3: 3
"A loss?!"
Melissa let out a scornful laugh. "Frieda, come on, don't joke around."
"We ran a couple of promotions. Worst case, you made a little less. What kind of loss is that?"
"Pamela already told us. This place clears fifty, sixty grand in net profit every month."
She turned to Pamela.
"Right, Pamela?"
Pamela lowered her head.
"Frieda, I'll admit it, the store did make a little less last month. But we still made money."
"You should give something back to the customers now and then. Don't be so greedy."
My head was buzzing with rage.
I never would have guessed Pamela could be so shameless.
A clean hundred grand in the hole, and she was still saying we'd turned a profit.
Ian jumped in the second he heard it.
"A hot pot place this big, and you'd keel over from making a few thousand less?"
A woman customer chimed in. "Never satisfied, always wanting more! You make a few thousand less and act like it's the end of the world. You people who run these places, how much is ever enough for you?"
Gretchen had already quietly pulled out her phone.
I watched her go live.
She sobbed straight into the camera.
"I'm so sorry, everyone. The hot pot giveaways might have to end. The owner says we didn't make enough running them, so she won't let us keep going, and now she's firing me and my sister."
"She won't even pay us last month's wages, and on top of that she wants us to cover the losses she says we caused her."
Listening to her twist everything upside down, I had a bad feeling and opened my own phone.
After a few days of the giveaways, these two sisters' follower count had shot up to over a hundred thousand.
She'd even paid to boost her stream, and with all that pitiful crying, the number of viewers climbed fast.
In front of the camera, Ian kept hammering away.
"I'll say it plain. Everyone knows how obscene the markup is at a hot pot place. How could giving away two dishes possibly put you in the red?"
"Exactly!"
Another man in glasses picked it up. "Hot pot places are the shadiest of the lot. They reuse the broth base over and over, freeze the ingredients in a cold room for half a year and never toss them, all dirty money. These two students help you draw in customers, and you complain you're not making enough? Greedy, the lot of you!"
I listened to them cursing and closed my eyes for a moment.
With the crowd egging things on, the live chat lined up solidly behind the Fox sisters.
【This owner's got to be sick in the head. Won't take the money, and drives out staff that good.】
【So greedy. Not scared of shaving years off her own life.】
【Melissa and Gretchen would be a catch anywhere they worked. Kick them out and there'll be a line of owners fighting to hire them!】
【Pay our Melissa and Gretchen their wages first. What gives you the right to hold them?】
Melissa watched from the side, a smug smile pressed at the corner of her mouth. "Frieda, if you really think you're running a loss, why not just make the books public and let everyone be the judge?"
