Starbucks at the doorstep｜Seven Days Books

Write about a place you dare not go to again. Maybe something happened that frightened you, or it was emotionally unbearable, or maybe there are huge memories in your life there. What are the people and things that you dare not touch again (once)? Do you choose to coexist with these people and things or forget them?

In the winter of 2017, a Starbucks opened in front of my home. It is on the left side of Gate 1 of the shopping mall and is located at the T-junction on the east-west main road. It may be one of the shops with the highest visibility for miles around. The shopping mall reserves the best location for Starbucks, and it is said that the rent is reduced. Starbucks improves the quality of the shopping mall and attracts high-quality customers. They hit it off immediately, and the fourth-tier inland city where I settled welcomed the fourth Starbucks.

I had no job that winter and my daughter had just been born. I had more than 200,000 in savings, all deposited in Ant Financial’s Yu’e Bao. The interest was very high. One day’s profit could buy a discounted latte at Starbucks. However, I had a mortgage of nearly RMB 200,000 to repay, and the interest on the mortgage was higher. After weighing the pros and cons, I paid off the loan early and exhausted my savings. My friend Michael from the English Corner lamented: Mortgage is a high-quality asset! This is wrong. I have no job and no income. The monthly mortgage payment of more than 2,000 yuan - more than 600 yuan including interest - is a heavy burden. Michael has been a civil servant for decades and has a stable income. He is using his provident fund to repay his mortgage. He does not know the sufferings of the world and truly believes that his mortgage is a high-quality "asset" rather than a liability.

The door to the workplace was not yet closed to me. In the fall of 2017, I went to a pharmaceutical company in Fuzhou to interview for a foreign trade position. HR promised to reimburse round-trip travel and accommodation expenses. They offered me an annual salary of 150,000 yuan, but I gave up on joining. It’s not because I don’t have enough money, it’s not because I’m too far from home or it’s difficult to do business, it’s because of second-hand smoke. The general manager of that company was a smoker. He interviewed me in a closed office and smoked one cigarette after another, which made me suffocate. The general manager personally handles business, and I need to report work to him at any time. Thinking that inhaling second-hand smoke will be part of my job makes me feel cold. Giving up on joining meant that the interview fee of more than 1,000 yuan was wasted. The HR in Fuzhou stopped paying attention to me, and I was too embarrassed to ask him for reimbursement. I comforted myself by saying that I would just go on a trip. It was my first time to go to Fuzhou and I was short on time. I only saw the superficial part of Fuzhou.

In 2018, I found a job in Shenzhen and stayed there for only a few months. Then I found a job in Xi'an and was fired soon after. The company in Xi'an was not very kind. The boss asked me to leave. The human resources director talked to me and suggested that I resign. I followed his advice and wrote a resignation application. I didn't go home after I lost my job. I took the high-speed train from Xi'an to Hangzhou and interviewed with two companies, but only got a part-time sales opportunity with no basic salary. In order to postpone my return home, I traveled for 10 days at my own expense. I went to Huzhou and Wuhan and met two friends. In Hangzhou and Wuhan, I stayed at Ibis hotels. The Ibis in Hangzhou is a new store located in a remote suburb, not far from the dream town. The Ibis store in Wuhan is located in Wangjiadun, Hankou. The facilities are old and the price/performance ratio is very poor.

I stayed in Huzhou for two days and stayed at the Compaq Hotel on the edge of Taihu Lake. I invited Alice to the hotel for breakfast. She went to my room, but unfortunately I couldn't get it. This was a landmark event. Alice and I were no longer lovers. She said we could be friends, but I didn’t believe in friendship between the opposite sex. Then I found a new love in a pedicure shop.

There are no suitable jobs in the fourth-tier inland cities. In the spring of 2019, I went to work in a factory in the Chengnan Chemical Industry Park for two months. I only received my salary in July. I also worked as a part-time translator for more than a month. In 2019, my boss The income is less than 20,000, a new low in the past 10 years. Unexpectedly, hard times were still to come. After the outbreak, I lost even part-time opportunities and my income dropped to zero.

I lay down completely, took reading and writing as my main occupation, and earned a meager royalties from my pedicure stories. I had some profits from Matters but never cashed them out for fear of being called by the police.

I wrote a lot of words at the Starbucks in front of my home, including " A Futile Job Search" written in August last year, in which I mentioned Starbucks baristas. My articles are usually published simultaneously on Matters and the WeChat public account - as long as the censorship system allows it, someone suspected of sharing "The Futile Job Search" to the barista. My identity was exposed, and I have never dared to step into the door of Starbucks since then, and I have no idea. money consumption.