Chapter 3

While they said, "It's okay," on the surface, behind my back, they began to distance themselves from me and marginalize me. The tasks I had at hand required assistance from other colleagues to complete. When I approached my coworkers for help, they either ignored me or gave me half-hearted responses. What should have taken one or two hours to finish, left me still working while my colleagues had already gone for lunch. By the time I was done, it was well past the lunch break, and I had lost my appetite. Since I had decided to infiltrate the company from within as a junior employee, I wasn't going to give up over minor setbacks. The next day, I had my housekeeper prepare my lunch and put it in the office refrigerator. I thought that even if my work was delayed, I could still have a hot meal. However, before I could even retrieve my lunch, I smelled something spoiled. "Whose lunch is this? It's gone bad!" "Does she own the company? She doesn't care about others' feelings at all. Why would they hire someone like her in the first place?" I looked at the lunchbox that was being scorned and realized it was the one I had placed in the fridge that morning. Having been through bullying before, I immediately guessed that someone had taken my lunch out of the fridge early. I walked over and tossed the lunchbox into the trash, feeling more disgusted by the judgmental glances and whispers from my colleagues than by the spoiled food. They had no idea that the company was actually mine. I used my keys to enter my office and had my secretary bring my lunch to me personally. After finishing my meal, I returned to my workstation, calmed down, and pondered. When I had first joined, my colleagues had behaved quite normally, without any apparent hostility towards me. Stella Foster surely had to say something to them that caused this abnormal behavior over the past few days. She wanted to resort to the same old tricks to destroy me again. I understood that confronting Stella Foster directly would be foolish, so I discreetly stationed myself in the tea room with the most foot traffic, finally hearing my colleagues discussing my situation. "We're treating her like this, what if she can't take it and does something extreme?" "She's cozying up to Stella and looks down on us. She's so highly educated, and if she doesn't want to stay, she can easily find another job. Why would you sympathize with her?" Listening to their words, I realized that they were targeting me because Stella Foster had purposely made my colleagues believe I was a "goody-goody" who could do anything for them. Whenever I refused someone's request, she would incite them, claiming that I was doing so because I looked down on them. I had seen people who were willing to take risks, but Stella Foster was something else, actively walking into trouble. Dressed in a tight skirt and strutting in high heels, Stella Foster approached me. She crossed her arms and looked down at me from above. "How's the taste of these past few days?" I couldn't be bothered to respond and continued working. "As long as you listen to me from now on, your colleagues won't target you anymore. Once I become a full-fledged planner this month, I'll promote you to be my assistant. How does that sound?" She whispered in my ear, with a conquering smile on her lips. I looked at her with a cold gaze and replied, "Rather than being an assistant, I'd prefer to be a planner. If you don't want to experience embarrassment like the other day, stay away from me." "I know you're highly educated and ambitious, but when you enter a company, climbing the ladder still relies on connections." She seemed to recall the awkwardness from that day and awkwardly distanced herself from me. Seeing that I didn't respond, she handed me a USB drive. "Think about it carefully. Once you've made up your mind, organize the files on the USB drive and upload them to the conference room computer before the meeting tomorrow."