Remembrance: 三

One day, my teacher asked me: "do you want to grow up?", to which I said "no.". She then asked if I wanted kids or to get married. I didn't want to get married, and I still don't. I didn't want kids and I still don't. Even as a child, I knew how expensive children were; not just giving birth, but everything that comes afterwards; if they want to be a pilot or something, the expenses suddenly go over a hundred thousand in dollars.

Even the cheaper colleges cost thousands upon thousands. But luckily, I was fortunate enough to be born into a rich family. Of course, we weren't super rich — just on the more fortunate end of the spectrum.

Before college, I simply went through school putting only enough effort to pass — my mother hated it. Of course, it was around this time when my father quit his job and started a tech firm. Of course, this was when I finally realized by path.

My brother had always wanted to be an architect. He wanted to be an architect for as long as my father planned on starting his own company. Of course, I took way longer to figure out my dreams and intentions, but the second he started the company was when I saw my future. I wanted to go into finance; I wanted to go as high up as I could, and my father supported me. He even offered to turn me into a parachute with his connections, but I declined. If I wanted something, I'd do it myself.

Anyways, I decided to double major. My mother was very against it at first, because she didn't think I would study hard enough, but fortunately enough, my father was able to convince her, and I double majored in finance and business management.

After four years, my efforts finally shone through to my mother. All she could do was sigh and let me do whatever I wanted, because I gave results. I gave good results. And genes may or may not have played a role in it, because apparently, even my mother majored in business.

And to be fairly honest, my interest in finance started around the time when I heard my father wanted to start his own business. THAT was the time when I truly wanted something. Not his money and help, but his business. My brother wanted to be an architect and my sister is nowhere near competent enough to run an entire business on my own, but me — I was different. I selected my majors purely based on what my father's company needed — I was essentially the perfect employee.

My father majored in engineering and served as a civil engineer for ten years before hopping in and out of other companies every year or so, until he was promoted to the highest position in his department, with over 200 people to look after.

Anyways, after graduating, I started working in his company as an intern. I kept the fact that I was my father's son for a very long time. Of course, unlike most other interns, I didn't have to go through interviews and surveys and whatnot. I immediately got selected, and none of my coworkers, or rather, seniors, went against the decision made to hire me, just by looking at my resume.

I may have no experience, but with one of the best possible education given to finance students, it wasn't a surprise for me to be picked up immediately. Obviously, I was put into marketing and sales due to my expertise.

I wasn't given much work on my first day. It was just making coffee and giving it full-time and part-time employees. I unfortunately didn't make any friends, despite wanting to. It might have been because of the face I make whenever I'm in an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people, but basically, I think I scared everyone away.

It reminded me of that one time when I was going home, and some wannabe partae kid bumped into me. I was having a really bad day and was making that 'dead on the inside' face. The kid looked at me, stammered a little and was like: "oh, sorry bro." and immediately ran away.

Anyways, after a month, I was offered a full-time job at my father's company. I was pretty sure my father was pulling some strings, but there was nothing I could do to dissuade him, because we didn't talk much, these days. And a new intern that was suddenly promoted to a full-time employee meeting with the owner of the firm wouldn't seem suspicious at all, right?

Anyways, while I was an employee, I was able to make two great friends. They were the official sales and marketing department couple. I don't understand why my father would allow work place romance, but my friends seemed pretty happy about it. A few years later, I was promoted to chief revenue officer. I was now able to freely visit my father without talks of nepotism in the office. Of course many people were unhappy with my unrealistically fast promotions.

Before it had even been a month of me being a CRO, I immediately saw my father's firm losing its place within the country. With newer AI, robots, smartphones and cars, a simple tech company was useless. Especially when big brand manufacturers could hire private professionals and machines to do the work with more precision than humans. And even our company uses machines to create the circuits and computers/laptops. The other teams only design it and make sure everything works.

It wasn't long before my father collapsed. I don't know what happened to him or how it happened, but it did. He was then hospitalized and I started running the company. There was a lot of backlash from employees who were unsatisfied with my promotions before, and they were using nepotism as an excuse to attack me.

I told them they could leave if they wanted to, and obviously, none of them did. It was the end of the month and their salaries were just around the corner; most of all, their wallets were basically empty — if you exclude savings. Anyways, no one left.

My father's sudden collapse was rather sudden and unexpected, but it was exactly what I needed. I had always wanted to inherit my father's business, and this was my chance; it was a chance I could not waste.

After a few months of running the business as my father had done so, I realized our biggest money loss: employee benefits. I looked at it and just felt as if my father ticked off whatever box he could find, as long as it was under employee benefits. Not only can they have a flexible schedule, but every year, they can take a month of leave with no cuts in their salary, payed overtime and even dental insurance, to name a few.

Maybe it was to keep the competent people inside the company so that they wouldn't get poached, but it was still excessive. It might be ok for a small group of people, but with 500 employees, and not counting the managers and directors, most of the money is going outside to the employees.

And the second there came talks about me changing the contract, there was immediate backlash. Obviously, I wouldn't pay the contract termination fee, and nor did I want to pay it. So they will have my father's contract until it's time to sign my contract, which would be when their contract with my father expires. Of course, until then, I had to bear with our decreasing budget.

A year later, my father was still in the hospital with no signs of recovery. Fortunately enough, there was also no chance of him dying, unless it was natural. Zome employees decided to quit after their contract expired, but there were always many more fools desperate for money rather than people who knew how contracts could be used against them.

Many the employees didn't like me and most certainly preferred my father over me, but that wasn't my problem. The fact stands that they still trusted the company. Even after I said I would change the contract, many of them immediately signed, saying they trusted me and my father. Even my close friends were tricked into signing.

The contract basically had it so I would give a ton of bonuses and such, but even the smallest misconduct can be taken as a reason to cut their salary with absolutely no employee benefits. And the contract lasted until their retirement. Basically, a legal slave contract. Of course, my company had already collapsed and was deep in the red.

Things started going uphill after I implemented my slave contract. Of course, there were many strikes but they all ended quickly as a threat to cut their salary was all that was needed. The longer they worked for me, the more money they'd need. I calculated everyone's salaries individually based on their work, likelihood of promotion and such. I also made it the absolute bare minimum that I could.

And just as I finished replacing the board of directors with puppets, we finally went out of the red, and we were slowly becoming a proper business again. And just as things started going well, the second world war broke out. There were lots of rumors running around, but things didn't seem bad enough for all the superpowers in the world to started fighting — it all broke out so suddenly. The war spread like a wildfire to all countries, regardless of their alliance and strength.

It was hard trying to sell gadgets and gizmos during a time where guns, tanks and bullets were what the government wanted most. Unfortunately, the majority of the items used for said weaponry were also used by us, which the government didn't exactly like.

At the time, most, if not all the resources were being controlled by the government. It was the same story for the private sector. Any businesses that raised complaints would immediately get taken over by the government — even the giant corporations weren't safe. The Montgomery Ward was such an example. For millions of us, the photograph of Montgomery Ward's anti-Roosevelt chairman — Sewell Avery — being carried from his headquarters by a squad of soldiers crystallized the new relationship between government and capital.

We had no choice but to bend down before the government, but it wasn't like we could just leave things as they were. The company started to fail, and nothing seemed to be working. My masters in business management felt so useless... honestly, I was much better as a CRO rather than the CEO.