Summary:This year, 39 year old Hu Gafeng has a new job - working as a salesperson at IKEA in Shanghai. His decade long internet experience has been emptied in the store, and his job has shifted from organizing data and analyzing users to tallying and recommending products

Summary:

This year, 39 year old Hu Gafeng has a new job - working as a salesperson at IKEA in Shanghai. His decade long internet experience has been emptied in the store, and his job has shifted from organizing data and analyzing users to tallying and recommending products. He was delighted with face-to-face communication with people and also sighed: there were so many people who worked for ten years and still earned 10000 yuan or less.

In popular online terms, Hu Gafeng is now middle-aged with a slash. For over a year, he didn't have a stable job, and his daily life was divided into many aspects: getting up at five o'clock, cycling and meditating; At 6:30, I will come home and cook breakfast for my daughter and wife, and take my daughter home to school to make plans; At 11 o'clock, I went to IKEA to sell curtains, picked up my daughter from school after work, cut videos, and reviewed the past day

In the past decade, his resume has been very "fancy": he has worked at Alibaba, with a rank of P7, and has also obtained investment from Ctrip through entrepreneurship. In the past, he always caught up in the wind, earning a million yuan and buying a house in Shanghai. As a Northwestern person, he obtained a ticket to take root in Shanghai. But in this process, he always feels that 'bullshit work' has alienated him.

So now he is not the director and does not lead a team. He has removed all titles and wears a colorful cap every day, laughing his teeth out. He enthusiastically shares his and his daughter's outfits online.

How much he seems to love life, Hu Gafeng hates his past work. He hates meetings, the complex structure of large factories, and the work of turning people into numbers. In order to confront these, at the age of 37, in September 2021, he voluntarily left the workplace, rode a bicycle to deliver food and went to the store to sell goods. It is unknown whether he has survived the midlife crisis, but from his current light physical labor, he has felt a certain degree of healing.

After posting his experience on social media, he has gained the attention of many young people and is now becoming a new attempt for many people to shift away from single mental labor to physical labor.

The following is Hu Gafeng's account.

Hu Gafeng is on his way to work at IKEA by bike.

Article | Zhang Yali

Editor | Tao Ruogu

Happy every day when selling curtains

I have been selling curtains at IKEA for almost two months, and my biggest feeling is freedom. I feel happy every day.

About four days a week, I ride my bike from home, about five kilometers away, and it takes less than 20 minutes to arrive. After changing work clothes, start the day's preparation work, tally, replenish, and ensure that the goods on the shelves are sufficient. Occasionally, I have to move things, but many times, logistics colleagues will transport the entire box of goods, and I only need to sort them out from inside. Because my work scope is in the textile and fabric art area, the products are very light, all of which are cushions and the like, and my physical strength is not tiring. These preparations are completed in about 45 minutes.

Next, I started waiting for customers to come to my door. On weekends, there are many people, but in the middle of the week, there are few people. When there are many people, they receive more than ten people a day, and when there are few people, they receive three or four people. What I usually do is to understand the size and style that customers need to customize, recommend according to their needs, and facilitate the order.

Some customers say "yellow looks better" in the first second, and then say "no, no, no, it's still green" in the next second. After half an hour, they may say "let's change it to yellow

I once met a mother and daughter, who were in their twenties and were optimistic about the style, but they even started bargaining. She told me, can you make at least 1000 yuan by selling a pair of curtains? Why don't we buy it 500 yuan cheaper? We'll buy it right away. In a clearly priced store like IKEA, it feels very absurd.

But I don't feel bored, on the contrary, I find it very interesting. Because when I came for an interview, I specifically asked the interviewees to come to a department that can communicate face-to-face with people.

I am 39 years old this year and have been working in internet related user operations for ten years. My main job is to read data, and almost every morning I have to review and review data. In the afternoon, I organize and discuss requirements, and ask for them. After work, I confirm whether the requirements I mentioned yesterday have been launched.

Every user in our eyes is not a person at all, just a number, it is virtual. I don't know what the person I'm chatting with is like behind the internet, it's all up to my imagination. If you're willing, you can imagine TA as a talkative beauty, or anything else.

For a while, there will be community maintenance in my business. But most of the time, in the community, I just watch others chatting and occasionally make an expression without saying too much.

I don't know if these have had a direct impact on my life, but later I realized that I started to have some social anxiety and no longer wanted to communicate with real people. Even outside of work, when strangers or unfamiliar people talk to me, my answers are almost always closed, "um," "that's it," and I want to quickly end this conversation. At that time, I would think that I only needed to analyze the numbers, look at trends, and not talk too much about people.

But in fact, my original personality was not like this. My first job in life was as an exhibition salesperson. I had to communicate extensively with clients and party B without any obstacles, and it gradually became like this after entering the internet.

The situation is beginning to change at IKEA. Although I have only been working for two months, someone has already told me along the way, "We were very satisfied with the curtains you recommended last time, thank you." I will find that when I truly communicate with someone face-to-face, see their expression, talk to them, and ultimately help them achieve a vision, I feel truly happy.

Such feedback has been almost non-existent for me in the past decade. In the logic of internet operation, marketing is greater than the product itself, and it's good if others don't scold you.

The work clothes received by Hu Gafeng.

Also a tool man, but different from in a big factory

Last December, I posted a post about my middle-aged unemployment, but I didn't expect many people to leave me messages.

Some people say that his situation is similar to mine, some companies ask me about my job intentions, and there are others who want to start a business together. One of them approached me and said he was selling furniture in Shanghai, asking if I was interested. After I sent out my resume, he replied to me two days later, saying that he was sorry. The investors in their store felt that I had no relevant experience and was a bit old, mainly because they were afraid that my previous income was relatively high. Their store could only offer me a salary of less than 10000 yuan, afraid that I would run away after working for a month, as recruitment and training all had costs.

From September 2021 (resignation) to that time, I have been unemployed for over a year, so I just want to prove that I can sell furniture. My home is not too far from IKEA and I can ride my bike to and from work. I think I can give it a try at IKEA.

Before going to the interview, I was a bit concerned about my age. After all, over the age of 35, the number of headhunters calling me has been decreasing throughout this year. Even if there are, I still assume that my needs may be to become a director and lead a team.

The interview process at IKEA was very smooth, and the other person looked a few years younger than me. He asked me about my past work experience, but it didn't seem to pay much attention. The entire process was relatively easy. But one thing he clearly emphasizes is that in the store, there is physical labor that requires effort. He was worried that I wouldn't accept it and left after ten and a half days of work.

I told him that I just want to experience a job where I can communicate directly with people, and he brought me here, which is one of the few departments at IKEA that needs to communicate with customers.

There were many surprises on my first day at work. Firstly, there was a shower, which was so friendly for cycling to work. Then I realized that age is not a big issue here, as there are college students who work part-time, middle-aged people in their 50s, and many interesting people among their colleagues. There are post-90s state-owned enterprise employees who come to work part-time to buy anime peripherals; A leader who has worked at IKEA for over ten years and earns just over ten thousand yuan; There is also a post zero boy who has never had a formal job after graduation and only works part-time as a breadwinner, living at the lowest cost. He said, "The money he saves is his own

I started to discover something here that I hadn't seen before. Originally, people's lives could be judged not only by how much money they earn but also by what kind of work they do, rather than following the conventional beliefs of most people.

IKEA's income is indeed relatively low, earning around 20 yuan per hour. I was mentally prepared before going, and my wife also told me that jobs without considering salary are always happy.

I shared in my circle of friends that I went to work at IKEA, and many of my classmates and friends saw it. Most of them encouraged me, but there were always people who thought it was quite different. After all, my age here is different, from old to young. I was born in 1984 and am almost forty years old. As a Lanzhou resident living in Shanghai, I have a mortgage and also need to raise children.

Fortunately, my wife is more supportive of me. Around 2010, when Gapyear was popular, I went to New Zealand to work and travel for 15 months, where I met her. That experience potentially influenced my later choices, making me feel that life doesn't have to be so routine, so I came to IKEA and saw a different life. Although my wife has always had a stable job in the financial industry, she can understand me and, in her words, "After all, we are only 40 years old." I am very grateful to her.

Comments received by Hu Gafeng on social media platforms.

The longer you stay at IKEA, the more surprises you will have. If that bargaining incident happened to a full-time employee, he probably wouldn't be as good tempered as me and apologize to the customer, but would say, "Okay, then you can watch it yourself." Then he would just leave the other person there and think, do you like to buy it.

I can understand that in this store, I am a tool person who sells goods while tallying. But this is different from being a tool maker in a big factory.

Firstly, I am facing real people. In the past, when communicating with colleagues and Party A and Party B, they were people, but they were also stakeholders. The process of raising demand in a large factory is to see who is making the most noise. At that moment, every department was thinking - how can they add their own features in the new version? Enlarge your page a bit?

In the store, although I sell things, I charge by the hour without commission, and the amount sold is not related to my income. There is no game between Party A and Party B here, just manage today's goods and receive today's customers well. There is no 'I want to do better than you', to put it bluntly, it's not a deal.

Here, rest is truly rest. Although the hourly salary is not high and one shift takes eight consecutive hours, I think the experience is quite good. Rest for half an hour for four hours and one hour every eight hours. In the employee lounge, you can go to bed or read a book. In internet companies, there is no concept of 'rest', usually 'lunch time'.

This is very important to me. During my time working at Company A, it was already the end of the workday at 8 or 9 pm, and the group was constantly tinkling - the leader came from Hangzhou, stayed alone in a hotel, and was "single in Shanghai". After returning to the hotel after work, I started posting links in the group, either to let us learn or to let us forward the leader's link.

I heard that a female colleague suffered from depression due to this, so I couldn't read it back and was constantly complained about by HR. Later on, I simply resigned, earning a lot of money was useless. I don't like big factories, I like small companies, and it's easier to work.

In the following three years from 2018, I joined a startup company. In three years, the number of people in the company has increased from less than ten to fifty or sixty, and sales have increased from several million to over one billion by 2021. At that time, everyone was soaring and imagining that they could launch the company, feeling like they had stepped on the wind and were ready to take off at any time.

But as I worked on it, I found that many things were starting to become like big factories again - when our personnel reached twenty to thirty people, the other two partners began to develop towards the process oriented direction of big factories. They invited some third-party HR consulting companies and enterprise process consulting companies to provide us with training, "laying a solid foundation for the company in the next ten years

I am very tired of this. For small companies with a population of dozens, direct communication through WeChat can solve the problem. However, the cross departmental application process is not directly helpful for the business.

In a large factory, a very simple thing is to hold two internal meetings first, then cross departmental colleagues from the business department are called over, and another meeting is held. Although I can understand that in a large company, so many people need to fully understand what needs to be done next, the process is still very complicated.

The most exaggerated one was when a colleague hurriedly called me and asked me to attend a meeting, only to arrive in the conference room. It was like a university call, "Has this department arrived? Has that department arrived? Okay, there's no problem." In this way, everyone sat for over an hour without solving any problems.

I will find that to accomplish something here, it cannot be driven by individuals, and each person is a part of the assembly line. I keep leaving, actually fighting against big factories and those meaningless jobs.

Hu Gafeng is in the IKEA work area.

A healing session

So in September 2021, I left the startup again and completely stopped. It may seem like you took the initiative to leave, but in reality, your thoughts are different from the other two people in the team. You no longer have a job, which is passive choice.

Before and after leaving, there were no significant changes in my life, and I had originally spent a lot of time at home with my daughter. Just in the next six months, I gradually realized that there was a gap in mentality. At first, I felt like I had been exposed to so many KOLs and analyzed so many users. If I took care of my children at home and took a short video, maybe I could even become popular. But the real situation is that I don't even want to watch what I've been filming, and the so-called self media has been going on for six months, but there hasn't been much improvement.

Later, when others asked me what kind of job I do, I used to answer, 'Work from home,' but in reality, I couldn't face my unemployment directly.

I have been involved in internet operations for so many years, and things like 'midlife crisis' and' roll 'themselves were invented by the internet. When it comes to my own experiences, I can't sleep at night and keep thinking, 'Why is my hands-on ability so poor?'

And I have a clear confusion that I haven't met strangers for a long time - it refers to those who are different from colleagues, have interests, and have cooperative relationships, and are purely new acquaintances. I often feel that as I live to be almost forty years old, I have fewer and fewer friends. Even if you post on your social media, if you go out to play today, you may receive a "play together another day" or "envy." Most of the time, there are actually very few responses, and everyone is in their own lives.

After leaving my job for six months, I had no job at all, let alone social interaction, and this confusion became even more apparent. Sometimes when I ask a friend I haven't seen for many years if I want to meet them, the majority of the responses I receive are busy and busy with work. Shanghai is very big, everyone needs to meet, and the journey may take nearly an hour. In the end, I found that I was the only one idle there like an unemployed wanderer. When you ask a friend, two or three, and they are all busy, you can't help but fantasize. Is it because you have no use value for them now?

At this point, I would be more eager to have some connection with strangers in my heart. Just thinking, we should always break through and give it a try. How difficult is it to chat with strangers in real life? I like cycling, so let's start by cycling. Ten years ago, I first came to Shanghai and was very busy with work. In order to have some exercise, I bought a bicycle and have been riding it ever since.

I shared my cycling experience online, and soon someone found me and arranged to ride together. I have a deep impression of my first unfamiliar rider. Before I went, I was still very nervous and felt like I wanted to chat about something. But when we met, we found that we were of the same age, and each other was also a young father. No one exchanged too many pleasantries. We rode along a cycling path by the Huangpu River for about 20 kilometers, but didn't speak much during the journey. Although he is in sales, he has a sense of propriety and only occasionally stops to say where to ride. The entire process is very easy, and I found that socializing with strangers is not that difficult.

The cycling club organized by Hu Gafeng.

Later on, I began to try more. For example, at the end of last year, many delivery staff went home and the delivery platform was relatively short of people. I was inspired and rode a bicycle to deliver delivery.

This job is even more free than working at IKEA. Riding about 20 kilometers each time ends, with an average of about five to six singles. Gradually, I gained experience in delivering milk tea. The profit from delivering milk tea is relatively high, with around 12 yuan per order. For fast food, it is relatively low, at around six or seven yuan.

Perhaps due to the epidemic, over 90% of the orders I have sent are marked with "just leave the things at the door". I am looking forward to the possibility of users opening doors to deliver water and food, as shared online, but I have never encountered them before. Many times, I haven't even seen if they are male or female. My last time riding a bike to deliver food was before the Spring Festival. I had originally set myself a goal of delivering 1000 yuan, but now it seems that it may not be easy to achieve.

Before losing my job, I didn't have a clear concept of time and just passed by day by day. When starting a business, I often rotate for 48 hours without regular schedule. After unemployment, it has actually become more refined. Recently, I wake up at around 5 o'clock every day, make a daily schedule, and come back to review it in the evening.

I also realized that I had undergone a transformation. When I was at work before, I didn't have a particularly concrete idea about the future, just going to work and leaving work every day. Now I have more ideas. Firstly, I made it clear that I prefer to do what I enjoy, and then I will be very specific about what a task will look like. For example, how can I accompany my daughter, how can she graduate from kindergarten this year, and how can I transition from kindergarten to primary school.

After that ride date with strangers, I started a bike club and organized strangers to ride bikes together. From the very beginning, there have been nearly two hundred people now. There are older generations born in the 1970s and also in the 1990s; Some people drive Ferraris, while others earn a monthly salary of 10000 yuan, but they live happily. When I see them, I think to myself, is it really important to catch up with the trend in the past and have a halo of earning millions annually? In the face of preferences and happiness, title seems to have gone unnoticed.

Recently, I wake up at 5 o'clock every day, ride a bike, and also provide wake-up call and route planning services online. Although no one has purchased yet, I find it quite interesting.

This idea was provided by the boy who only works part-time at IKEA. In the lounge, besides eating, I enjoy chatting with my colleagues. One day, the boy told me, "You're too tired of making money by riding a bike and delivering food. You should open your mind and be able to ride with you." You see, he graduated two or three years ago and according to mainstream thinking, he doesn't even have a stable job. But we don't talk about this, we talk about how to make ourselves happy. I always see in him, 'Oh! I can still do this.'

This week, I ended my experience at IKEA, or rather a healing session. My colleagues warmly bid me farewell, and I am very reluctant to part. In the medium to long term, I will not enter another company or large factory, but rather want to become a free individual and no longer pursue an annual salary of one million.

(The pictures in the text are provided by the narrator.)

Disclaimer: The content of this article is sourced from the internet. The copyright of the text, images, and other materials belongs to the original author. The platform reprints the materials for the purpose of conveying more information. The content of the article is for reference and learning only, and should not be used for commercial purposes. If it infringes on your legitimate rights and interests, please contact us promptly and we will handle it as soon as possible! We respect copyright and are committed to protecting it. Thank you for sharing.(Email:[email protected])