Daddy, Come Home For Dinner!

Chapter 936: Chapter 936: Wouldn’t It Be Difficult for You?

The colleague competing with Li Xiaoyun for the department manager position is a male colleague.

Although there’s a lot of talk about gender equality these days.

In reality, whether in the workplace or other aspects, true gender equality is far from being achieved.

Discrimination against women is still widespread.

And the workplace is one of those places that are particularly harsh and unequal towards women.

Not to delve too deeply.

Just taking the common experiences of female employees as an example.

If a woman is approaching 30, or even just over 25, she will be asked if she has a boyfriend, if she’s married, if she has kids?

If she doesn’t have a boyfriend, or if she has a boyfriend but isn’t married, then when she gets married, she’ll need marriage leave, and if she has a kid, she’ll need maternity leave.

If she’s married but doesn’t have kids, she’ll still need maternity leave in the future.

Under these conditions, she’s far less competitive compared to a married woman with children.

And even with the same resume, companies tend to prefer hiring male employees.

This, in fact, is also a form of gender discrimination and inequality.

Many young women applying for jobs have likely experienced such things.

And when it comes to promotions, male employees also tend to have a higher chance than female employees.

This time, the one competing with Li Xiaoyun is Zheng Xuelin, who joined the company two years earlier than Li Xiaoyun.

In terms of seniority, he is above Li Xiaoyun.

But in terms of ability, he’s actually slightly inferior to Li Xiaoyun.

Speaking of which, Zhou Yunyun initially thought Zheng Xuelin and Li Xiaoyun could become a couple.

The company doesn’t have any rules or unwritten rules prohibiting relationships between employees.

Zheng Xuelin is two years older than Li Xiaoyun.

Zhou Yunyun joined later and heard that before she entered the company, Zheng Xuelin had quite a good impression of Li Xiaoyun.

But as for care and attention, it wasn’t quite there.

Because Zheng Xuelin is also just an ordinary employee himself.

But he did have some attentive moments.

Later on, Zhou Yunyun also observed that Zheng Xuelin seemed to have a good impression of Li Xiaoyun but was somewhat arrogant.

Although Zhou Yunyun didn’t quite understand what Zheng Xuelin was being arrogant about.

It was as if he liked Li Xiaoyun but didn’t want to admit it.

His demeanor of liking but not admitting it didn’t seem like it was due to shyness or embarrassment.

Was it purely because he felt liking Li Xiaoyun was lowering his own status?

Zhou Yunyun had to put a question mark on that.

Because she really couldn’t figure out what Zheng Xuelin had to be so proud of that he felt it was lowering his status.

She knew that Zheng Xuelin always felt he had decent conditions.

His looks were above average, not stunningly handsome, but he had regular features and was quite good-looking.

Such looks were enough to attract a lot of attention.

Furthermore, Zheng Xuelin’s family was local to B City, with a local residence permit.

A residence permit in B City is valuable.

Online, it’s said that having a name on a B City residence permit is worth 500,000.

Whether that’s true or not, Zhou Yunyun didn’t know.

But even if it’s not that exaggerated, it’s certainly worth a lot of money.

However, if you’re only looking at external conditions.

Li Xiaoyun is very beautiful, and in Zhou Yunyun’s opinion, it’s a pity to match her with Zheng Xuelin’s looks.

Moreover, she’s also a local of B City.

It’s not that locals are noble or anything.

But in terms of living costs, it’s indeed much lower than for outsiders struggling in B City.

In addition, she has parents nearby who can help out.

For young people, these are particularly good conditions.

Take Zhou Yunyun herself, for instance. She’s from the neighboring J City.

In B City, renting an apartment costs her 5,000 a month just for rent.

If she gets married and her husband is also an outsider.

If they don’t have money to buy a house or even for a down payment, they can only continue renting.

Although the cost of renting goes down, what about after having a kid?

There are no elders to take care of the child; they’re all back in the hometown, not in B City.

You either have to take care of the child yourself or hire a nanny.

Whichever option, the cost is high.

Not to mention the many other very practical problems.

Of course, Zhou Yunyun wasn’t thinking about finding a local person to marry.

It’s still about fate and feelings.

Struggling together as a couple is tiring, but it’s fine.

After all, if she has to struggle alone, she will struggle on her own.

Having struggled this long, it doesn’t matter continuing to struggle.

However, in Zhou Yunyun’s view, Li Xiaoyun and Zheng Xuelin’s conditions are comparable, if not slightly better.

What’s Zheng Xuelin holding back for?

If he really likes her, he should pursue her properly.

Behaving like Zheng Xuelin, liking her but not admitting it.

Paying attention to small details seems warm and caring, but essentially what’s the difference from a pathetic warm-hearted guy?

No wonder Li Xiaoyun doesn’t fancy him.

Anyway, when Zhou Yunyun looks at Li Xiaoyun, she doesn’t think Li Xiaoyun has any good impression of Zheng Xuelin.

Not even the slightest feeling beyond that of ordinary colleagues.

However, Zhou Yunyun still feels a bit wistful.

At least Zheng Xuelin once liked Li Xiaoyun, but whether he still does is unknown.

But they ended up becoming competitors.

And the competition between the two has become increasingly heated.

Although no one dares to openly take sides, secretly, people still choose to support someone.

Everyone is an old hand in the workplace.

If the person they support gets promoted, they may get some advantages in the future.

If the other person gets promoted, their secret support will remain unknown to them.

In any case, Zhou Yunyun supports Li Xiaoyun.

"Perhaps it’s just not finalized yet?" Li Xiaoyun caught the key point in Zhou Yunyun’s words.

"Yes, but I’ve heard it’s practically a done deal," Zhou Yunyun said. "And the boss is very pleased."

"Moreover, if this deal is successful, it will bring great profits to the company. It’s said to be the biggest deal in the company’s history."

"If that happens, his promotion to manager is almost guaranteed." Zhou Yunyun said.

Li Xiaoyun smiled and said, "That’s his ability. After all, he’s the one closing the deal. If it really goes through, I can’t ruin it, can I?"

"But if you two competed and he gets promoted, it would be difficult for you, right?" Zhou Yunyun said.

No one is naïve here.

If Zheng Xuelin gets promoted, Li Xiaoyun, as his former competitor, would become a thorn in his side.

And can Zheng Xuelin tolerate Li Xiaoyun?

Zhou Yunyun doesn’t think Zheng Xuelin is someone with a broad mind.

Besides, normally, people would think Li Xiaoyun surely has someone supporting her.

Even if he succeeds in getting promoted, leaving an employee with her own supporters who might not follow his instructions would be disadvantageous to him.

By then, Zheng Xuelin would definitely try to push Li Xiaoyun out.

However, Li Xiaoyun has been with the company for many years.

Throwing away all those years of accumulation to start over at another company would be a great pity.

With Li Xiaoyun’s experience, she might not be able to become a manager at a company of the same level.