| Episode 100. Managing the Break Room (1)
When we opened the door to the meeting room we had been directed to, several cameras and around ten members of the production crew greeted us.
“Welcome, Spark!”
“Hello, we’re Spark! We look forward to working with you!”
“Wow, rookies really do have a different kind of spirit.”
The PD beamed as he pointed to the empty seats around the meeting-room table.
We sat in a row facing the cameras.
The format of *Challenge! Experiencing Life* was simple.
The day before filming, the cast met with the production crew and was informed what kind of work they would be doing the following day.
Then, the next day, they were sent straight into the field. That was the entirety of the content.
Whenever a particular skill was required, they sometimes attended a class prepared by the production crew in advance.
≫ Yeonji’s expression when she heard she had to take a skin-diving lesson
Startled hamsterㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
└ I thought “skin diving” meant working part-time at an aquarium, but it was actually diving for abalone……;;
└ *Challenge! Experiencing Life* is seriously ruthless……
Otherwise, we simply had to throw ourselves at the work with stamina, spite, and sheer guts.
Honestly, I didn’t care as long as it wasn’t loading and unloading packages. I wouldn’t mind if I were the only one doing it, but it would be troublesome if those guys got hurt.
While I was thinking this and that, the formal greetings with the PD wrapped up without a hitch.
Then we got to the main point.
“First of all, you all know what kind of program this is…… right?”
“Yes!”
“Good. But there’s one problem.”
From the very beginning? That was rather inconvenient.
Seeing the members’ bewildered expressions, the PD spoke with a grave look on his face.
“The legally permitted working hours for minors are seven hours, so I think the younger ones will have to leave work first, and the oldest members will have to handle closing.”
So it really was a major problem. My heart was already pounding at the thought of running around until the soles of my feet were sweating.
After dropping only Choi Jeho and me into the abyss of darkness, the PD asked a question.
“Have any of you ever worked a part-time job before?”
“I’ve modeled clothes for online shopping malls a few times.”
Choi Jeho answered. That guy had done a pretty stylish part-time job.
The others were all young enough that they simply shook their heads.
I did have experience working part-time, but…… it seemed like it might be troublesome if I had to prove it later, so I decided to keep quiet.
The PD looked at us, nodded, and announced,
“The place where Spark will be working tomorrow is the holy land of part-time jobs: a café!”
“A café?”
For a filming location so far, it was an unusually ordinary part-time job.
Working at a café was tough. There were so many menu items, and who knew how many difficult customers there would be?
But considering how this program had once made a famous actor remove a beehive, I doubted they would simply put a large group of six people into one ordinary café.
‘A café with a long wait? Or one near a subway station, or a huge café? Could it be the time when Starbucks is releasing its seasonal drinks?’
I roughly narrowed down the possibilities in my head.
Unlike me, the guys sitting beside me chattered excitedly about how they had always wanted to try on a café uniform and how they liked playing baristas in dramas.
“When it comes to part-time jobs, you can’t leave cafés out. Since they’re workplaces with a high proportion of part-time workers, you could also say they’re workspaces closely connected to our daily lives!”
As he spoke, the PD unfolded a sketchbook.
“This afternoon, you’ll receive training from a professional barista. Then tomorrow, you’ll be running a one-day free beverage giveaway event in Gangnam!”
“Gangnam?!”
“What’s wrong, Iwol?”
The moment I saw the location marked in red on the map, I doubted my own eyes.
Gangnam.
We had to survive from opening to closing at a café in Gangnam!
I felt dizzy. I thought I might pass out at any moment.
“What’s wrong, Iwol hyung……?”
“Are you worried there’ll be a lot of customers? It looks like it’s still somewhat far from the station.”
At Park Juwoo’s question, Kang Giyeon looked at the map and answered for me.
“It’s Gangnam. Do you really think there won’t be a single café between the station and here? The customers will naturally be spread out.”
Choi Jeho added his two cents.
Rather than listening carefully to what they were saying, I looked straight ahead. The PD and the production crew were wearing sinister smiles.
Sure, it wasn’t particularly close to the station.
But……
“PD, could you show us the map one more time?”
I took the map from the PD.
My uneasy intuition had not been wrong.
Within two blocks of the spot marked in red, the entire area was filled with high-rise buildings.
“Guys, we’re in big trouble……”
I muttered it like a last will and testament. My vision went dark.
* * *
Office workers were extremely busy during lunchtime.
Some companies had such good benefits that their lunch breaks lasted an hour and a half or even two hours, while others allowed employees to eat whenever they pleased.
But most companies without cafeterias had lunch breaks from twelve to one.
To make the most of that one hour, not a single step could be wasted.
The lunch menu was chosen in advance, starting at eleven. If they were going to a restaurant with a long line, they ran there as soon as noon arrived.
Drinks were ordered to go. Restaurants that accepted reservations were booked starting the week before, and cafés with apps received their orders in advance.
As if they had a manual, office workers moved with military precision. The destinations of the many employees after lunch could generally be divided into three categories.
Smoking, going for a walk……
‘……or going to a café.’
The location marked on the map was right in the middle of a district packed with companies.
Even someone like me, who hardly drank coffee, knew that the cafés near offices were overflowing in the mornings and at lunchtime.
And on top of that, there would be a free beverage giveaway event being held for the sake of filming.
We were doomed. They would probably wring us dry until coffee grounds started coming out of our entire bodies.
‘It may not qualify as an extreme environment, so I guess they were trying to balance things out with the free giveaway event…….’
That was nothing but a cowardly excuse. Even I would drink anything for free, short of lye water. How much more would office workers want the essential potion of their daily lives?
“Hyung, why have you been staring into space for so long?”
Jeong Seongbin asked. In his hand was a smoothie he had spent the entire morning making.
I replayed the performances the members had shown throughout the day in my mind.
Then I looked at Jeong Seongbin and answered,
“I was thinking about how we can successfully run the business tomorrow.”
* * *
*Challenge! Experiencing Life* had recently been going through a slight slump.
The reason was simple. As rumors spread that the program was grueling, it became difficult to cast guests.
The program’s main content was shedding new light on difficult, exhausting, but essential jobs.
Naturally, the jobs prepared by the production crew were quite demanding.
As was the case with writers on many variety shows, the *Challenge! Experiencing Life* writers also had to devote a great deal of time to casting.
A job with high intensity → but easy enough for celebrities to do → still grueling enough that viewers would think, “That person’s really suffering” → ……
As this dilemma repeated itself, the material was running dry while the supply of guests was dwindling.
At that point, the head PD decided to take another look at the subjects that had been rejected for various reasons.
Working part-time at a café was one of the items that had been rejected long ago.
There had been various reasons for its rejection.
It was too common, and people didn’t perceive it as being as difficult as the other options……
So the production crew added some conditions to raise the difficulty. They were serious enough to consider timing the shoot to coincide with Starbucks’s seasonal drink release. In the end, they abandoned the idea after internal opposition arose against getting involved with a nationwide event.
Once they had chosen the subject, the cast became the problem again.
It was all well and good to raise the difficulty, but after looking over the research they had done beforehand, it was obvious that one or two people wouldn’t be enough to handle it.
In times like these, idols were an easy choice. They came in large numbers, and the less experienced they were, the less likely they were to refuse difficult work.
But everything in the world had two sides.
There was a reason *Challenge! Experiencing Life*, despite driving its guests to the brink, rarely invited rookie idols.
≫ Choi Yeongsu is seriously frustrating
Isn’t it too much that he couldn’t memorize the table numbers all day?
Even I could memorize them all just by watching the edited footage
I almost changed the channel while watching
Because Koreans couldn’t stand anything frustrating.
Viewers enjoyed watching guests fumble while doing unfamiliar work, but at the same time, they wanted those guests to handle the job at the same level as professionals.
You only had to look at the high view counts on videos titled “*Challenge! Experiencing Life* Guests Who Conquered the Job.zip” on various video platforms to see that.
And—though this wasn’t true of every single one of them—most idols debuting these days were far too young to begin with.
Since they spent their lives as trainees with the goal of debuting from a very young age, they lacked what people called practical know-how.
People who were good at their jobs were loved wherever they went. *Challenge! Experiencing Life* needed celebrities like that.
So, as their first choice, the production crew contacted Parthé, a rookie boy group that had debuted recently under a major agency. Broadcasting stations still had faith in the idea that “The major agencies at least train their artists properly!”
To cut to the chase, the offer was rejected.
The *Challenge! Experiencing Life* production crew had briefly forgotten that the reason major agencies were so desirable was because they prevented their artists from appearing on programs with such poor cost-effectiveness.
Just as the writers were clutching their heads in despair—
“Well, if rookie groups are okay, what about this group?”
Someone mentioned Spark for the first time during the meeting.
“They debuted around the same time as Parthé, and they get a lot of praise on social media and online communities for being sharp and capable.”
At the same time, a short video appeared on the meeting room’s projector. Its title was “The Idol with Suspiciously Exceptional Practical Sense.”
As the video began, the fair-skinned, handsome young man from the thumbnail filled the screen.
“Juwoo, clean from top to bottom.”
“I uploaded it to the guide’s shared folder, so check it individually. Let me know if it says you don’t have access.”
Subtitles explaining the situations flashed over several brief but clear scenes.
Writing press releases himself, showing how to insert functions into a web spreadsheet, washing greasy dishes until they were spotless…… and so on.
They had been rejected by Parthé anyway, so why not go all in?
With that attitude, the *Challenge! Experiencing Life* production crew sent a casting inquiry to UA.
That afternoon, they received a reply saying Spark was available anytime.
‘If we have one existing café employee as a support staff member, there’ll be plenty of hands, so they probably won’t have to deal with a complete disaster.’
Keeping every possible contingency in mind, the head PD prepared for the shoot.
During the brief meeting held the day before filming, he became slightly worried.
They were all tall and handsome, but most of them still had a youthful look about them. Only the young man they had seen in the video gave off the air of someone who had been through every hardship under the sun. The PD found himself thinking that he was the only one they could rely on.
After this long and winding process, on a warm day in May, the doors to *Challenge! One-Day Café* opened.