My name is Lu Fuluo, a new recruit in the foreign trade department of Shengshi Factory. To everyone else, I am just a fresh face straight into the workplace. What no one knows is that I have years of in-depth experience in the raw material foreign trade industry. I have witnessed the rise and fall of countless business tracks and long since seen through the logic of workplace involution. The sales department of Shengshi Factory is perpetually shrouded in the brutal, suffocating smoke of cutthroat internal competition.
Official clock-in is at nine in the morning, yet every day by eight-fifty, every workstation is already occupied. No one slacks off or chats idly. Everyone hunches over their desks, fingers flying across keyboards as they relentlessly refresh inquiry pages on foreign trade platforms. The dense, nonstop clatter of keyboards forms an endless race against time. Here, traffic equals performance, and snatching orders means survival. No one dares to slow down, nor will anyone spare a glance at the so-called “dead-end track” everyone despises.
I am the only outlier in this frantic crowd.
Sitting at my corner workstation by the window, dressed in a neat, plain white shirt, I stay completely relaxed, free from the tension and anxiety consuming my colleagues. From my very first day on the job, I have mastered the low-key survival rules of this workplace: no unnecessary hustle, no office gossip, and no pointless involution—steady work, low profile.
On the day business tracks were assigned, everyone scrambled fiercely for popular categories: home goods, daily necessities, and outdoor products. These mainstream tracks boasted massive traffic and endless inquiries. Even relying on low-price sales could generate decent performance, making them the most sought-after niches in the department.
In stark contrast, the SAP superabsorbent polymer track was a hot potato everyone avoided like the plague. Universally dismissed by the entire sales team, it was regarded as a dead-end position for slackers and underperformers.
Whispers of disdain and contempt drifted continuously to my ears.
“Whoever takes SAP is doomed. It’s normal to get no orders for half a year, and even the occasional order is trivial. It’s a total waste of time.”
“The last guy who took this track quit in despair after three months. This niche has no future at all.”
I heard every word clearly. No one had faith in this unpopular track, and naturally, no one had faith in me—the new guy stuck with the mess. In their eyes, I was a lost cause, doomed to the bottom of the rankings from day one.
My supervisor walked over with a thick stack of documents and dumped the dust-covered SAP product materials heavily on my desk, his tone perfunctory and helpless. “The entire messed-up SAP line is yours. Don’t push yourself too hard. Just scrape by on the basic salary. No one has ever achieved decent results in this niche.”
In an instant, dozens of eyes swiveled toward me, filled with pity, mockery, and undisguised amusement at my misfortune.
I lowered my head and flipped through the dusty, yellowed documents, brushing my fingers over the worn pages. There was no panic or frustration in my eyes—only quiet, unreadable certainty.
Amateurs chase popularity; professionals judge potential. This was the confidence built on my years of foreign trade experience.
The overcrowded popular tracks had long been squeezed dry of profit, flooded with homogeneous products. My colleagues raced against each other with faster operations, lower prices, and tricky sales tactics, wearing themselves out day after day in futile, exhausting internal friction with no room for growth.
This neglected, long-forgotten SAP track was never marketless. It was simply abandoned by impetuous workplace employees who refused to settle down and dig deep. It was a blank blue ocean, buried beneath pointless corporate involution.
While the crowd chased fleeting trends, I chose the untrodden path.
Amid the noisy, cutthroat sales office, I sat calmly at my corner station, gazing at the product cover printed with “superabsorbent polymer”, a complete plan already taking shape in my mind.
This overlooked corner workstation now hid a sharp blade, kept low and unassuming.
No one at Shengshi Factory could have imagined that I, seemingly a laid-back newcomer saddled with a worthless project, would soon upend the entire office’s ruthless competition rules—all with nothing but these humble white resin particles.