There are many guides to survive the workplace. For me, there is only one rule: Either you bury your nose in work and get things down, or you find some other ways to impress your boss.

Impressing the others has never been my strong suit, besides I seem to have problems with the authority.  I never know how to make proper approaches to those in power, so unconsciously I just avoid them as possible as I can. As a technical assistant, I am undertaking most of works offstage. Frankly, it's very difficult to make myself even visible. My career would be doomed if I am not a hard working person. However I am a willing horse in the office and so get most of the work to do.  I don’t mind much.  I am no good at being a lady of leisure anyway. Give me half a day doing nothing but surfing idly, my interests in online things would exhaust. Then I would start hunting for something to fill the empty or I would be bored out of my skull. However, no matter how many assignments I have taken, in my entire life, I never pluck up enough courage to ask for a pay rise. How easily I could be ignored or exploited! Fortunately, in the company I am working now, my hard work has been appreciated and somehow paid off. During six year service in my present company, I have worked for three bosses in a row: L, P and D. Without particular efforts, somehow I did impress them one way or anthor. L always gave me “excellence" in my performance evaluation; the first thing P did after his promotion was to ask HR a salary raise for me; and now it comes to D.  D is… how to say it? D is D.

“You have done a great job, and I hinted several times before but you seemed not to get it. So let’s get it straight. You can’t get a pay rise, but from now on, you could claim several hundred yuan taxi fee per month. It’s not much, but if opportunity arises, I would try something else.”  I could actually feel blood rush into my cheeks, and I felt a little dizzy. It's not because of the money, but all the troubles he went through for. He hinted, several times? How?  When? Vaguely I remembered he mentioned some other ways to make up for my added work, but I never got it seriously. I thought that he was just trying to be polite.

Yes, the money is not much, but it means that my efforts have been appreciated and valued. The meaning behind it is too much. Thank you, boss.