It's hard to buy old years with a lot of money

In the morning, my colleague asked me if the tiger she bought looked like it. I hesitated for a moment, and couldn't bear to say that it was a bit like a puppy. Yesterday, she rode her bike all over the city's shopping malls before buying back these four tiger dolls, a few red scarves, couplets and lanterns for the Chinese New Year.

I haven't been able to see what is written on the couplet. I think it is probably congratulations on the New Year and wishes for the coming year. Later, everyone discussed whether to ask someone to write another copy. However, my thoughts had already drifted out of the Nine Heavens Clouds, and at this moment I was hurriedly pulled back, as if to make a decision immediately, what to write on the new couplet. And there is only one thing in my mind: it is hard to buy the old year with a lot of money, and the New Year will be celebrated without a penny.

This is what I see from other places. Some people say that when I was a child, there was a family in the village, and this couplet was posted every New Year. I felt a bit familiar, and remembered that although the old days were sad, people still had that kind of spirit. Today we say a lot of festive words and write such festive Spring Festival couplets, but the year is still a bitter year.

Sometimes I hear my colleagues joke that the New Year's Eve dinner is a rice soaked in tears. Everyone laughed and told him to sell the camera lens and lend us money for the New Year. In the roar of laughter, I looked down and saw a line of words, Xu Lizhi wrote: I can still drink some rice soup and my breath has not stopped / what do you have to be happy / I am still alive / How can you laugh.

Everyone has not received any salary since April last year. Many projects have not yet been settled, and some have been delayed until the contract expires, and there is still no news. The days were hard, neither staying nor leaving. On weekdays, the money for buying a bottle of shampoo was reimbursed by the company, and the daily necessities were also taken from the office. Sometimes men and women sit together and chat, wearing the same color-changing lip balm, and looking up, a pair of eyeballs are rolling, both amusing and pitiful.

When he mistakenly thought that the situation was getting better, a colleague used the remaining fifty dollars to charge the phone bill, thinking that the salary would be paid that day, but it still could not be paid. But seeing that the New Year is coming in a few days, everyone started to worry and anxious.

These days, back pay seems to have become extraordinarily well-deserved. Even the workers who built this office building have not received their wages yet. They started to gain momentum from January 12, gathering downstairs every day to ask for wages. In the past two days, a banner has been pulled up again, with black characters on white cloth and sternly written, "xxx pays back my hard-earned money".

In recent years, I have personally seen large and small incidents of wage demands. I even typed "peasant workers" into a search engine. Every entry related to arrears and demands for wages was related to salary arrears, but it was almost never on the news. On the contrary, there are some unclear official announcements, which surprised people who have never seen such a world before. How can there still be arrears of wages these days? Haven't we all solved it and become a historical term?

At the end of November, I saw a local news that the police recovered more than 540,000 yuan of back wages for migrant workers. The content of the news is that the representatives of the migrant workers who received the wages sent the pennants to the Municipal Public Security Bureau, which said "Serve the people and do their due diligence". There is only one bad guy in the story, the project contractor who owes wages and refuses to pay. A good black and white story.

The workers gathered downstairs have been here for a week now. Their problems have never been resolved, and no one has come forward to face them and give an explanation. The security guards were originally ordered to block the entire building, not allowing outsiders to come in and those inside to go out, but now they hope to live together peacefully without any conflict. They and the workers among them may be acquaintances in the same village.

The workers are looking forward to going home for the Chinese New Year after receiving the money. The security guards are looking forward to guarding this gate, and they can go home for the Chinese New Year.

When something like this happens, the ground is not working every day. The workers once had no choice but to bring their wives and family along the way. Occasionally, they bought a case of soda, and when the sun was good, they would sit on the steps and share a drink.

I haven't been home in the last few nights, and I just slept in the lobby on the first floor. It was really cold, and they brought an electric stove to heat the fire. When passing by them, I listened to their discussion, and simply moved the electric frying pan and rice cooker to cook and eat here. Waiting is not the way to go.

Today, the weather is also very bad, there is a bone-chilling coldness, and the sun has not come out all morning after sitting in the office. I met a few women downstairs. They were sitting on the steps embroidering insoles. Opposite them, the men were all standing in a row, everyone looked bitter and numb, and it was rare to have a chance to laugh. A piece of paper also celebrates the New Year" jokes like that.

The banner was not pulled by anyone. They broke the thin bamboo branches and inserted them into the flower beds on both sides. Occasionally, they saw the back office staff who were still working for the building pushing their carts past, and wanted to draw a row of yellow safety lines on the road.

Yesterday they shouted "Return my hard-earned money" downstairs, and colleagues in the office also shouted, "Down with the Japanese devils". I think only one of these two slogans has made the news. It's a world of difference, and it's been proven. absurd.

Sometimes violently, they swarmed and quarreled in the lobby on the first floor. I saw the young girl in the office next to her with her sleepy eyes open, and said in pain and impatient, I really want to sleep! Maybe her situation is not much better, and her salary will be like ours, and it will not be paid after a few months. But the day is still going.

I imagined that she was touched for a moment, but soon took a deep breath and told herself: everything is ok, so far so good.

In a few days, it will be New Year's Eve.