But as I walked to the parking area with Wei Wang, I saw Leon’s car park there. He was sitting in the backseat of the car with his laptop on his lap, seemingly working.
Why did he, the CEO of a public company, get to work in a parking lot of a Pioneer Park?
I pretended not to see him and continued walking to the white Cadillac the company had assigned me.
A young man in a suit came over, curtsied to me and said politely, “Hello, Mrs. Hua. Mr. Hua invites you to go there for a moment.”
The title of Mrs. Hua was very strange to me, and in fact I had nothing to do with it now.
“Please tell Mr. Hua that he’s mistaken me for someone and I’m not Mrs. Hua.” I said.
But the young man didn’t leave. He said to me again,”Mr. Hua said you would certainly say he got the wrong person, but Mr. Hua also said that he would never mistake anyone. He let me invite you over or he’ll fire me.”
This Leon was really scheming. He was so shameless to threaten me with others job. I knew he wouldn’t give up if I didn’t get over there, so I had to head towards his car.
“You wait for me for two minutes. After I deal with those two emails, we go to dinner. I’ve already booked the restaurant, and I’ve even had your favorite braised tofu made especially for you.” Leon said to me.
“I don’t want to go to dinner with you. Don’t let anyone call me Mrs. Hua from now on. We don’t have relations now.” I said coldly.
“It occurs to me that the young man next to you is the one who was photographed by the press when he drank with you before. At the time you said you had nothing to do with him, and now you’re with him, so how do you explain it now?” Leon’s eyes were still on the computer and he didn’t look up at me. He was indeed working.
“He’s an employee of my company, it’s normal for me to have dinner with him and I don’t have to explain this to you.”
“I heard Tongyu Technology has hired a beautiful executive as CEO, and I’m still guessing who she is. I didn’t expect that you are the one. You know that Tongyu and Lanhai are competitors, but you’re still going to be CEO of Tongyu. Are you trying to go against me deliberately?”
Leon finally finished his work. He closed his notebook and looked at me with cold eyes.
“That’s my job. I didn’t want to antagonize anyone. I have to go to dinner with my colleagues. If you stop me again, I’ll sue you for harassment. We have nothing to do with each other now. Mr. Hua, please remember it.”
I finished and headed back to my car. To my surprise, Leon didn’t come after me.
Wei Wang pulled open the back door of the car for me and said, “I’ll drive the car.”
I ignored him and got in the back seat of the car. Then Wei drove the car out of the parking area.
“Mr. Yao, where are we going to eat?” Wei said with excitement tone.
I thought about it and felt really little desire to eat, no appetite at all.
But since I was already out with Wei, I had to deal with him anyway. I was most likely to learn more information that couldn’t get from the company’s statements about Tongyu Technology from him.
So I casually named a restaurant that was a nice Chinese restaurant. It was not very upscale but its food was good.
When I arrived at the restaurant, I ordered two dishes and handed the menu to Wei. Then I started talking to him about the company.
“Can we talk about anything other than work? It’s after working hours and you still want to talk about work?” said Wei.
I said, “I thought you were going to report to me, why do you lose interest in talking about work now? If we don’t talk about work, what else do we talk?
“Can’t we talk about something interesting? We’ve been working all day, aren’t you tired?” Wei looked unhappy.
I didn’t care if he liked it or not, I came to dinner with him for work.
“Our main rival is Lanhai Technology. On a technical level, when do you think we’ll be able to overtake them?” I was going straight to the point.
“It’s hard to say. They are early in researching this product and have the advantage of the number of users. But we have late-development advantages, because we borrow some from their stuff. We have avoided the detours they took. And I’ve worked at Lanhai Technology before, so this late-development advantage is even more pronounced.”
I nodded, and although I wasn’t very technically savvy, I felt what Wei said was practical and not pompous.
Wei continued, “As for when we will surpass them, it’s hard to say. It’s not only about our progress, but also the progress of their company. Yan Chen is a great tech expert and I wonder if he’ll upgrade their product quickly. You know, some technologies are just sudden qualitative changes. But I’m sure we’ll be able to make products that are almost as advanced as theirs even if we can’t surpass them in a short time. ”
I nodded my head in agreement. I understood that a company’s competitiveness was not all in the product, but in the ability of other departments to collaborate and execute.
At that point the food started to be served and I said, “Well, Let’s start eating.”
“Miss. Yao, I heard rumors that the Lanhai Technology wants to buy Tongyu. They’re getting ready to talk to our company about it. Is that true?” Wei asked me.
I really didn’t know about that. But it is very normal for companies of the same type to compete first and then merge. Mergers of companies in the same category are beneficial because they can reduce the waste of resources associated with competition.
“I haven’t heard anything about that yet. But don’t worry, Tongyu is not going to be acquired by Lanhai. Tongyu is followed by the powerful Nanhe Group, which is very unlikely to be acquired. But we have to work hard, or our company might get merged someday.”
“I came out of Lanhai Technology. If Tongyu were bought by it, I’ll be out of business. I’m not staying in this company anymore.” Wei sighed.
I said, “You’re overthinking it. You don’t have to think about that. Just work hard.”
The food was served and we were just about to eat. And then a man came over. It was Leon.
He looked at the food on the table and nodded, “It’s not bad, it’s looks good.”
Then he looked at Wei, “You can leave now. I’ll dine with my wife.”
“Why?” Wei looked at me and then said to Leon with an unconvinced look,
“You’re not welcome in this restaurant, so you can’t eat here.” Leon picked up his chopsticks and tasted a small piece of food, “It tastes good.”
“I’ve never heard of a restaurant that doesn’t welcome guests, so you can’ decide that.” Wei, of course, didn’t listen to Leon.
“Of course I can decide that. Because I bought the restaurant and now it’s my restaurant. You can’t eat here if I don’t allow you. No matter how much you pay, I won’t allow you to eat here” Leon said bluntly.
It seemed that I had seen this style of behavior acting on money and power to bully people.