Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

”Bro, when does Kuai Pao let you guys off for the holidays?”

Jiang Hao was just about to take off when a Qian Du Delivery rider pulled him aside. The man had a big smile on his face and offered him a Hong Shuangxi cigarette.

As the saying goes, you don’t hit a smiling man. Although Jiang Hao looked down on the cheap Hong Shuangxi brand, knowing it would be harsh on his throat, he didn’t refuse outright. He took it, tucked it behind his ear, and answered, ”In our line of work, what holidays?”

”So Chen Yansen is just as much of a bastard as Li Yanhong? He doesn’t give you guys a break?” the Qian Du Delivery rider asked, looking surprised.

”Fuck! Who are you talking about? You think you can just bad-mouth my boss?” Jiang Hao’s face instantly turned cold. He grabbed his bike lock and demanded loudly.

The Qian Du Delivery rider was dumbfounded. ’Are you fucking crazy? I’m sticking up for you, and you’re yelling at me?’

”Hey man, let’s just talk this out.” A few other Qian Du Delivery riders quickly stepped in to de-escalate.

”We get triple pay, extra subsidies, and rush-order bonuses during the New Year. Only a son of a bitch would want a holiday.”

Jiang Hao snapped irritably.

He tossed the bike lock back into his delivery box with a CLANG.

Hearing this, the Qian Du Delivery riders glanced at each other. They had been looking for some shared misery but got a critical hit instead.

They had heard that Meituan also had corresponding benefits for its ’Preferred Riders.’ Only the Qian Du Delivery riders had it the worst, getting absolutely nothing. Their station manager said they would get 100 yuan tomorrow for travel expenses.

yuan?

Travel expenses?

Is that supposed to be charity for a beggar?

But what could they do? Like the Meituan riders, they were all part-timers.

They didn’t even have labor contracts, so they weren’t technically considered Qian Du employees.

”Bro, is your station still hiring?” The Qian Du Delivery rider who had just been cussed out wasn’t angry. Instead, he put on a fawning smile, trying to curry favor.

Jiang Hao paused. He swallowed the curse that was on the tip of his tongue. He was the type to yield to a soft approach but not to a hard one.

Three months ago, when he was still a rider for Meituan, he had been in the same position, bowing and scraping while asking a Kuai Pao Rider for hiring information.

Seeing this, Jiang Hao’s attitude softened considerably. He nodded and replied, ”We’re short-staffed at year-end, but each station is only hiring two or three people, so it’s very competitive. Actually, you could go south. They just launched in new cities there a few months ago and are desperate for people. If you work there for three months, you even get stock option rewards.”

It was hard to imagine Jiang Hao, who didn’t even have a high school diploma, talking so casually about stock options.

Kuai Pao’s riders across the country, just like CEO Pei Yi, all belonged to the same company. You could even say they were all colleagues.

Sixty percent of the delivery riders held company stock options, so of course they’d get pissed off if they heard someone daring to bad-mouth their own boss.

”The south? That’s too far! I’m from Beihai,” the Qian Du Delivery rider said, shaking his head.

”A base salary of 1,800, eight hours online a day for a guaranteed monthly income of 8,000. Still think that’s far?” Jiang Hao said with a purse of his lips.

A year ago, he was working an assembly line in Yangcheng and personally witnessed a coworker’s three fingers get crushed by a machine tool. The bloody scene scared him so much he packed his things and fled that very night.

He was only eighteen; he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as a cripple.

After arriving in Yanjing, he couldn’t find a job for a while, so he joined Meituan as a rider. Later, he heard that Kuai Pao’s compensation was better: they paid social security, offered a base salary, and provided a full set of accident, medical, and third-party liability insurance.

So, as soon as he had familiarized himself with the commercial centers, streets, alleys, and residential layouts of Chaoyang District, he joined Kuai Pao’s delivery department without a second thought.

”The base salary in the south is that high?” The Qian Du Delivery rider was secretly amazed, his eyes full of envy.

Don’t underestimate that 1,800. They all knew that Kuai Pao gave out a performance bonus every quarter, amounting to one to three times the base salary. Over a year, that was at least another 10,000 yuan. Who wouldn’t be jealous?

”Bro, don’t you watch the news? Our group raised salaries!”

A corner of Jiang Hao’s mouth lifted as he spoke with smug satisfaction.

Not only did the Orange Phone Factory raise its hourly wages, but Cloud Speed Express and Kuai Pao Delivery did too.

”Everything about Kuai Pao is great, but you hire too few people,” the Qian Du Delivery rider said resentfully.

”If we hired everyone, the company wouldn’t be able to afford it! Besides, in this commercial area, we only get about sixty or seventy orders a day. If there were more people, there wouldn’t be enough to go around,” Jiang Hao explained with a smile.

With that, he waved his hand and said, ”I gotta go. The station made hongdou porridge, and I’m going back to have a bowl to warm up. Don’t limit yourself. If you want to make money, don’t be afraid of being far from home.”

Jiang Hao deftly started his electric vehicle and left, feeling pleased with himself.

”Brother Tao, should we go to the Kuai Pao station and ask? What if there’s an opening?” one of the Qian Du Delivery riders asked tentatively.

Today was February 6th, the 26th day of the last lunar month. The fact that they’d stuck it out in Yanjing this long meant they definitely wanted to earn money. But Qian Du Network wasn’t giving them the chance, and Meituan played favorites.

Their only remaining hope was Kuai Pao!

”Let’s go!” Brother Tao hopped on his electric vehicle and sped off toward the Kuai Pao rest station.

「Meanwhile.」

「Yiyuan Office Building, Longcao Road No. 200, Hu City.」

After more than a month of preparation, Kuai Pao Maicai finally completed its functional testing and went live just before the New Year.

”Liang, what’s the order count?”

Pei Yi walked out of his office and shouted to Liang Changlin.

”51,000 orders in the first hour!” Liang Changlin replied, looking up, his eyes shining.

Only now did he truly experience what it felt like to have the boss’s full support, with no shortage of funding or user traffic.

The product had only been live for sixty minutes, yet it was hitting as high as 850 orders per minute—a number he would never have dared to imagine before.

He had run Dingdong Community for over half a year, and at its peak, it had 47 stations, but the daily order volume had never managed to break 20,000.