The man laughed and said, “That’s because you lack experience. Let me tell you, you should bring two machines back to the factory for production, and hand the other three over to private bosses for them to produce. You don’t know, there are dozens of private machine tool factories in Linhe City. If you introduce business to these private bosses, they’ll give you a 5% kickback without a word. A single machine tool, at the very least, is worth five or six thousand yuan, right? 5% is 300, and three machines is nearly 1,000 yuan—enough to match more than half a year’s salary.”

“You can do that?” Franklin Turner was a bit shocked. Even in his previous life, where he’d seen a thing or two, this kind of double-dealing was something no unit could tolerate. How had it become the norm at Lin Yi Machine?

He thought for a moment and asked, “If that’s the case, why don’t I just give all five machines to private bosses? Wouldn’t I get even more kickbacks?”

The man said, “That’s where you’re inexperienced, brother. If you give all five machines to private bosses and the factory doesn’t have a single one, how are you going to claim travel expenses? How will you get travel allowances? Two machines can get you 600 yuan in kickbacks, but if you report travel expenses at the factory, you can also find some invoices, say it’s money for gifts to clients, and it’s easy to claim a thousand or eight hundred yuan.”

“I see.” Franklin Turner nodded. This situation was extremely important for him and Henry Sullivan. If the sales department was full of these backstabbers, it would be a miracle if the company’s business could get off the ground. It seemed that the first thing to do after arriving at the factory was to reorganize the sales department. But how to do it?

Franklin Turner thought for a few seconds, some vague ideas forming in his mind, but there was no need to dwell on it for now. He asked the man, “Just now you mentioned the purchasing department, infrastructure office, and sales department. Are there any other good departments?”

“As for the others, they’re all about the same,” the man said. “As long as you’re not in the workshop, your basic salary is still guaranteed in the administrative offices. Every department has a little slush fund, and every now and then you get some benefits, just not as good as before.”

“What’s the situation in the workshop?” Franklin Turner followed up.

“No way to make a living!” the man said firmly. “In the workshop, only the workshop director and the workshop accountant can claim some expenses for themselves to make up for owed wages. Ordinary workers get nothing at all. They get paid three times a year, and it’s impossible to survive on that.”

“What do they do if they can’t survive?” Franklin Turner asked.

“They go out and find their own way!” the man said. “Didn’t I just say there are dozens of private machine tool factories in Linhe? Half the workers there are from our Lin Yi Machine, and some even take the factory’s tools and materials to work elsewhere. The leaders know about this too—they just turn a blind eye. If you’re eating meat, you can’t let others not even have soup, right?”

“So, brother, which department are you from?” Franklin Turner asked with a smile.

The man also smiled and said, “I’m from the technical department. My department is the most useless—no power, no money. Just like the old saying goes, ‘A scholar is useless for anything.’ My name is Charles Harris, I’m the deputy section chief of the technical department’s process section. If you run into any trouble at the factory, you can come to the technical department to find me. No matter what, I’ve got some old face, and I can help you with small problems. By the way, brother, what’s your name?”

“My name is Franklin Turner, I graduated from Renmin University.”

“Renmin University? Impressive, impressive!” Charles Harris gave a thumbs up in praise, then pointed to Henry Sullivan’s bunk and asked in a low voice, “Is that your father up there?”

“No, no!” Franklin Turner quickly denied it, secretly admiring Charles Harris’s imagination. Franklin Turner and Henry Sullivan were together, which Charles Harris had already noticed.

Franklin Turner said he was going to work at Lin Yi Machine, and Charles Harris thought that at Henry Sullivan’s age, it was impossible he was also going to work there, so there was only one explanation: Henry Sullivan was Franklin Turner’s elder, accompanying him to report for duty.

Of course, Franklin Turner couldn’t say that Henry Sullivan was about to become the new factory director at Lin Yi Machine. If he did, Charles Harris would probably be too scared to say another word. He found Charles Harris to be quite a talker and very knowledgeable about the situation at Lin Yi Machine, so he planned to get more information out of him. He casually replied, “He’s an elder of mine… By the way, Section Chief Harris, are you just returning from a business trip to Beijing?”

Charles Harris shook his head. “There are no business trips these days. To be honest, Brother Turner, I was also out doing private work.”

“Private work?”

“Yeah,” Charles Harris said righteously. “The factory can’t give us any benefits, and we can’t survive on just a dead salary. I have some friends outside who can introduce me to some jobs. A few days ago, I went to Huangyang Province to repair a machine tool for a company there.”

“Oh, I bet you made a good profit?” Franklin Turner asked.

“No, no!” Charles Harris denied it flatly, but the smile on his face gave away the truth.

“Really nothing?” Franklin Turner asked with a smile.