Chapter 272: A Cup of Coffee Without Sincerity

I and the woman in red reached an agreement on the issue of names in a friendly atmosphere. I said to her, “Dear customer, please wait for a moment on the balcony of our inn, I’ll bring the coffee to you right away.”

The woman in red smiled and said, “I’m just here to have some free coffee, so you don’t need to call me ‘dear customer’.”

I praised her, “What a great word, ‘free’!”

“Why?”

“Well, since you’re having free coffee, when I ask for your name later, you won’t feel embarrassed to refuse me, after all, you’ve accepted my hospitality.”

“You really want to know my name that much?”

“After we get to know each other better, it’s necessary to know. Otherwise, how can you stand me calling you ‘you’ all the time?”

The woman in red shrugged noncommittally, then walked upstairs to the balcony. I took 50 yuan from the cash register and immediately went to the neighboring coffee shop to buy an Americano latte.

I carried the coffee cup to the balcony on the second floor, and she was swinging on the hammock chair.

“There you go, your coffee.”

She took the coffee from me and took a sip, then frowned.

“Not good?”

“This is a cup of coffee without sincerity!”

“How so?”

“If I’m not mistaken, this coffee was bought from the Feiyu Coffee Shop next door, right?”

“Did you see that?”

The woman in red shook her head, “I’ve had their coffee before, and I remember the taste.”

I looked at her in disbelief, “No way, you can actually remember that!”

The woman in red didn’t respond to my surprise, and frowned, “Do you think a cup of coffee bought from a coffee shop can still be considered warm-hearted coffee?”

“How is it not considered warm-hearted? If I didn’t have the spirit of serving customers, I wouldn’t have paid for it myself. Isn’t that kind of dedication warm-hearted enough?”

The woman in red still had a disinterested expression and said, “No sincerity.”

I finally felt a bit annoyed, “You’re really such a tsundere!”

The woman in red remained unmoved, half-smiling, and said, “Don’t forget that you’re in the service industry. But this kind of sincerity won’t truly move consumers and make them feel a sense of belonging to your brand.”

I thought for a moment and asked, “Do you mean I should brew the coffee myself?”

“At last, you’ve got some awareness. If it’s not coffee brewed by you personally, it can’t be called warm-hearted, and your warm-hearted marketing strategy will also fail, because from the customer’s perspective, they will only think you’re doing it intentionally for commercial profit.”

Her words made me look at her in a new light, because she clearly understood the way of warm-hearted marketing. I asked her with curiosity, “Are you from the industry?”

“That’s not important.”

“It’s not important… What matters is: is the promise you made to tell me your name still valid?”

“You gave me only a cup of coffee without sincerity. Do you think it’s still valid?”

I immediately changed my expression, “Then you spit out the sip of coffee you just drank. Otherwise, do you really think there’s such a thing as a free lunch?”

She looked at me with disdain, then took out a hundred-yuan bill from her wallet and slammed it on the table, saying, “No need for change, consider it a tip for your errand.” Then she turned and walked downstairs without looking back.

I smiled, then folded the hundred-yuan bill she left into a paper airplane. Leaning on the balcony railing, I waited until she came out from the inn, then shouted to her, “Hey, here’s your money back. Thank you for your advice just now, it was really helpful!” Saying that, I threw the money in my hand.

She instinctively reached out to catch it, then looked at me again, but didn’t say anything, and turned to leave again.

I shouted at her again, “If you come again, I will definitely let you truly feel the charm of warm-hearted marketing!”

She finally smiled and said, “I hope you’re not just fooling me.”

I responded with a smile to show I wouldn’t, she turned away again and left, and I watched her back disappearing, sighing involuntarily: What a strange woman!

…

In the evening, Tongzi went to the bar to relax as previously agreed with me, and I stayed alone at the inn, waiting for the tourists to come.

An hour passed, then another hour passed. I gradually felt tired and lay back on the office chair with my eyes closed.

I don’t know how long this lasted, until the phone, which had been quiet all the time, finally rang. I picked it up and saw it was a text message from Jianwei.

“Zhaoyang, how’s your perfect travel plan coming along?”

“I’m selecting the participating businesses.”

“Okay, you need to hurry up and try to launch this plan on Uncle Yang’s website before the peak tourist season in Xitang.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll precisely control the timeline.”

“Okay, good luck!”

Originally, our conversation should have ended here, but I suddenly remembered what happened last night. After hesitating for a moment, I still sent another message to Jianwei: “You were drunk last night.”

“I know, thank you for sending me home.”

“…Xiangchen called you, I couldn’t answer it, later he sent a text saying he wanted to come to your place. Did you see him?”

“Don’t talk to me about these things.”

I was surprised by Jianwei’s tone and didn’t know what to reply for a while. Then she sent another text: “Zhaoyang, from now on, between us, let’s not talk about anything other than your career, okay?”

I felt a bit annoyed by her assertiveness and replied emotionally: “Do whatever you want.”

Jianwei seemed to have emotions too, so she didn’t reply again. My world seemed to be split into a solitary unit once more. I was afraid of being too lonely in this solitude, so I quickly got back into work mode and plunged again into a recent problem that had been troubling me…

It was foreseeable that once my “Perfect Travel Plan Package” was launched on the “Easy Travel Website,” it would inevitably bring a surge in customer traffic. However, with the limited capacity of the inn at present, how could it handle such a surge?

Should I set a daily limit on the number of people purchasing the package?

Absolutely not, because limiting the numbers would be a huge waste of this high-quality advertising resource. But how could I solve the thorny problem of the inn’s small capacity? After all, this was an unchangeable drawback.

Habitually, I lit a cigarette, but my thoughts didn’t open up, so I became increasingly anxious because this problem needed to be solved urgently.

Amidst the continuous anxiety, the phone rang again. This time it wasn’t a text message, but an incoming call. I picked up the phone from the table again, looked at the caller ID, and a strange emotion immediately arose in my heart, because this call was from Mica. Since she went to the United States, we rarely communicated directly by phone. I couldn’t help but wonder: What made her choose to communicate with me directly by phone?