I met Kally when I was twenty.

She was the HR manager at a company where a group of us college students were competing for internships that summer, all of us carrying the same curiosity about working life and the same nervous ambition. Before the interviews even began, many people already knew her well through resume submissions and back-and-forth questions. Later I heard that some had even made early appearances in her office.

No one wanted to miss the chance. So everyone tried hard to turn effort into familiarity, hoping that one more conversation, one more impression, one more bit of closeness might give them an edge. That is one of the contradictions of working life: everyone says they want fairness, yet so often they still hope to create exceptions for themselves.

Warm on the surface, firm at the core

The interviews took place in a meeting room. As Kally walked past everyone, she greeted many candidates by name. The effect was immediate. Each person seemed to believe they were the one most likely to be chosen, and their smiles grew more certain.

The whole process moved quickly. Twelve people were interviewed in one morning. Afterward, everyone seemed oddly at ease, busy with their phones, barely speaking to one another. I sat quietly.

My own interview had gone well, and even pleasantly. What worried me was that, unlike some of the others, I had been a complete blank slate to Kally before that day. An interview is like a first impression: it can redeem you, or ruin you, all at once.

She did not ask the usual dead, mechanical questions—why did you choose our company, what can you contribute, and so on. Instead she asked: what are your interests, and what effort have you made for them?

I answered honestly. I told her I loved writing, but from the end of middle school until I finished high school, apart from assigned essays, I had barely written at all. I only picked it up again in my first year of university. But I also said I was grateful for those six years away from writing, because I had read widely. Among women writers, my favorites were Sanmao, Eileen Chang, and Wang Anyi. Among foreign writers, I loved García Márquez, Borges, and Yeats.

An HR staff member beside her told me, “If you gave up writing, then maybe you don’t really have strong convictions.”

I gave an awkward smile. “Yes.”

Kally stepped in gently. “That’s alright. You can work on it from now on.”

Her smile was warm in a way that immediately softened the moment. Later she asked me whether I had felt like crying back then. I told her I had.

When the results were announced, Kally was the one who delivered them. I was selected, along with another male candidate. The two of us stayed for our first pre-job training.

Then one of the girls who had interviewed with us rushed into Kally’s office. Kally called her by name at once; it was obvious they had met several times before. The girl said, “Kally, I didn’t do well today. Could you give me one more chance? I’ll work hard, I promise.”

Kally refused.

“This year we’re only taking two interns,” she said. “I can recommend you to other companies. Some of them may be interviewing too.”

The girl shook her head. “I only want to work here, with you. Please, just give me one chance.”

She started crying.

I quietly asked Kally whether we should step out.

“No need,” she said.

I have never forgotten what she told that girl.

“Every company has rules, and no one gets to break them. In private, we can be friends. But whether we can become colleagues depends on what the company needs as a whole. There’s no reason for you to keep spending time on us.”

Then came the polished closing line of someone experienced in the workplace: “I really appreciate how much you like it here. If we recruit interns again next year, I hope you’ll apply.”

She hugged the girl and walked her to the elevator.

Later Kally said to me, “Whenever possible, be decisive. If there’s no hope, then let someone be disappointed clearly. That, too, is a form of respect.”

The easiest person to talk to, the hardest person to move

My mentor at the company, Lin, was the top salesperson there and the most bluntly direct person in the office. He had ranked first in sales for ten straight months. He was the kind of person who, once he started running, made everyone else feel the pressure instantly.

Lin once said, “Kally is probably the easiest person in this company to get along with, and the hardest person to deal with.”

Only after I left the company did I fully understand what he meant.

At lunchtime, Kally was almost always chatting happily with different coworkers. She made people feel close to her, relaxed around her, without distance. There was also something else that left a strong impression on me. One of the vice general managers had a terrible temper. Sometimes he would storm into the open office area and start scolding whoever had made a business mistake.

Whenever Kally was in the office, she would immediately step out as an intermediary. She would first help clarify what had happened, buying a little time. By the time the facts were laid out, the vice general manager had often calmed down. Then she would have the employee present a solution. Her real skill was that she could explain the cause of someone else’s mistake in a way that sounded measured, reasonable, and defensible. At one point it almost became an office rule of thought: if the vice general manager was around, everyone hoped Kally would not be out of the building.

Lin had a phrase for people like her. He said she had “a soft mouth and a hard heart,” and knew exactly how to use both.

That was the lesson: kindness with principles, gentleness without surrender. That combination is often the best way to move through life.

Mercy has limits, and rules still count

On my third day at the company, I watched Kally dismiss an employee in person. It was a decision she had made together with company leadership.

The woman being let go had joined the company two years earlier. She was a graduate of a prestigious university, and at the time of hiring, Kally had interviewed her alongside two department heads from business and design, plus the vice general manager. Kally had thought she was smart. She could also tell the woman still had some of that slightly lazy, unformed air many students carry out of university, but they decided to give her a chance.

After joining, however, all new employees were ranked, and her business performance remained in the bottom three. There were other problems too: repeated lateness, stock trading during work hours, one issue after another. The company had a rule that, except for special circumstances, an employee could not be late more than three times in a month. Trading stocks during working hours was also forbidden.

What I later learned made the situation more complicated.

Before all this, Kally had actually maintained a very good relationship with her. They often shared a lunch table. Because they lived near each other, they sometimes took a taxi home together after work. On company trips, Kally sat next to her. When she was late or absent and management came around checking attendance, Kally had repeatedly found reasons to cover for her. Many colleagues had quietly criticized Kally over that.

So when Kally informed her that she was being dismissed, the woman shouted in the office, “Kally, you really are ruthless.”

Lin was already defending Kally under his breath. From what he had seen, Kally had gone to the woman’s desk many times to warn her quietly—at least ten times, by his count, not to mention whatever private reminders had happened beyond that.

“I’m sorry too,” Kally said. “But the company has its rules. I hope you can understand.”

By then her eyes were already red. Her heels clicked quickly down the hall as she left. People are often like that—unwilling to cry in front of others, trying desperately to hide before the tears come.

Being useful is not the same as being valued

As an intern, I handled the most basic tasks: fetching water, buying afternoon tea, occasionally making long trips to pick up office supplies. I had a simple instinct at the time: in the moment someone needs help most, do what they need most.

Lin was very open-minded. His view was that once you finished your own work properly, you could drink tea, read, and spend your time as you liked. So after I had proofread all of his materials, my schedule became relatively free. Before long, whenever some small errand came up, I was the first person people thought to ask.

I remember one afternoon when the head of the design department came to me and asked if I could buy five one-meter rulers for them. Lin said, “Go ahead, no problem.”

I spent nearly half the city looking for them. Eventually I found them in a shopping center and returned to the company drenched in sweat.

Kally was waiting for me near the elevators and asked me to come to her office.

She said, “You’ve done excellent work during this period. As an intern, of course people will like you for doing these things. But you also need to understand what your actual job is. It’s business work. You should spend more of your time on that, instead of becoming the person who handles everyone’s miscellaneous tasks. You need to learn to say no. The workplace has no special affection for people who are simply nice to everyone.”

I blushed and nodded.

Years later, I finally understood what she meant: your value must first be your own value, not just your ability to keep proving your usefulness to other people.

She handed me a cup of coffee and went on: “Lin is a good mentor, but he didn’t warn you clearly about this, and that’s not good for your growth. I like you very much, but your personality is too gentle. The armor you need in working life isn’t a weapon. It’s protection.”

Later I learned that timely refusal earns more respect than frantic availability ever does. It also saves you from constantly putting yourself in difficult positions.

Politeness is character; firmness is principle

Everyone wants to be recognized, affirmed, appreciated—in life and at work. Better still if they are constantly surrounded by attention and praise. But often the result is the opposite: you become peripheral, optional, the person no one really considers essential, the one people feel free to lean on, overlook, or push around.

That was when I began to understand the balance Kally embodied.

A gentle way of speaking is cultivation. A sharp inner edge is principle. The two are not in conflict.

We should be friendly to others and fundamentally kind. We should do the right thing at the right moment, and not turn away when someone is truly in difficulty. But we also need to keep a blade hidden inside—to know when to cut things off, when to let go, when to draw a boundary. Life is never a straight path. Branches grow sideways. You have to know how to prune them, how to judge proportion, how to keep your shape.

Some time ago, I went back to visit the company. Lin had become the head of sales. He was much the same as before: smoking, a stack of completed documents on his desk waiting to be delivered to clients on schedule, reading books about sales on his own. Kally had become the youngest vice general manager in the company.

Over a meal, we talked about those old days. Lin said, “If someone can learn to speak softly without losing a hard center, they won’t turn out badly.”

Kally didn’t answer. She just smiled.

But I still remember what she once told me: “There is never any shortage of people willing to compromise. You need your own light—your independence, your principles. Even your refusals should be open and self-possessed, so others can accept them, and so you can live according to your own will—comfortably, freely, and with brightness.”