(Minghui.org) I ended my ten-year career as a sales clerk in a shopping mall in 2008 and began working as a cashier in the marketing department of a pharmaceutical company. I had been practicing Falun Dafa for nine years, and the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance of Falun Dafa were deeply rooted in my heart.
During the past eight years, I had challenging and interesting work experiences—from cashier, and accountant, to manager.
Most of my coworkers were young people. Affected by modern notions, they were lazy and littered the office with food and snacks. The company’s time and attendance were loosely regulated: Even though the work hours were 9 to 5, everyone showed up after 9 a.m. The manager arrived around 10 a.m. There was no sign-in or face scanning.
I am a Falun Dafa practitioner, and I must be a good person in any environment and in anything I do. I normally arrived at the office at 8:30 a.m. and cleaned the desks and floor. On my first day of work, the supervisor said as soon as he entered the room, “Wow, our office has changed!”
One day, just after I cleaned the floor, the manager arrived. I thought to myself, “Why is the manager here so early today?” He looked around the office and left. The next morning, just after I wiped the desks clean, the manager came in. He again looked around the office, did not say anything, and left. Several times the manager noticed that I was the first one to arrive and I cleaned the office every morning.
At a meeting one day, the manager praised me after making assignments, “If a person can persist in doing good deeds every day, then she must be a good person.” People started to feel the company’s atmosphere changing subtly after I arrived.
After I worked for the company for six months, my coworkers, manager, and accountant all knew that I practiced Falun Dafa. I took every opportunity to tell them the facts about Falun Dafa and helped them quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Youth League, and the Young Pioneers. They all know Falun Dafa is good, and that practitioners are good people. They were blessed because of this.
The company set up a new marketing department in a peripheral city, assigned an accountant to be the manager at the new location, and let me take over as the accountant. I was hesitant because I had just gotten used to working as a cashier, and accounting was very different, especially since I had not even handled a simple voucher.
However, I thought of myself as a Dafa practitioner, so I decided to validate Dafa by taking the job and doing it well. I found the vouchers and accounting sheets left behind by the accountant, verified them carefully, and analyzed and studied them.
I brought my mother-in-law, a retired accountant, to my home to teach me accounting. She started by teaching me how to make vouchers. She taught me so conscientiously, and I learned so keenly, that both of us forgot to eat or drink. By nightfall, I suddenly understood everything, and my mother-in-law praised me for being smart.
I knew it was because of Master’s merciful empowerment of opening up my wisdom that I was able to grasp it. In actual work, I still had to seriously figure out how things should be done. In those days, the manager saw me buried in the account books all day, and he felt a sense of security. Soon, the headquarters received the accounting reports I prepared, and the financial department praised me.
However, who would know, just after familiarizing myself with this accountant’s job for half a year, I was once again faced with new challenges and choices.
Because of the economic downturn in China in those years, it was difficult to make profit in any field. Our company was also going downhill with the economy.
With high operating costs, poor management, low wages, staff insecurity and low morale, high turnovers of employees, and the cost of training and retraining unskilled new recruits, the marketing department was on the verge of being abolished.
Due to insufficient revenue and high operating costs, the company lost money for several months in a row. The general manager blamed the marketing manager for his inaction and considered his management style problematic, and the latter resigned in a huff. The general manager told the marketing manager to recommend a successor within the marketing department.
The marketing manager talked to me and decided to recommend me to replace him. I was surprised because I had no degree or management experience, and I had only been working as an accountant for six months.
A bachelor’s degree or an associate’s degree as well as management experience have always been required in recruiting marketing managers, and I have neither, because I graduated from a technical secondary school and had no management experience, so I declined the offer.
I instead recommended a young college graduate, the supervisor who worked in the company for more than two years to the marketing manager.
He shook his head and said, “You know that everyone in the company is vying for this position, but why did I recommend you? Because you’re selfless. No one can hold up for long, but you’re a good person and get along well with your coworkers, so I will have peace of mind if the position is given to you.”
Later, the general manager called me and repeatedly asked me to take the position, which I decided to accept.
The marketing manager received blessings for believing Falun Dafa is good, and he later became a manager in a large company.
The first year after he left was the most difficult year for me. Before my promotion, my coworkers and I got along well, and we could talk about anything, but as soon as it came to personal interest conflicts after my promotion, they were very different from before. The supervisor did not get the manager’s position, and immediately resigned, and other employees looked at me with skepticism.
I told myself that as a Dafa practitioner, I must first of all put myself in the employees’ shoes and be considerate of them. I understood how they felt, and I didn’t blame them for doubting my ability, because I hadn’t made any achievements yet.
They are all beings who have a connection with Dafa, and I want to treat them well so that they would know how amazing Falun Dafa is, from the bottom of their hearts, and be saved by Dafa.
Faced with the resignation of the supervisor, everyone’s skepticism and wait-and-see attitude, I knew I must raise the sales first to win them over.
We are a private company and set up marketing departments in multiple cities in China. We sell imported medicines and cosmetics. The quality of the products and our company’s reputation are the assurance of our company’s survival.
Our company’s products are mainly distributed in drugstores and advertised in newspapers, and the biggest expense of the marketing department is newspaper advertising.
I visited the newspaper and negotiated the price. Our regular full-page advertisement cost 70,000 yuan (USD$9,850). I found it wasteful and overpriced, so I asked for half-page advertisements with a lower price.
At first, the editor did not agree, thinking it would be difficult to arrange the layout. I contacted my company’s planning department and asked them to make a vertical half-page advertisement design. I asked them to make sure to include pictures and texts, and the content was proper, factual, and responsible for the customers.
The editor saw that our design had a stylish layout, beautiful pictures and unique content, and gladly accepted my proposal and reduced the cost to 25,000 yuan for a half page. As a result, we saved a great deal of money on the advertisement.
The company had a promotional event in my first month as the marketing manager. I created the sales plan and shopped the giveaways with the accountant. We picked affordable and beautiful items to give to customers. As to the complimentary drugs, we strove to meet the customer’s expectations as much as possible.
As it turned out, our first month’s sales exceeded the plan, with sales of more than 200,000 yuan exceeding the average annual sales of the previous manager. The staff saw hope and had confidence in their jobs.
Only when a company looks out for its employees can the employees share the company’s concerns.
Everyone came to work to support their families. They were frugal and brought their own lunch every day. I figured it was inconvenient for them to carry a lunch box to ride a crowded bus every day. So I switched to lease a bigger office suite with a kitchen in the same industrial park. I purchased a second-hand refrigerator, so the staff could make simple food for lunch in the office.
I gave everyone a monthly subsidy for food expenses, and added the money from the company’s sale of waste products such as newspapers, magazines, packaging boxes, etc. to the food subsidy.
I applied for funding from the company and replaced the old desks and chairs with new ones, and added office supplies such as computers, a fax machine, etc. The office had a new look.
We must be smart in budgeting. Previously, to mail medicines and cosmetics to customers, the company bought fabrics for packaging, which was expensive. I asked the staff to cut the cardboard boxes in which the goods came in into the right sizes, pack the medicines and cosmetics with it and wrap them with tape. It saved expenses on shipping, and the packaging was sturdy and durable.
I changed the shipping from using freight depots to using the post office or courier companies, which increased the credibility of our company. In the past, the freight depots collected payments upon delivery, but some of them had poor credit and did not return the payments on time, which caused losses to our company.
Now, the customers made their payments first, followed by shipment. Pharmacy sales were also collected timely, and debt was avoided. The company’s operation and sales gradually formed a dynamic circle.
After several promotional events, our company’s sales increased significantly, from nearly abolishing our marketing department to gradual recovery. Among the company’s sales departments in all cities, our sales have risen from last to first place.
After each sales event, I took the staff and their families to dinner, picnics, and on hikes. In the process, everyone was relaxed and spoke freely, and I took the opportunity to tell them about the beauty of Falun Dafa and told them to recite “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” which they all repeated happily. They felt the beauty of Falun Dafa from the bottom of their hearts.
In my fifth year of managing the marketing department, we were ranked number one in sales nationwide. The general manager called me and said, “I have been impressed. Since you came to the company, employee morale is stable, the company’s profits grew each year, you deserve all the credit.” I knew this was the wisdom that our great benevolent Master had bestowed on me.
That same year, the headquarters did a large-scale sales campaign, allowing each marketing department to develop its own sales plan and purchase its own giveaways. The first place in sales would be rewarded with a high bonus with an impressive amount.
I discussed it with my staff and asked them if they were confident they would win the highest reward, the staff said that should be no problem. In the end, through the joint efforts of all the staff, our department won the first place with an unexpected sales exceeding two million, which set the record of any marketing department since the establishment of the company, and won the highest bonus.
The headquarters called each marketing department manager to the planning department and held an on-site meeting to award the bonus. After the meeting, I took everyone to climb Mount Tai, which I had looked forward to.
I recited the words of Master’s Fa,
“Climbing Mount Tai
I climb the steep steps, stretching miles ahead,Winding upward and steep, this road, even to set off is hard;Glancing back, ’tis just like cultivating True Fa,Pausing half way makes salvation hard.So steel the will, and lift thy leaden leg,Endure the pain, diligent, and cast off attachments;Dafa disciples, the tens of millions -A place still higher awaits you at Consummation.
(“Climbing Mount Tai,” Hong Yin)”
Reciting Master’s poem filled my body with the extraordinary power that comes from assimilating to Dafa, and I easily climbed to the top of Mount Tai. I felt that my cultivation over the years was like the process of climbing Mount Tai. It was Master who arranged my path from cashier, accountant, to manager. Standing at the summit of Mount Tai, my heart was filled with nothing but gratitude to Master!
I discussed with the accountant how to distribute the bonus to the employees. The accountant reminded me that when she worked at the headquarters, every time the bonuses were given in private, and one only knew how much he or she got, but not others’. She suggested that I do the same, fearing that the employees would be at odds with each other otherwise.
I said, “They won’t. More work means more gained, less work means less gained. I will make it clear to everyone.”
I distributed the bonuses in a sensible and reasonable manner according to various aspects such as the sales performance of each sales representative and the principle distribution rules among logistic staff. Everyone knew the amount everyone else received, and was satisfied. They all understood the principle of however much one sacrifices is the amount one will gain.
The company was in a peaceful atmosphere, the employees arrived early every day to clean the office or do whatever they could. Some customers said, “Your company is now very professional.”
Sometimes customers remitted payments to us without checking the amount. Our financial department would notify the customers and return the overpayment in time.
Everyone cherishes the working environment and appreciates the beauty of being a good person in accordance with Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance.
In the blink of an eye, it has been seven years since I took over the manager’s position. One day, the company’s general manager called and told me, “The company may have to go out of stock, because the foreign business partner no longer wants to supply goods to China. This is something you need to be prepared for.”
He said he had something for me to consider, that he wanted me to join forces with him and take a share in a new product line. He said I would not need to invest much, just a symbolic amount, and he would take care of the rest and share the profit with me 50-50, as long as I agreed. He said he however could not take any of the staff in the marketing department. He asked me to think about it and let him know.
After I put down the phone, I felt lost at first. I knew the general manager trusted me tremendously and didn’t want to abandon me, because he admired me as a person and my principles.
However, the company’s employees trusted me, and repeatedly said to me, “If the company goes belly up, manager, you must take us with you no matter what you do, and we are willing to work with you.”
I am a Dafa practitioner, and I can’t give up my principles and moral code for the sake of making money for myself. Besides, I am approaching retirement age, what difference does it make if I make a lot of money? The limited time left to assist Master to do Fa-rectification and the opportunity to save sentient beings is precious.
During these years, I have not caused any waste or loss to the company, nor have I generated any disputes or conflicts. The employees all agree that Dafa is good, have quit the CCP, and learned how to tell the difference between good and bad.
After pondering the situation, I decided to forego the opportunity.
I returned the call to the general manager and politely declined his kind offer. He said he understood and repeatedly thanked me for my excellent work and contribution to the company.
I said, “I have a spiritual obligation to guide me to do my job well. Because following the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, I feel open and noble. I hope you remember that ‘Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.’” He happily accepted it and thanked me.
On the occasion of the 25th World Falun Dafa Day, I am writing about this experience to bear witness to the beauty and extraordinary nature of Falun Dafa. May all the world’s people understand the truth of Falun Dafa and be saved as soon as possible!
I am grateful for Master’s merciful salvation!
(Selected submission in celebration of World Falun Dafa Day on Minghui.org)