At the end of January, with the help of my comrades, I finally withdrew from school. At the time, I was also filled with hope for the future of the proletarian revolution, so I went to work at
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8/4
I started working at a bubble tea shop in late July. More precisely, though, the shop doesn’t actually sell bubble tea—it sells milk drinks. The shop where I was originally supposed to work after training won’t open until mid-August, so for now I can only work at other locations. Today I worked the afternoon shift at another shop, from 11:00 to 20:00, with a one-hour break in between.
Our shop is supposed to specialize in fresh milk, but in reality, it’s all “technology.” Our signature drink is about 550 ml. It’s advertised as completely natural and additive-free, but fresh milk makes up only 14% of it during preparation; the rest is basically all that “technology”—some kind of base milk blend. Today, a customer saw us pouring white liquids from different bottles and asked what they were. The store manager just lied to them, saying they were cheese and that everything we used was fresh milk, and so on.
The worst part of today was running into a Xiaohongshu “influencer.” In order to attract wealthy, petty-bourgeois customers to buy this brand’s drinks, the capitalists invite a bunch of Xiaohongshu influencers to “visit the store” and stage photo shoots. We have to make all kinds of drinks for these “influencers” and cooperate with them while they film videos—such as demonstrating how to use tongs to pick toppings out of the ingredient containers and place them on top of the cup. These “influencers” do little work but make plenty of money, exploiting others; they can “easily” earn money just by filming a video, while workers have to labor hard just to scrape by.
One influencer even asked me to film a video of packing a milk tea cup in the shape of a five-pointed star. Specifically, I had to stick five sealing strips onto the lid in the shape of a star. As I was doing it, I felt really dissatisfied. They really do treat shop workers as tools for obtaining views and money.
(To be continued)
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When I was working at Wallace, I often had to deal with this kind of so-called restaurant promotion and review content. It was absolutely ridiculous: they’d have us act out these wildly exaggerated, nonsensical scenes to promote Wallace’s new combo meals and products. Even though we were already working ourselves to death every day, we still had to perform like online clowns for him. The most outrageous part was that, after making us fry a huge amount of food for filming, he would just throw it all away afterward. Some of it hadn’t even been touched, which was incredibly wasteful.
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8/6
On 8/5, I had a day off. On 8/6, I’ll continue working the 11:00–20:00 mid-shift at the store where I worked on 8/4. The store opens on 8/7, and I’ll have to work three full-day shifts in a row, with only a little over ten minutes of break in between. There’s not even any overtime pay—just time off in lieu. 
After these three days, I’ll have some time to update you with my thoughts.
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This is way too reactionary. Even the male chauvinists I’ve encountered have never been so direct in insulting someone’s appearance.