The energy Manager Lee Hyuk was radiating froze the office atmosphere in an instant.
Yoon Sun-young shuffled forward toward his desk. If the new hires ended up in trouble, it would be because she'd asked them to help find that sample.
"Manager, I was training them and had to run out to look for a sample the sales team urgently requested. And you did say I could ask them to help with my work."
"Why don't you go deal with your backlog first?"
Lee Hyuk glared at her.
Sun-young did bear primary responsibility for misplacing the sample, and she should have reported any task she gave the interns to her team leader.
Under that fierce stare, she couldn't say anything more and slunk back to her seat.
"If you're going to be away from your desks for a while, you report to me first."
He looked at the two of them, displeasure clear on his face.
At his words, Yoojin bowed at the waist in apology.
"I'm sorry, Manager. I'll report to you first next time."
He studied her face to see if she was truly sorry. Her gaze was primly lowered, lashes casting shadows on her cheeks.
Then Lee Hyuk turned his eyes on Dong-ha.
"And you, Mr. Yoon Dong-ha?"
"I'm sorry, Manager. That was my oversight. I'll report to you first next time."
His expression was cool and unreadable as he spoke, voice devoid of emotion.
Hearing the apologies from both new hires, Lee Hyuk seemed satisfied. His thick lips curled upward, and he finally took his eyes off them.
"We'll let it go this time. Make sure it doesn't happen again."
They bowed and went back to their assigned desks. Sitting down, their backs and waists prickled as if the chairs were studded with spikes.
"And Ms. Yoon Sun-young?"
At his call, Sun-young shot to her feet. "Yes, Manager."
"Please add Mr. Yoon Dong-ha and Ms. Han Yoojin to our department group chat."
"Yes, sir."
The overseas trade department was suddenly abuzz inside, even if no one dared show it. A chilly mood seeped through the team.
Here we go again, breaking in the newbies.
Why'd he pawn them off on Sun-young in the first place?
They bust their asses finding a missing sample and he can't even say thank you?
Everyone had plenty to say, but no one voiced it. Their eyes stayed fixed on their monitors.
Even inside Yoojin, who had looked so meek in front of Lee Hyuk, something was starting to churn.
Was it really their fault, like he'd said, for going down to the basement to find the sample without reporting to him first?
At university, she'd been a business major who never once lost her scholarship in four years. In her previous life, she'd been a prima ballerina who could memorize the choreography for entire productions.
None of that would have been possible without logic and an exceptional memory.
As soon as she sat down, her brain kicked into high gear. She thought back and recalled a required third-year class: Operations Management.
The 5-Why one-page report. A problem-solving method used on Toyota's production line. If you ask "why" five times, you arrive at the root cause and can derive the improvement plan on a single page. A way to minimize defects.
In her head, a one-page report unfolded, and her porcelain-doll face seemed to glow even brighter.
The report wrote itself in real time as her thoughts raced.
The initial reason the sample hadn't been checked into inventory was that Senior Staff Yoon Sun-young had been too busy. Her crisp tone and work style didn't fit someone who simply procrastinated.
Yoojin concluded she'd genuinely been buried in work. So then, why had her workload become excessive?
Sun-young's time was also a company resource. Was she, or the company, failing to use that resource efficiently? If so, this was less an individual problem and more an organizational one.
And the organization was something Yoojin would need to observe over time during her internship. Only then could she derive an accurate solution.
Then came the next question: why hadn't they reported to Manager Lee before going to look for the sample?
As she probed for the cause, the neatly structured report in her mind stalled. She'd found something bigger.
Why, as their supervisor, hadn't Lee Hyuk gone looking for his own new hires when both they and Yoon Sun-young had been away from their desks for so long? Was it so hard to ask, "Where are you right now? It's lunchtime—let's grab a meal together."?
Back at the ballet company, everyone had practically competed to look after the rookies. If a newcomer even looked like she might miss a meal, someone would thrust an emergency energy bar into her hands as if it were a crisis. Going without food on time was that demoralizing.
But here, he'd made them stand in the middle of the office and scolded them in front of everyone for not reporting?
I'm fine, but he shouldn't have done that to Dong-ha.
He was a brand-new twenty-one-year-old just starting out. A true freshman in the working world.
Anger began to ripple through her. Her gaze wavered, and the one-page report in her mind vanished with a pop.
In the end, the problem isn't with us. It's inside this team.
While Yoojin reached that conclusion after a chain of logical steps, only one phrase was echoing in Dong-ha's head.
Abuse of power.
To dress Yoojin down like that with a ridiculous excuse in front of the whole office—he hadn't seen that coming either. Thinking of her standing there completely exposed in the middle of the floor, his eyes darkened.
A little later, Sun-young came over with sandwiches and drinks for them. It weighed on her that, on their very first day, they'd skipped lunch and worn themselves out over her mistake.
Her usually sharp, almost hysterical tone had softened just a bit.
"Thanks for helping me find that sample earlier. Let's eat together. I'll teach you the system and email while we do."
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
As they unwrapped their sandwiches, Yoon Sun-young clicked deftly with her mouse and opened Yoojin's email.
[Re: Shanghai Fog Transport Issue]
The task Manager Lee had assigned had been forwarded by the relevant contacts to Yoojin and Dong-ha by email. A list of delayed containers from the shipping company was attached.
Sun-young explained only the essentials so they could start working right away.
"You need to organize this so the sales and production teams can see what kind of production problems we're looking at."
Yoojin focused on her explanation, cheeks puffed out as she stuffed in big bites of sandwich and chewed as fast as she could.
Watching her eat so frantically, Dong-ha glanced between the orange juice and banana milk on the desk.
He cracked open the banana milk and slid it over to her. Seeing it, Yoojin's eyes curved in a smile.
The sweetness washed the dryness from her mouth.
So she likes sweet stuff, he thought, watching how quickly she drank it, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
Right now, Yoojin was slightly giddy. Not because of the sandwich and sugary drink, but because of the work itself.
It was the first task she'd been assigned since joining the company. She'd always dreamed of being a top-performing elite employee, so she'd waited a long time for this moment.
As if she sensed that, Sun-young passed on the most efficient way she knew to handle it.
The container list from the forwarder was full of internal management numbers they used in logistics. She highlighted only the necessary cells and hid the rest.
"Now log into the system with your IDs and initial passwords."
The initial password was their date of birth. When they logged in, a rigid interface of boxy menus filled the screen.
"The default screen is rough, but you can customize it with the pages you use the most. From now on, think of this system as the tool you use to do your jobs."
She typed the order numbers from the container list into the order management page. The system pulled up the related data.
For each order, there was the buyer, garment design, pattern, material consumption, cost, factory information, and the material purchase and shipment history.
It was all internal company information. Yoojin's eyes locked onto the monitor, her concentration sharpening.
"Once Chairman Yoon Tae-young took over as Group CEO, every piece of data at Samho Apparel started feeding into this system. At first people complained, saying, 'Why does a sewing company need a system?' But now everyone uses it, so they quietly enter their data."
With her short, acorn-shaped bob framing her face, Sun-young smoothed down her hair and then fixed them with a warning in her usual clipped tone.
"These records were all entered one by one by the development, sales, and trade staff. So even by mistake, don't delete or overwrite anything. You have to be careful."
Dong-ha also examined the system carefully, this hub where the company's development, sales, and production data converged.
Until now, he'd thought of the company as a world separate from his own—or rather, as something he should keep separate out of respect for his older brother.
But for the time being, wrestling with this system alongside Yoojin would be his job.
From the system, Sun-young pulled the factory and shipment information—where the order was being produced, from when to when, on how many lines.
Then she opened the Asia and South America garment production schedule file she'd sent them earlier from her desk and entered those details into the last column of the container list.
"That's it. For each order, you're narrowing down which factories are going to be in trouble because their materials will be late. You could check against the material suppliers' shipping documents, but that's way too much work. Clean it up in the system, show it to me, and then send it on to Manager Lee."
She thought for a moment, eyes narrowing, checking if she'd missed any key points, then pushed back her chair and stood.
It was finally time for her to dive into her own workload.
"Thank you, senior."
"Thank you."
After their thanks, Sun-young returned to her desk with a knot of anxiety in her chest.
The new hires still weren't fully used to the production system. But at least there were two of them, not one. If they figured things out together, maybe it would be all right. She forced herself to tamp down the unease.