E-Ladies: Navigating the Wired World
Chapter 102: Episode 102: If You’re Unkind, Don’t Blame Me for Being Unjust1

Chapter 102: Episode 102: If You’re Unkind, Don’t Blame Me for Being Unjust1

Li Jiniang fell into thought for a while, "Since the other party has shown no kindness, then there’s no need for us to save face for them! Wanna know who the manager is? Just make a fake sales order!"

"Fake sales order?" Zhou Xueyin looked at Li Jiniang, puzzled.

"Yes! Let me tell you..." Li Jiniang shared her sudden idea with Zhou Xueyin.

Zhou Xueyin’s usually gloomy face gradually brightened with a smile, "Good! This is good! Not bad! Not bad! We need to find someone we trust to help us!"

"Of course! Too bad Lao Li is in South Korea, and Xiaoding is in Japan. The most trustworthy person we can find now is Xiaojing!" Li Jiniang looked at Zhou Xueyin with meaningful eyes.

"Him? He’s not suitable... Oh, right! We can ask Brother Ji!" Zhou Xueyin had an epiphany.

"Brother Ji?" Li Jiniang didn’t know who that was.

"Besides, we can also discuss the plan with Xiaojing, create more fake orders to make it more convincing, right?" Zhou Xueyin was very impressed with Li Jiniang’s idea, "Let’s touch base with them this week and execute it next week!"

After leaving the meeting room, Zhou Xueyin reinstated Zhao Caiyun to her former position and brought her back to continue as her assistant.

Zhao Caiyun kept expressing her thanks, but her expression seemed somewhat reluctant, whether that was genuine or feigned was uncertain.

After all, life was much more relaxed at the reception desk, answering calls, handling emails, and browsing the web during downtime.

Being reinstated, though, meant dealing every day with all sorts of data, and sorting through various reports. If she was a spy sent by the other side, facing a mountain of work would understandably make her less than willing.

Actually, Zhou Xueyin was quite hoping she would take those fake orders so she could monitor and gather evidence, and also find out who sent her.

Over the weekend, Zhou Xueyin and Wei Jingzhu went to Brother Ji’s stall and shared their plan, "If someone claims to be our subsidiary and comes to discuss a contract with you, make sure to insist on visiting their company to see the specific conditions!"

"Understood! Try to pry out the company’s address and the actual manager, right!" Wei Jingzhu said, fully comprehending.

"Exactly! But we don’t know when they’ll contact you... After all, this operation isn’t small, and the other side wouldn’t be foolish enough to act while we’re aware of them..." Zhou Xueyin laughed helplessly, "unless the forum’s manager wants to make a quick buck..."

"Alright, I’ll keep an eye out. If this person you mentioned does get in touch, I’ll help you guys out by meeting this crook!" Brother Ji promptly agreed.

Perhaps as Zhou Xueyin said, reassigning Zhao Caiyun had scared them, or maybe because the New Year’s bonus had been received, Xiaolu Technology really had been quiet for a while.

Zhou Xueyin took all the important documents home for personal organization, leaving Zhao Caiyun with those fake orders they had agreed upon beforehand.

And Zhao Caiyun had changed her hard-working attitude, finishing the tasks given by Zhou Xueyin and then promptly leaving on time each day.

Her actions gave Zhou Xueyin an illusion, making her wonder if she had misjudged Zhao Caiyun. Could the commercial spy be someone else?

It might also have to do with the upcoming New Year, perhaps they no longer wanted to bother each other. Xiaolu Technology had been quiet, without making any moves.

Unlike the 2005 spring festival, Zhou Xueyin gave everyone a long vacation. In 2006, she resumed the normal holiday schedule, although sales were slow around the New Year, so Zhou Xueyin specifically agreed that everyone could take their accumulated leave together.

Liu He, to liven up the forum, even hosted a special thread for sharing New Year’s Eve dinner photos.

Though there were no prizes, everyone still enthusiastically posted photos of their family’s New Year’s Eve dinner on the forum.

As expected, Xiaolu Technology’s forum had posted the same content, but their twist was offering a prize for the top post, which drew a lot of people to their side because of the giveaways.

The reason why Zhou Xueyin didn’t host such events was twofold: too many tricks involved and the issues of providing prizes... If the prizes were low-quality, the users would despise them, and the company would damage its reputation. If the prizes were high-quality, those who didn’t win would be bitterly resentful, and would still criticize the forum for not being generous enough.

In any case, no matter how well the event was organized, as soon as prizes were involved, the whole thing just went sour.

Xiaolu Technology was seemingly fearless, losing money to make some noise with their prize-top-post event. Zhou Xueyin was genuinely waiting to see them become a laughingstock.

After the Spring Festival was over, Zhou Xueyin, who prided herself on running the company on actual merit, ended up being the butt of the joke by the opportunistic Xiaolu Technology.

Somehow, a bunch of unfamiliar accounts popped up, forcibly dragging users in the New Year’s Eve dinner threads to participate in the neighboring forum’s prize event.

Every day, they had to delete a pile of IDs, yet the next day a new bunch would emerge.

It was like they were targeting specifically those users with high activity levels and extreme loyalty to drag them to the other side.

Some really couldn’t resist the temptation, went over there, started posting and chitchatting...

Zhou Xueyin observed that, in just a short holiday, there had been three prize-top-post events and the winning IDs for the floors were not all the same. Wasn’t this the old pattern of fake lotteries? Did they really think netizens were fools?

And as it turns out, netizens were indeed foolish, actively participating in the lottery events and livening up the forum’s atmosphere, no longer going to 51buy’s forum to look for useful content.

Traditionally, traffic would plummet during the Spring Festival, but this year, 51buy’s daily active users had fallen below 1,000...

Feeling anxious during festivities was all the more intense, and Zhou Xueyin started to worry anxiously about how to attract people back to her own forum.

That was until she received a text message from the bank about her credit card points expiring.

’That’s right, the forum has a points system too! And our long-time users have so many points lying around unused! Why not put them to good use and organize some points exchange events?’ Zhou Xueyin had a sudden flash of enlightenment, as if she’d found a new direction.

"kk, kk! Listen to me! I’ve thought of a way to revive our forum!" Zhou Xueyin could hardly wait to leave a message for Kang Siyin on QQ, "We can make full use of the members’ points!"

"We’re on the same wavelength! I was just pondering how to get the members to spend their years of accumulated points too!" Kang Siyin replied quickly to Zhou Xueyin.

"To think we’re in sync! Let me draft a points expenditure plan first, one that allows all our users to participate!" Zhou Xueyin was brimming with confidence.

Having run the forum for a year and a half, it was time to change the game rules. Forever sticking to the same old methods wouldn’t lead to progress!

"Yinyin! Yinyin! All our forum’s cosers have run off to Xiaolu Technology!" Yao Shanshan sent frantic messages in the group chat to Zhou Xueyin.

"I noticed a few days ago, no need to worry! I’ve got a plan to win them all back!" Zhou Xueyin replied in a calm and collected manner to Yao Shanshan, "Shanbao, help me design a points exchange page. You can refer to the points exchange pages of the major banks for the layout."

"kk, you write a set of rules for exchanging points for prizes!"

"Jixiang, ask those cosmetic manufacturers if they can provide samples for us to use as prizes..."

The year hadn’t even ended yet, and Zhou Xueyin was busy with work again...