Introduction:The new Chinese-style tea brand Cha Yan Yue Se has recently made frequent appearances on Weibo’s hot search list due to issues related to employee salaries and management, sparking widespread discussion about corporate culture and labor relations. This article provides a detailed account of the incident, covering the salary adjustment controversy, internal group chat conflicts, official responses, and public feedback. It delves into the underlying management chaos and class tensions, while also exploring how companies can maintain a healthy organizational culture amid rapid expansion.
Recently, Cha Yan Yue Se has triggered multiple waves of public outcry over employee salary issues, with related topics dominating Weibo’s hot search list and becoming a focal point of public attention. The spark for the incident was employees’ dissatisfaction with low wages and reduced working hours. Subsequently, in a large internal group chat, a heated argument broke out between company executives and employees, even prompting the founder, Lü Liang, to personally apologize. According to insiders, there was evident management chaos and a classist tendency within the company, which at one point led to over two hundred employees leaving the work group. Although the company later clarified that the number of people who left the group was around eighty-seven and emphasized that the salary adjustments were special measures during the pandemic, this explanation failed to quell external skepticism.
Within just one day, Cha Yan Yue Se repeatedly topped Weibo’s hot search rankings due to related topics, including “Cha Yan Yue Se employees complain monthly salary doesn’t exceed 3,000 yuan,” “What do you think of Cha Yan Yue Se employees complaining about low salaries,” “Over a hundred Cha Yan Yue Se employees leave the group,” “Cha Yan Yue Se founder Lü Liang apologizes,” and “Cha Yan Yue Se apologizes over salary issues.” From these keywords, the public was able to roughly piece together the outline of the entire incident.
The tipping point of the incident occurred on December 17, when netizens on platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu revealed that due to employee complaints about low salaries and improper meeting scheduling, three of Cha Yan Yue Se’s top executives engaged in a heated verbal conflict with grassroots employees in a company-wide group chat with over seven thousand members. It was reported that the executives did not gain the upper hand in the dispute, and there were even rumors that some employees were asked to resign voluntarily due to dissatisfaction with the handling of the situation, causing the large group to suddenly lose over two hundred members that afternoon.
As screenshots of the group chat records circulated, public opinion quickly escalated, and the actions and words of internal figures such as “Xiao Cong Laoshi,” “Xiao Mai Jie,” “Zhang Xue Pan,” and “Wang Bo” were thrust into the spotlight. It is understood that “Xiao Cong Laoshi” is Lü Liang, the legal representative of Hunan Cha Yue Cultural Industry Development Group Co., Ltd., the parent company of Cha Yan Yue Se; “Xiao Mai Jie” is his spouse; Wang Bo serves as the operations director; and “Zhang Xue Pan” is an employee of Cha Yan Yue Se in the Wuhan region. The following will refer to these individuals by their internal nicknames.
From the exposed dialogue records, it can be seen that on the evening of December 17, some employees reported that due to the impact of the pandemic, their working hours had decreased and their salaries had been reduced, with their originally around 5,000-yuan monthly income plummeting to just 2,000 yuan, plus a commission of only 8 yuan, leaving many employees feeling that the year-end was difficult to endure. In response, Zhang Xue Pan said: “Why is it not enough? It’s because you go clubbing every day and have high consumption. If your virtue doesn’t match your position, disaster is inevitable. You get what you deserve based on your abilities.”
Shortly after, Lü Liang (Xiao Cong Laoshi) also revealed that the company was losing over 20 million yuan per month during the pandemic and believed that employees did not fully understand the business pressures the company was facing. Meanwhile, Xiao Mai Jie used a homophonic pun to call out an employee named “Xiao Ting,” demanding that she “come resign as soon as possible, as she really won’t stay quiet.”
After this internal conflict quickly made headlines, Cha Yan Yue Se issued an official statement addressing the November salary and employee communication issues. Regarding the employees’ allegations of low salaries, the company explained that due to the temporary closure of dozens of stores during the pandemic, some employees were unable to meet normal working hours, so a temporary adjustment to the salary calculation method was implemented. However, due to insufficient clarity in the explanation of the relevant adjustment rules, employees misunderstood their actual salaries.
The official statement also mentioned that Lü Liang (Xiao Cong Laoshi) had issued an apology letter to internal employees that day and had communicated with employees who received “resignation notices.” As for the online rumor that “the company’s large group lost over two hundred members in one afternoon,” Cha Yan Yue Se responded that this information was untrue and provided group departure records from December 14 onward, showing that a total of approximately eighty-seven people had left the group.
Although the company tried to ease public opinion with warm phrases such as “winter is coming, and we are actively saving ourselves,” many netizens were not convinced. Some internal employees, through private social media accounts, stated that the so-called apology letter was merely a whitewashing tactic by the executives and publicly shared an internal notice issued after the conflict, titled “Prohibition on Accepting External Interviews,” further fueling skepticism about the company’s culture.
In fact, the internal management issues at Cha Yan Yue Se are not a recent development, as many problems had already shown signs in daily operations. According to summaries by netizens, the company mainly suffers from the following management flaws: first, overly complicated internal processes and unclear responsibilities, leading to low execution efficiency; second, a strong sense of hierarchy, where new employees often feel disrespected, and internal factionalism is prominent; third, insufficient professional capabilities among management, lacking sufficient senior talent support for new business expansions, resulting in poor decision-making quality and execution effectiveness.
This incident has led many netizens to lament that “those who are wealthy should be benevolent, and the greatest path is virtue,” reminding companies that while pursuing economic benefits, they should also pay more attention to employee welfare and organizational culture building, avoiding situations where employees “are full of enthusiasm but can only leave hastily.” As a representative brand of new Chinese-style tea, if Cha Yan Yue Se wants to maintain its leading position in the highly competitive market, it must start from within, truly embody the core values of new Chinese culture, and build a healthy, transparent, and humanistic corporate environment.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
