Yoojin sipped on the milk tea Dongha had bought her as she quickly worked her way through the purchase orders.
She normally didn't drink milk tea, but for some reason today the sweet black tea fit her taste and lifted her mood.
The POs went smoothly. Since she already had a file she'd created once before, making them again wasn't all that difficult. She only paid extra attention so she wouldn't repeat the same mistakes she'd made with the previous mis-orders.
On top of that, the vendors weren't emailing her like crazy today.
Ever since she'd sent the cancellation notice on Monday, there had been a flood of pushback and complaint replies for a while, but now… it felt like they had just decided to accept it and were waiting for the revised POs instead.
Internal coordination with the sales team and inside the company was Dongha's job, and Yoojin was in charge of the overseas vendors and factories, so the workload had been neatly cut in half.
It felt like the start of a smooth day, and she couldn't help but grin to herself.
Looks like I'm almost done.
She printed out the prepared POs, attached them to the previous PO documents, and neatly slipped them into the approval file.
Just then, Manager Lee Hyuk stepped out from his partition and called her.
"Han Yoojin. Executive Director Park is calling a meeting. Let's go talk for a bit."
"Ah, yes, yes."
Yoojin hurriedly picked up the approval file. It seemed like a good idea to walk through the revised orders during the meeting as well.
Manager Lee strode quickly out of the office, and Yoojin rushed after him.
At that moment, Dongha caught up to her in a few long strides. She narrowed her eyes at him and said,
"Yoon Dongha, Manager Lee only called me to the meeting."
"We're on the onboarding program, remember? We're supposed to do things together. That was Executive Director Park's directive."
Dongha winked at her.
Yoojin stared at him, her mouth falling open in disbelief.
What was that? Was he trying to wink and failed, so he just scrunched one eye? Yeah. That must be it.
His clumsy attempt was cute, and at the same time ridiculous—and for some reason, her stomach tickled.
Yoojin and Dongha followed after and stepped into Executive Director Park Jin-hee's office.
"Huh?"
On the large wall-mounted monitor that covered one side of Executive Director Park's office, someone was in the middle of a heated conversation with her.
- Come on. Why do you keep telling me 'no, no'? The line is about to get wrecked because of this fabric issue—give me a solution here!
"Please, Plant Manager Joo Myung-gon!"
Executive Director Park was snapping at Manager Joo Myung-gon, who seemed completely unwilling to communicate.
Joo Myung-gon.
Yoojin remembered the name. He was the one who'd called in a complaint from Production the very day she sat down at Kim Jang-woo's desk.
Right, he'd said the fabric was going in late. After that, she'd cleaned up all the issues about shipment status and delayed containers.
Yoojin and Dongha shrank back a little as they sat down at the table. At the end of the table, a tall video-conference camera stood over them, looking down.
Once Yoojin and Dongha came into frame, Plant Manager Joo Myung-gon paused his abrasive back-and-forth with Executive Director Park.
"Who's that?"
"Hello. This is Han Yoojin—you and I spoke on the phone the other day."
"Hello. My name is Yoon Dongha, I joined as an intern this time."
"Hello. I'm Joo Myung-gon, plant manager of Vietnam Factory No. 3. You two are really easy on the eyes!"
The mood relaxed a little, and Manager Lee Hyuk, sitting across from Executive Director Park, immediately tried to reassert control with an intimidating tone.
"So, Manager Joo, what exactly is so serious that you say the line is about to get wrecked?"
To Manager Lee, the staff at overseas factories were always like this—he thought Manager Joo was making a fuss and blowing some minor issue way out of proportion.
Manager Joo, as if it wasn't even worth answering, barked loudly in fluent Vietnamese at the local staff. The staff chattered back in Vietnamese like a flock of birds, then spread the fabric out.
Yoojin's eyes tightened.
It was one of Assistant Manager Oh Myeong-ju's orders.
A fleece fabric with a small stripe pattern. Three colors of stripes were printed in sequence as a rotary print.
"What is this, a rag? No, it's polyester—you couldn't even use this as a rag. Good grief. How do you ship something like this here and tell us to produce with it!"
Manager Joo's voice was hoarse and cracking, but the volume he projected was tremendous.
"Instead of calling it a rag, why don't you send us a formal defect report so we can at least make a judgment?"
Manager Lee spoke languidly, as if asking for data was too much trouble.
"Ha! A report? We opened thirty rolls and twenty-five of them are like this. And I'm supposed to sit here writing a report?"
Manager Joo shouted at the top of his lungs.
The local staff spread the fabric across the wide conference table, and the striped pattern curved up to one side.
Ah… Yoojin squeezed her eyes shut.
"They'll probably just say, 'Cut it carefully and make it work,' right?"
Manager Joo's face twisted into something vicious.
"Hey, Lee Hyuk. You come here and cut it. Take scissors and trim it piece by piece, matching the pattern edge. We're not running this order. Don't even think about putting it on the line until the fabric problem is resolved!"
He practically shouted a proclamation, and then the video call cut off with a click. The screen reverted to the default video-chat program page.
No one in the room said a word.
Yoojin just fidgeted with the approval file in her hands. The additional order for that striped fabric was inside those POs.
"Ms. Han? Tell me the details on that order."
"Yes."
At Manager Lee's instruction, Yoojin quickly pulled the relevant PO from the approval file.
"It's order OB3221, vendor Titax. Total of five combos. The striped combo he just showed is white, peach, and yellow. The other combos are not stripes."
Yoojin checked the print details on the back of the PO. Besides the stripes, there were heart, cloud, rabbit, and zigzag prints.
"Good grief, the manager's overreacting. We can just start garment production with the other printed fabrics first."
Manager Lee growled, annoyed.
"Okay, what's the total yardage and cost on the striped fabric?"
"Yes. It's twelve thousand yards total, about forty-eight thousand dollars."
"For tiny baby clothes, and it's twelve thousand yards? A money-losing order, and they sure ordered a lot. Ha."
At his bitter joke, Executive Director Park's expression tightened.
"Manager Lee, take care of this immediately."
Of course. Just saying, handle it quickly, that one line is what executives do. So easy for them. Manager Lee's thick lips twisted at her order.
But he swallowed that rebellious feeling and simply nodded to Executive Director Park, then turned to Yoojin and gave instructions.
"Ms. Han, notify the vendor of the problem first, and ask Plant Manager Joo to send the defective fabric here so we can check it ourselves and then forward it to the vendor. Before we ship it out, take photos and email them over."
"Yes, understood."
After giving Yoojin his rapid-fire instructions, Manager Lee turned back to Executive Director Park, his brow furrowing.
"Ma'am, this feels like a Vietnam business trip in the making."
Executive Director Park nodded. Clashing head-on with the overbearing Plant Manager Joo at Vietnam Factory No. 3 was ridiculously exhausting. Still, she figured he wouldn't be too rough on an intern.
Executive Director Park and Manager Lee both turned their gaze to Yoojin.
Dongha felt that look and his own eyes flashed sharply.
Just as Manager Lee opened his mouth to speak to Yoojin, someone knocked on Executive Director Park's door.
"Yes, come in."
Her voice toward the door was not her usual gentle tone, but a sharp one.
"Hello, Executive Director."
Design Team's Manager Oh Min-ji walked in, turning on the charm as if she could sense the mood in the room.
"Yes, Ms. Oh. What brings you here?"
Manager Oh glanced around the office and, when she spotted Yoojin and Dongha, her eyes curved into crescents.
"Well, Executive Director, with your permission we had Ms. Han and Mr. Yoon do some sample fittings on Monday and sent the photos to the Maxcara buyer. We also shipped the garment samples on Monday, and yesterday—Wednesday—Department Head Hwang Ji-yeon met with the buyer. The response was so good that it looks like we'll be starting the first test order right away, so I came to report in person."
At that, Manager Lee let out a disbelieving laugh, while Executive Director Park simply stared at Yoojin and Dongha. Since it was a sales achievement, congratulations were in order.
Her expression quickly shifted into her signature warm, people-friendly smile.
"Congratulations, Ms. Oh. This is our first high-end order, isn't it? You'll finally get to prove yourself as a designer."
"Yes. The Maxcara buyer said they found exactly the atmosphere they'd been looking for in our samples and photos. According to Department Head Hwang, the buyer's reaction was incredibly positive. Samho Apparel is now the top candidate to handle all of their Asia orders. They said they drew a lot of inspiration especially from Ms. Han's photos. So when Department Head Hwang comes back next week, it sounds like the Maxcara team will visit as well—would it be alright if we introduced Ms. Han and Mr. Yoon to the buyer then?"
At Manager Oh Min-ji's report, Executive Director Park clicked her tongue without thinking.
On Thursday morning alone, two separate matters involving Yoojin had landed on her desk.
"Ms. Han is very popular, it seems."