Part 1 of the story.
Once a upon a time, there was a very large chicken rice shop.
Despite selling delicious chicken rice, the chicken rice shop never made any profit since the start of the opening. In fact, the start up capital is supplied by chicken rice fanatics that wanted to revolutionize the chicken rice business.
Armed with so much cash, the bosses of the chicken rice shop started to expand to other businesses like selling random provisions and even started to do unrelated businesses. Also, learning from their experiences working in bigger chicken rice shops overseas, they started to rear their chickens, grow their rice and even insisted of building a slaughterhouse.
Since almost everything is done in-house, the bosses have to hire top chicken rice workers. Bosses started to give high salaries to attract fresh chicken rice workers from the chicken rice vocation institutes. The chicken rice shop became one of the top chicken rice employers.
With so many chicken rice enthusiasts applying, the bosses started to set almost impossible tasks for the interviewee, such as slaughtering a chicken without using imported knives in 30 minutes or cooking chicken without a stove. So many of the chicken rice enthusiast has to train in the forest, sometimes paying to paid trainers to help them get skills that probably will be irrelevant in a chicken rice shop that has good chicken processes.
So for a few years, the business is growing fast as they give chicken rice vouchers to consumers and got chicken rice influencers to dance in front of the consumers.
The number of chicken rice employee also increased. Loss is mounting, but the bosses assured that as long as they can capture market share, they can just price out the other chicken rice shops. Let’s be honest, this chicken rice does end to end including answering of customer complaints and making sure your chicken rice is delivered in an timely manner.
But with greater uncertainty over the economy, it is clear that investors money is drying up. They have to start making money and save on cash. So some of the less important chicken rice employee (such as identifying and recommending the type of chicken rice that a customer should buy based on their mood) are let go with an handsome sum of severance. Most of them found jobs in other chicken rice shops or in other F&B industry.
To be continued…