"Mr. Dickerson, this pack of tissues—would you like to pay cash or scan the code? Ten dollars."

I froze on the spot.

Thirteen years of running my company, and every single year, I'd held our annual company gala at Gourmet Grace. Client dinners. Team celebrations. Company banquets.

Without fail.

From the days when my entire staff was seven or eight people, to now, when we were over a hundred strong.

From the days when ordering meant agonizing over the budget, to tonight—signing a $138,000 check without batting an eye.

How much I'd spent here each year, exactly? I'd never bothered to add it up.

But Neville had mentioned it once. Between all the client entertainment and company events over the course of a year, the total came to well over a million dollars. Easily.

And I had a standing rule for our finance department: every bill from Gourmet Grace was to be settled on the spot. No outstanding balances. Always cash.

I'd watched this place grow—no, I'd funded its growth with cold, hard cash—from a cramped little hole-in-the-wall into what it was today: a sprawling restaurant occupying an entire floor, decked out in lavish décor.

Their prices were a good ten to twenty percent higher than comparable places in the area.

The food? Honestly, it had always been... adequate.

Not bad. But nowhere near remarkable.

The reason I'd kept coming back—in the early days, it was convenience and a sliver of loyalty from when times were lean. Later, it was more about the service being reliable and consistent. One less thing to think about.

And of course, "close to the office" had always been reason number one. Time was money too.

Images flickered through my mind, unbidden.

Thirteen years ago. A cramped little restaurant. A young owner carrying steaming dishes to the table, her smile simple and earnest.

Eight years ago. The first expansion. She'd personally reserved the best private room for me. During the toast, she'd said, "Without loyal customers like you, Mr. Dickerson, I wouldn't be where I am today."

Five years ago. The restaurant took over the entire floor. The grand opening was a spectacular affair. She'd glided among her guests, every inch the successful businesswoman. When she clinked glasses with me, the words were still about gratitude.

Only by then, the gratitude sounded more like a social formality.

Thirteen years of spending here. If you stacked all that money up, it could probably buy a mountain of tissue packs.

No—it could probably buy several tissue factories.

And just minutes ago, I'd had Neville, my financial director, personally settle tonight's bill. One hundred thirty-eight thousand and forty-four dollars. Down to the cent.

Now here she stood before me—Gloria, in an elegant cheongsam, wearing her most gracious smile.

Over a pack of tissues that cost a dollar or two at most.

She was asking me—the "valued patron," the "big boss" she'd spent thirteen years professing gratitude to—

For ten dollars.

A feeling of utter absurdity crept over me, slow and heavy.

I wasn't angry. Strangely, there wasn't even a flicker of heat. Just something cool and hollow settling in my chest, along with an overwhelming sense of the ridiculous.

She watched me stand there, motionless, and her warm smile dimmed a shade.

"Mr. Dickerson, I'm running a small business here. Everything has a cost."

"A man of your stature—your company doing so well—surely you're not going to haggle with us over a little thing like this?"

Even Lily, the receptionist, couldn't hold back. She spoke up timidly. "Ma'am, it's just a pack of tissues. Let it go."

Gloria's expression hardened instantly.

"Just a pack of tissues? Just?"

"Ten dollars isn't money? You've been here, what, a few days, and you're already taking the customer's side over mine?"

"Do you have any idea how tough the market is right now? Do you have the first clue how hard it is to keep a business afloat?"

"Utilities, rent, payroll—every single one of those costs money. Every. Single. One."

Her voice climbed with each word. She stepped forward, one red-lacquered fingernail jabbing the air, inches from the girl's face.

"You think a pack of napkins isn't worth anything? Think I'm being petty?"

"Fine. That ten dollars is coming out of your paycheck this month!"

"Maybe that'll teach you a lesson about what things cost—and how hard it is to earn a dollar!"

The girl flinched under the verbal assault, her whole body trembling. Her eyes reddened instantly. Her lips quivered as if she wanted to say something in her defense, but in the end, she just lowered her head. She bit down hard on her lower lip, tears pooling in her eyes, refusing to let them fall.

I watched the whole thing, and something inside me went cold.

I pulled a hundred-dollar bill from my wallet and held it out to Gloria.

"Here. Keep the change."

Her tirade cut off mid-breath.

She turned to face me, reassembling that smile of hers—even more effusive than before. She snatched the bill with practiced speed, her fingertips giving it a quick, expert rub.

"Oh, Mr. Dickerson! You're too generous! You really shouldn't have..."

"Thank you so much! You're such a class act! Next time you come in, I'll have the kitchen set aside the freshest ingredients just for you—"

I'd already stopped listening.

That greasy smile of hers, glistening under the neon lights, turned my stomach in ways I couldn't put into words.

I straightened the front of my coat, let my gaze pass over the girl—still standing with her head bowed—then settled it on Gloria's beaming face. When I spoke, I chose my words carefully.

"Gloria, the secret to good business is thinking long-term."

"You'd do well to broaden your horizons."

She clearly didn't understand—or didn't care. She took it as polite small talk and nodded eagerly.

"Yes, yes, absolutely! You're so right, Mr. Dickerson. Long-term! Long-term!"

The next day, back at the office, I called my secretary in and gave her a simple instruction.

"Send out an internal memo. Effective immediately, any company-expensed meals or client entertainment involving Gourmet Grace will not be approved for reimbursement."

She froze, blinked, and instinctively double-checked. "Mr. Dickerson, you mean... Gourmet Grace? All reimbursements? Denied?"

Her surprise was understandable. For thirteen years, that restaurant had practically been our unofficial company cafeteria—especially for executive dinners and the annual company gala. It had never changed.

"That's right." I picked up my freshly brewed coffee. "Send it out."

The memo went out via internal email. At first, nothing happened.

But within half a day, the ripples started spreading beneath the surface.

That afternoon, I walked past the break room and caught fragments of conversation drifting through the doorway.

"...Is this for real? We don't have to go to Gourmet Grace anymore?"

"The memo's already out. You think it's fake? Mr. Dickerson signed off on it himself."

"About damn time!" someone chimed in, their voice carrying the weight of long-suppressed frustration. "Last year our department dinner was there. We ordered a fish—clearly not fresh. We mentioned it once, and the owner came over and spent twenty minutes going on about how expensive her suppliers were and how hard sourcing was. Then she gave us a two-percent discount like she was doing us some massive favor."

"You got off easy," another woman's voice joined in. "Last time we were entertaining a client—Mr. Li—he casually mentioned that the complimentary peanuts were good and asked for another plate."

"Guess what? When the bill came, that plate of peanuts was twenty-eight dollars!"

"We asked the waitress, and she hemmed and hawed. Then the owner came over and said they were premium amber-glazed peanuts—high cost."

"Twenty-eight bucks for a plate of peanuts! Highway robbery!"

"It's not just the food prices," an old-timer from accounting couldn't help piling on. "Getting invoices from them was a nightmare. Always delayed, always wrong. It'd hold up the whole reimbursement process. Drove everyone crazy."

"If Mr. Dickerson hadn't always insisted on that place, who would've willingly put up with that kind of treatment?"

"I heard they're ridiculously cheap with their own staff, too." A well-connected guy in the group lowered his voice. "A buddy of mine from back home used to work there as a food runner. Said the owner watched costs like a hawk—eyes practically glowing green."

"Staff meals were basically water with a hint of flavor. And if you tried to take home any leftovers? You'd get a look like you were stealing from the register."

"Year-end bonuses? Delayed as long as possible, shaved down as much as they could get away with."

"Exactly," another voice chimed in immediately. "Business got bigger, but the heart got smaller."

"I used to think it was a solid, reputable place. Now it's all nickel-and-diming. The food hasn't gotten any better, but the attitude sure has."

"Last time my family went there for a birthday dinner, the servers couldn't have cared less. Dishes took forever. Probably figured walk-in customers weren't worth the effort since we weren't spending enough."

"What Mr. Dickerson did this time was..." The first voice wrapped things up with a note of genuine admiration. "Handled perfectly. I'd felt something was off for a while but never said anything. Looks like he'd finally had enough too."

"Something must've crossed the line."

"Honestly, it's a good thing. A new place might give us better value and better food."

"Mr. Dickerson should've looked elsewhere a long time ago."

The chatter gradually died down. I stood outside the break room, never stepping inside, just listening in silence.

These scattered complaints and revelations were like puzzle pieces, slowly assembling a full picture of how Gourmet Grace had quietly rotted from the inside over the years.

That uncomfortable feeling of being nickel-and-dimed—it had seeped into every corner of their daily operations. Not just toward major clients like me, but toward casual diners, and even their own employees.

The notice I'd sent out that morning had drawn little pushback. Most people understood. Many openly agreed. That alone told me everything I needed to know.

Back in my office, I gazed at the Gourmet Grace sign in the distance and thought of Gloria's face the night before—that undisguised glee when she'd pocketed a hundred dollars, that sharp, cutting expression when she'd dressed down the server.

Then I thought of a small restaurant years ago. A bowl of hot soup. A simple, honest smile.

Time can bring scale and profit. It can also corrode the very thing that made you worth believing in.

Thirteen years. Long enough for a restaurant to expand into something impressive. Long enough for a person to become unrecognizable.

I'd lost a hundred dollars. No—probably many hundreds of dollars over the years.

But I'd gained something far more valuable.

At the very least, my employees would no longer have to endure increasingly suffocating penny-pinching and miserable experiences just because of my "habit" or some unearned sense of "loyalty."

As for Gourmet Grace and its owner?

I picked up my coffee—long since gone cold—and took a quiet sip.

You choose your own path.

And you ruin your own business.

After New Year, the company stuck to the original plan: grand opening on the tenth.

Early on the morning of the ninth, a long string of messages from Gloria landed on my phone.

"Mr. Dickerson, Happy New Year! Wishing you a belated happy holiday! May your company have a fresh start and money rolling in!"

"Grand opening tomorrow on the tenth—shall we set up our usual opening banquet for you?"

"I know you're busy, so I've already handpicked all the dishes for you—all your favorites from years past, the luckiest ones on the menu!"

A detailed quote followed right after.

I tapped it open and skimmed the contents. The dish names were as familiar as my own handwriting. Roasted suckling pig, steamed grouper, crab roe tofu casserole...

Virtually unchanged from the past five or six years. The only difference was the numbers next to each item—they'd quietly crept upward again.

I scrolled straight to the total at the bottom. Compared to last year's opening banquet, it had jumped nearly twenty percent.