Yang had only been working as a financial consultant at a loan assistance company in Hangzhou, China, for about a month when the trouble started. The job, which she’d taken in June, was essentially telesales dressed up with a fancier title.
According to sources, every day she was expected to make 200 calls, land one client meeting, and pull in interest from at least one more prospective customer. It was a grueling quota by any measure, and on July 28, she came up two targets short.
That’s when her manager, identified by his surname Zhang, laid out her options. She could pay 50 yuan for each missed target, or she could work off the shortfall with squats, 100 for each one. Yang didn’t hesitate long.
“I have no money,” she said, and chose the squats instead.
To prove she’d done them, Yang filmed herself completing the exercise in batches around the office building, sending the footage to her supervisor as evidence. By the time she reached 200, she could barely stay upright. Witnesses described her staggering as she tried to walk, her legs wracked with pain. She didn’t go to a hospital right away. Money was tight, and the cost of treatment felt like one more expense she couldn’t absorb.
Five days passed before she finally sought medical help, prompted by something alarming: her urine had turned dark. Doctors diagnosed her with rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which damaged muscle tissue breaks down rapidly and floods the bloodstream with proteins the kidneys aren’t built to filter that fast. Left untreated, it can trigger kidney failure. Yang was fortunate. According to the South China Morning Post, her kidneys came through undamaged, though the ordeal still cost her roughly 1,400 yuan in medical bills.
She resigned soon after, unable to continue working while she recovered. Then she asked her employer to cover her medical and transport expenses, plus an additional 15,000 yuan in compensation for what she’d been put through. Zhang turned down the request.
Pressed on the matter during a television interview, Zhang didn’t try to pretend the punishment was standard practice.
“I also know that it violates labour law,” he admitted, though he defended the culture of pressure at sales-driven companies, framing it as a necessary part of pushing employees to perform.
That admission hasn’t translated into any resolution. Yang has since filed a complaint with local labor inspectors, who say they intend to look into the case. For now, she and Zhang remain at a standstill, with no compensation agreement in sight and her complaint sitting in the hands of investigators who will decide what, if anything, comes next.
