Second-Tier
by Huina Zheng
“Why do you look so pale? You need to stop eating so much takeout—”
“Mom, I know.” Yulan’s voice caught in her throat. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her supervisor, Holly, pushing through the glass office door. Their eyes met briefly. Holly’s gaze dropped to the phone in Yulan’s hand. Instinctively, Yulan lowered her voice. “I have to go.” She ended the video call and placed her phone face down on the desk.
By then, Holly had already reached her cubicle. “Who were you talking to just now?”
Yulan glanced at the bottom-right corner of her laptop screen. 7:45 p.m. “My mom.”
“The company doesn’t pay you to chat with your family.”
Yulan opened her mouth. She wanted to say that Human Resources had told her during her hiring interview that working hours were from nine to six. She had already worked more than an hour overtime. She had not even eaten dinner yet. The call had lasted less than two minutes. She bit her lower lip. Instead, what came out was: “I’ve already completed everything on today’s task report.”
“So in your mind, as long as you finish the assigned tasks, that’s enough?” Holly said. “Have you ever wondered why your performance is always so average?”
Yulan told herself to stay calm. But she was hungry. Dizzy. Thirsty. Before her mother had called, she had spent nearly an hour on the phone with a parent listening to complaints about how their child’s English had shown no improvement after six months of lessons. Unable to stop herself, she murmured, “But I finished everything.”
Holly picked up her phone. Yulan watched Holly’s fingers. She imagined her opening WeCom, finding the daily report Yulan had submitted, and scanning through it line by line.
“Well, everything is checked off,” Holly finally said, as indifferently as if she were commenting on the weather. She looked up. “But if you want to grow, you need to be more proactive. Do you honestly think your current attitude deserves the opportunities this company gives you?”
Yulan clenched her fingers but said nothing.
“You know, Yulan, I’ve always thought you’re the one who needs to work the hardest,” Holly said. “Everyone else in our department graduated from top-tier universities. You’re the only one from a second-tier school, right?” Holly smiled lightly, as though she were genuinely trying to help.
The words second-tier school struck Yulan harder than she expected. For a moment, she was back in her final semester of college, scrolling through job postings and sending out résumé after résumé. The companies she considered “good” never even offered her an interview. She had desperately wanted to join one educational institution. Through a friend of a friend who worked there, she asked about her chances. The answer came back blunt: “We only take first-tier graduates.”
This company had said the same thing. But that year, they expanded their hiring. She got lucky; she made it in. So Holly wasn’t wrong; Yulan really was an exception, one who could be reminded at any moment: You don’t belong here.
“I’m not putting you down,” Holly said. “Quite the opposite. I can see the gap between you and them. If you’re not willing to make up for it through extra effort and the right attitude, how exactly do you expect to compete?”
Yulan lowered her eyes to the wood grain of her desk. She focused on the dark lines running through it and kept herself from blinking.
“Oh, and one more thing.” Holly sounded almost cheerful. “Prepare a presentation for tomorrow morning’s meeting.”
“About what?”
“How to improve communication quality with parents.” Holly smiled. “You just spent an hour on the phone with one, didn’t you? Reflect on what you could have done better. The rest of the team can learn from it.” Then she turned and walked back to her office. Whether Yulan agreed or not, whether she stayed or left, seemed entirely irrelevant to her.
Yulan knew what Holly expected. She was supposed to stay late, finish the presentation, and send it over for approval before the end of the night. But only one thought remained in her head: Enough! Mechanically, she shut down her computer. No one around her looked up. No one said a word.
She had been at this company for nine months. Things like this happened so often that she should have stopped caring by now. But tonight, for once, she didn’t want to swallow it. Tomorrow she would come back, apologize, and pretend none of it mattered.
It was not until she stepped out of the office building and the night wind hit her face that she realized she had been trembling the entire time. Her phone vibrated. A voice message from her mother. She didn’t open it.
* * *
At 9:14 p.m., Yulan pushed open the door to the apartment she rented. Her friend and roommate, Ling, was sitting on the couch eating instant noodles. Her shoulders were trembling, and several crumpled tissues lay scattered on the coffee table.
Yulan sat down beside her and began eating a brown sugar steamed bun she had brought home. Ling looked up while Yulan was still chewing. Yulan swallowed. “What happened?”
Ling pulled out a tissue and blew her nose hard. “I... quit today.”
Yulan said nothing. She waited.
Ling pushed her noodles aside. “I got thirsty today, so I went to get some water. The whole trip took less than a minute. I had barely sat back down when my phone buzzed. It was the department group chat. My supervisor tagged me and said, ‘Some people spend ten minutes wandering around when they’re supposed to be working.’”
Yulan thought about how, in the four years since graduation, this had already been Ling’s ninth job. Then again, Yulan was hardly any different; she had changed jobs five times herself.
Neither of them was afraid of hard work. They worked overtime when they had to. Yet every time they left a job, it was for the same reasons: either the rules had become impossible to live with or the company had run into trouble and started letting people go.
Ling’s eyes filled again. “So I told him I was just thirsty. I was gone for less than a minute. Other people get water. They go to the bathroom. Nobody says anything to them. I only said a couple of words back.” She stopped and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Then he started calling me out in the group chat. Said I was rude. Said I had a bad attitude. Said I wasn’t capable enough. Said I was talking back to management and didn’t have any team spirit. One message after another.”
Yulan tightened her grip on the steamed bun.
“I thought...” Ling’s voice dropped. “I thought maybe someone would say something. They didn’t even have to take my side. Somebody could’ve just said, ‘She really was gone for less than a minute.’” She stared at the instant noodles in front of her.
“But nobody did. One after another, people started replying. ‘Support the supervisor.’ ‘Some people really do have attitude problems.’ ‘A team needs discipline.’ Somebody even tagged me and said, ‘Ling, just apologize. Stop being so stubborn.’”
Ling fell silent. After a while, she leaned back against the couch. “I still can’t get used to being humiliated in public,” she said quietly. “I just sat there staring at my phone while I cried. Then I walked out. When I got home, I submitted my resignation.”
Yulan lowered her eyes to the steamed bun in her hands. She thought of what had happened at work that evening. She thought of Holly saying, You’re from a second-tier university, right? Yulan didn’t tell Ling, I understand. Instead, she broke her steamed sugar bun in half and handed a piece to Ling. “Eat,” she said. “Your noodles are cold.”
Ling took it and bit into it. As she chewed, she started crying again.
The two of them sat on the old couch in their rented apartment, each eating half a steamed bun. Yulan knew Ling would rest for a day or two at most before starting another job search. Rent was due in a week.
Both of them had grown up in rural villages. The year they took the college entrance exam, they had each missed admission to a top-tier university by only a few points. But after college graduation, that second-tier degree had followed them everywhere like a brick tied to their back, constantly reminding them that they were somehow not good enough.
Yulan wanted to say something, but Ling had already wiped away her tears. “Give me one day,” Ling said. “I’ll sort through all this mess in my head, and then I’ll start over.”
Yulan laughed, but not because anything was funny. Years ago, after the college entrance exam, Yulan had cried. Ling had told her it didn’t matter. “Gold shines wherever it goes.” Back then, Yulan had believed her.
Looking at the half-eaten part of the steamed bun in Ling’s hand, Yulan wondered whether Ling still believed that. She hadn’t said it in a long time. Still, Yulan took another bite.
Copyright © 2026 by Huina Zheng
