. We got off work at 5:30, bought groceries and got home at 6:00. The three or five of us cooked together and finished eating before 7:00. We could even watch the news for 30 minutes."

After these two days of contact and eating several meals cooked by Chef Wang, I realized that what Ouyang Xue said before, "He is the top chef we poached from a big hotel," was not a joke.

Although most of the customers who dine at the Cat Cafe during this period have ordered "fast food" such as fried chicken, steamed chicken, hamburgers and egg tarts, the kitchen has gradually opened up the "freshly fried fast food" category in the past two days, and each one is a fine product.

In terms of fast food, the coffee shop focuses on "group purchase packages", which are similar to the layout of a hotel. Although there are ordinary "two meats and two vegetables" dishes here, most of them are already matched, such as scrambled egg beef with blanched seasonal vegetables, pineapple duck and lemon duck with eggplant and minced meat, etc. These are generally ordered by single customers who don't like grilled chicken or fried chicken. However, after all, most of the customers who come to the coffee shop are young couples or families of three. If they don't like fried chicken, we will recommend that they order directly according to the rules of the hotel.

For example, for a family of three, the main dishes can be taro braised pork and scrambled egg beef, and the vegetables can be sweet potato leaves and water spinach, and the children can add cola chicken wings or pancakes, and the rice is free to add as much as they want. The total cost will not exceed one hundred yuan.

I don't know much about chefs, but I am more or less a foodie and can discern a lot when it comes to food. Chef Wang's cooking skills are completely different from the fast food sold at roadside stalls.

"really."

After all the dishes were served, Ouyang Xue, who had just woken up from the cot in the staff lounge and sat opposite me with messy hair, picked up a piece of watermelon and said, "When I was a kid, I also finished my meals around this time every day. After I graduated and started working, I was thankful that I could eat before eight o'clock."

"Hahaha, times have changed. In the past, we could build houses in our county at will. A two-story villa could be bought for tens of thousands of yuan, and even a company house was only 50,000 or 60,000 yuan. Now, commercial housing in big cities costs millions of yuan. The strangest thing is that everyone works harder and eats later than before, but life is more tiring than before..."

Master Wang pushed the cola chicken wings in front of me, Yin Xiamo and Elodie: "You girls should eat more."

According to the information Ouyang Xue gave me, this Master Wang's full name is Wang Jie. After graduating from high school, he went directly to a technical school and chose the chef major. He then continued his studies, obtained many chef-related certificates, and went to work in a large hotel in Shenbin City.

It was fine in the first few years, but with the rise of takeout, people became less and less willing to go out, and the hotel's revenue plummeted, so the hotel owner switched to takeout.

Nowadays, people’s pace of life is fast. No one likes to cook or go out. When they are hungry, they just order takeout. If you don’t keep up with the times, you will be eliminated.

The new store used a food delivery app, but there were no ratings or reviews, so others could not find it. The owner could only hire people to place fake orders, and then buy bids and advertisements. After the hotel's popularity increased, problems such as "orders are placed too slowly" and "prices are too high" emerged.

The food delivery platform takes a cut of the store’s revenue, usually around 20%. That is to say, if the store sells 100 yuan worth of goods, it has to give 20 yuan to the food delivery platform, and the store also has to bear the rider’s income. If the store chooses to “free delivery”, then it must raise the average price of the dishes or reduce the ingredients.

That's not all. If a user becomes a member, or if there are any coupon activities, the store also has to bear the cost. Some new users find a bunch of coupons by scraping together money, and actually pay 50 yuan for an item worth 0.1 yuan. The store can only take the order at a loss. Although they can apply for subsidies from the platform later, they generally don't get much money.

Coupled with the platform’s recommendation mechanism... generally, the stores that serve food quickly, have low prices, and have high user praise rates are at the front. In order to achieve these numbers and not to lose money, everyone can only try their best to increase the speed of serving food and find ways to prevent customers from giving bad reviews.

Chef Wang Jie’s experience is a classic example of “restaurant transformation”. In order to gain a foothold on the food delivery platform, his previous hotel began to use “meal packs”.

Chefs, who were once known as "never unemployed", are completely unable to beat meal kits in the takeout business. Meal kits are sealed directly by factory machines and are ready to use at any time. They are low-cost and fast. When someone places an order, the restaurant using meal kits simply opens the package, heats it, and places it in a plastic bowl, shapes it, and the meal is ready in less than five minutes.

In the traditional sense, after a customer places an order, the front desk notifies the chef, who then picks up the ingredients and starts cooking. It takes more than ten or twenty minutes for the dish to be cooked and packaged. Before you know it, half an hour has passed, and the riders outside have already started cursing. When the food is delivered to the customer, they get a bad review because of the time limit. They are caught in a dilemma, with the platform deducting money from them, and the restaurant also deducting money for water, electricity, and gas. They cannot make any money, so they might as well just start using the meal delivery service and become a "takeaway capitalist."

As a result, Master Wang "transformed" from a chef to a "dish packager".

Ever since the boss shifted the focus of the restaurant to the food delivery platform in order to make more money, Chef Wang, who used to spend a long time cooking every day, now has to check the food delivery orders, then find the corresponding cooking packages in the refrigerator, heat them up, put them in a bowl, and hand them to the riders outside.

Although this kind of work is easy, it is very "meaningless" to Master Wang.

"I have studied cooking for most of my life, but now I am doing something that anyone can do. Is it the world that is wrong or am I wrong?"

According to Master Wang, he applied for the job at the hotel as a "chef". Although the profession of chef cannot be said to be extremely valuable, at least not everyone can do it. Now, as a middle-aged man, packing takeout every day makes him see the crisis - if anyone can do this job, then one day in the future he will be unemployed.

Finally, Master Wang was found by Ouyang Xue who was looking for top chefs everywhere. He switched from the big hotel to the Cat Cafe and started to realize his dream of "letting customers taste the skills he had learned for many years".

"It's not that tiring, but everyone is tired."

While eating, Ouyang Xue, who was sitting opposite her, picked up the resume that Elodie brought over and looked at it carefully for a while.

"This is the first time I've seen the last name Ai."

Five minutes later, Ouyang Xue seemed to have finished reading the one-page resume. She was thoughtful: "Your resume is quite neat. You started working as an editor right after graduating from college and have been working there for three years. Have you never worked as a waiter or something similar?"

"I... um..."

Elodie, who was chewing on cola chicken wings next to Yin Xiamo, swallowed the meat in her mouth and said, "I can learn."

"I don't mean that. We are not interviewing each other right now. We are just chatting about daily life. You don't have to answer according to the rules of an interview."

Ouyang Xue showed an expression as if she was looking at a junior: "We have two principles for hiring maids in our store. The first is that they must be good-looking and have a good figure. Don't think I'm vulgar, there's nothing I can do about it. This is how the market is now."

"I understand."

Elodie was still chewing on the chicken wings: "Then I... um, am I qualified?"

Ouyang Xue said without any ambiguity: "I passed."

“And what is the second principle?”

"The second principle is that the maids in the store cannot be too introverted, especially not too socially anxious. If a customer comes in and they don't say anything, you will be too shy to say anything and become a laughing stock."

Ouyang Xue looked at Elodie, who treated this place as her home and ate and drank without any hesitation: "But I think you don't have any worries in this regard."

“Editing is like this.”

I peeled shrimps on the side while helping Elodie explain: "If I really wanted to shut myself in, I would have been unable to continue doing this long ago because so many authors would ask me for recommendations or even curse me every day."

"Indeed, the only thing on her resume is that she worked as an editor for three years. What I meant just now was that it would be best if she had worked as a waitress before. If she hadn't, it's okay. She can slowly adapt."

Ouyang Xue thought for a moment and said, "Your resume is perfect. You're qualified."

"Perfect?"

Now it was Elodie's turn to be confused: "Didn't you just say... that my resume only had the item "Editing"?"

"The editor of Yaetang is now the editor of Miguabao. I know both of these novels. Tongmeng.com has invested in Miguabao."

Ouyang Xue explained, "As I said earlier, the most important things for a maid are appearance and figure. You have both. Then personality. You can't be too introverted or socially anxious. The last thing I didn't mention is familiarity with the culture of the younger generation, such as otaku culture and ACG culture. You have to have a certain understanding of it. At least you can't wear a maid outfit and say weird things to other otakus when serving customers. As an editor, you must be very familiar with this, right?"

"Yes, I know all that."

Elodie thought for a moment, "Does that mean I can come here to work?"

Ouyang Xue was silent for a moment: "Have you quit your editing job?"

"not yet."

"If I resign tomorrow, how long does the handover usually take?"

"one day."

"So fast?"

"Because I was employed temporarily after being unemployed, I didn't even sign a labor contract."

Elodie put three more pieces of braised pork in her bowl, and then poured half a bottle of chili sauce on the side into the bowl: "Before, Yaetang Novel Network closed down for a while, and I was unemployed during that time. It was only in the past two days that Yaetang was acquired by Miguabao and I was able to go back to work. However, due to business adjustments, many authors fled. Miguabao actually has enough editors, and they haven't arranged a position of responsible editor for me for the time being. I just help review the texts every day, and I can leave at any time."

Seeing how much Elodi eats, Master Wang opposite me gave me a look that said, "Is this your editor? Is she really a girl?"

"That couldn't be better. Tomorrow I will go to Xiaomo's place and discuss my resignation with the boss of their grocery store. If everything goes well, Xiaomo will be able to come here to work the day after tomorrow."

Hearing Elodie's words, Ouyang Xue was obviously relieved. She took a sip of soup and said, "You... need help? Labor arbitration or something like that."

"No need. I'm pretty familiar with the editorial department. I can ask the finance department to pay my wages for the past few days and then I can leave. Maybe I can come here to work tomorrow night."

Elodie picked up a few documents on the table and said, "I've read the rules here. There's no problem with the salary and commission, but I want to work night shifts in the future. Is that okay?"

"All night shift?"

Ouyang Xue was a little curious: "Is it okay? The night shift here is from 12 o'clock in the evening to 8 o'clock the next morning. It's very tiring."

"No problem. It's just right. I can go to work at night and take a shower and go to bed in the morning. When I wake up, it's just evening for dinner. The temperature outside has dropped, and I still have several hours to play games every day."

Elodie yawned, "Actually, I hate the summer sun. I hate sitting in the office. I'd rather sleep at home during the day."

"In principle, you maids need to discuss which shifts to take each month."

Maybe because she hadn't recovered from her cold yet, Ouyang Xue coughed a few more times. "Now most of the main staff in the store are here. Regarding the shift change...Xiaomo, Nuo'er, do you two have any opinions?"

"I have no opinion."