I was getting ready to leave. Over one meal, all the questions I’d had were finally cleared up.
I thought you and Y were on the same side.
Honestly, that was quite a misunderstanding. Maybe I was pretty good at playing dumb, and fairly thick-skinned too.
Y’s shortcomings as a manager were common knowledge; it was just that nobody wanted to say it outright. I often heard about things he had approved that went wrong, only for him to blame his subordinates in the end. (Shrug.) Working in both administration and sales under him, I was the first to take the brunt of it. It was easy for him to keep putting pressure on me.
Today we went to one of my favorite places in Jiaxing, Liang’an Coffee.
Clean and unpretentious.
Sometimes I think of it as a kind of camouflage, before you know who’s a friend and who’s not.
After all, I’d taken the blame for plenty of things that weren’t my fault, and everyone had seen it.
We were both Taiwanese managers trying to make our way far from home. Over some grilled skewers, we smiled and let bygones be bygones.
Until next time.
