See You at Work Tomorrow: Episodes 1-2
by Unit
In dramaland’s newest rom-com, a burnt out employee is forced to get off autopilot and take back the controls of her corporate life when a determined team leader makes it his mission to bring back her workplace spark.
EPISODES 1-2
Our show drops us right into the world of our leading lady, CHA JI-YOON (Park Ji-hyun) — an emotionally exhausted senior associate at Saeum Electronics Product Planning Team 1, whose only reason for keeping her job at this point is because those adulthood bills won’t pay themselves. The first time we see Ji-yoon at the office, her team lead, KO YOUNG-SAM (Hong Woo-jin), is dispatching her to mediate a factory standoff. Saeum is set to launch an ice sphere refrigerator. But production has been suspended because the research team isn’t satisfied with the quality of the spheres, and the factory staff insist that’s the best they can produce. Despite Ji-yoon’s multiple excuses to avoid the factory visit, Young-sam mandates her to get the production line back up before sending her off in the company chopper.
At the factory, Ji-yoon suggests producing test samples of the refrigerator for the launch first, then gradually working on perfecting the ice spheres. The researchers and factory staff consider this compromise…until our leading man, KANG SHI-WOO (Seo In-guk), strides in. Shi-woo, a.k.a Three-No-Man (no smile, no people, no apologies), is a legendary figure at Saeum. He’s a workaholic, he’s great at his job, he has achieved multiple promotions in quick succession — and he’s against launching the ice sphere refrigerator when there’s still improvements to be made. Ji-yoon and Shi-woo make their pro-launch and anti-launch arguments, and Shi-woo gets the last word. The production line will remain suspended until a solution is found.
Ji-yoon and Shi-woo encounter a slight turbulence in their shared chopper ride back to Seoul. She ends up with her head in his lap in a panic, and her embarrassment worsens when she throws up. Lol. Good thing she had the foresight to bring a plastic bag. The possibility of a regular employee running into a higher up at work is very low, so Ji-yoon is consoled by the fact that she won’t be running into Shi-woo any time soon. But guess who shows up right next to Product Planning Team 1? Why, of course, it’s Kang Shi-woo, the new team leader of Team 2! And then he has to coincidentally have lunch at the same restaurant Ji-yoon’s mom tricked her into going for a blind date — and see her with sauce on her face! Looool.
Young-sam steals Ji-yoon’s report on the refrigerator and passes it off as his during a presentation to company execs. Smh. He even has the audacity to put her in charge of the slides, so she restarts the computer under the guise of a system error and leaves him stuttering at the blank screen because his thieving ass didn’t think to properly study the stolen report. Ha! Shi-woo clocks the situation and asks Young-sam for a solution to the ice sphere issue, but Young-sam doesn’t have an answer. Ji-yoon has an idea that can work and Shi-woo expects her to bring it up when he turns to ask her for a solution. But she keeps mum because the factory workers laughed at the idea, plus she’s not too sure about it yet. Shi-woo is disappointed, and the meeting ends with his recommendation to shut down the refrigerator launch all together.
Moving on, Ji-yoon is tasked with collecting Product Planning’s congratulatory money for the wedding of a colleague in another department. Shi-woo already told her he wasn’t attending the wedding when she first asked, and he snaps at her when she meets him later for his share of the money because… the colleague, CHOI SOO-JIN (Park Ye-young), is his ex-wife. Whoa! Looks like no one in Saeum knows Shi-woo and Soo-jin are an ex-couple. Ji-yoon texts Shi-woo to apologize after the wedding, and he asks her to buy him a drink. It’s her first time seeing him outside of work, and she’s surprised at how casual he is when he’s not on the clock. Shi-woo tells Ji-yoon he got fired, but he has to take a call before he can explain the circumstances that led to his dismissal.
Ji-yoon is already drunk when Shi-woo returns from his call, and he walks her home. She follows the rom-com manual by tripping and falling into his arms, and he urges her to be careful because a fall at her age can lead to broken bones. *ignores my age and laughs* Shi-woo asks to meet up the next day if Ji-yoon is free, and this sounds like flirting to her. She almost invites him over to her place for another round of drinks, but she changes her mind at the last minute because the thought of hooking up with a superior is horrifying. But it’s just the thought that’s horrifying, because she has no problem having a racy dream about him. Heh.
The next day, Ji-yoon runs into Shi-woo at the neighborhood convenience store and she’s dressed in one of those house clothes and slippers you hope nobody you know ever catches you in. Pfft. Shi-woo is amused and Ji-yoon’s mortification grows when she catches him laughing. From throwing up in the chopper to having sauce on her face at the restaurant, to the button of her pants popping out when she tripped into his arms and now this? It’s like she’s destined to show him all her embarrassing sides. The good thing is, Shi-woo got fired and she’ll never see him again, right? Wrong! He still shows up at work and worse, he goes out of his way to get her attention while she does everything to avoid him.
Ji-yoon’s work hoobae, YOON NO-AH (Kang Mina), catches on to the situation, but she can’t decide whether Shi-woo is chasing after Ji-yoon for work or romance-related issues. Ji-yoon’s bestie, LEE HYE-JI (Ahn So-yo), is firmly on the side of romance, and Ji-yoon starts to think maybe Shi-woo does have feelings for her. She legit expects a love confession when her colleague, JEON KI-TAEK (Kang Ki-doong), tricks her into having lunch with Shi-woo, but Shi-woo just wants her on his new TF team. Lol. Turns out he was fired from Product Planning and assigned to create a team for the re-development of the ice sphere refrigerator. The reason he asked Ji-yoon to buy him a drink (and to meet up the next day when she got too drunk to have a conversation) was to tell her about the TF team, and it’s also why he has been trying to get her attention. *snaps out of the romance delulu*
Ji-yoon turns down Shi-woo’s scouting offer because she’s scared of failing and she’d rather work on projects with better chances. Other employees are also reluctant to join the TF team because no one wants to work on a risky project and under a workaholic boss like Shi-woo. Ji-yoon learns Shi-woo has never lost at anything he sets his mind to when she does some mild digging in him, and watching him carry on with work in his one-man team makes her admit he’s the type of boss she wants to work for. No kidding. Having Young-sam as a team lead will make you wish you had a different boss. Young-sam used to be Shi-woo’s boss back in the day, and Shi-woo reported him for accepting kickbacks from a supplier. But there was no evidence so the case was closed and Shi-woo got kicked off the team. That’s when he made up his mind to stay out of office drama and let his work speak for itself.
Shi-woo witnesses Young-sam being all shades of frustrating to Ji-yoon, and he attempts to poach her again with the promise to make sure she’ll never have to deal with Young-sam’s type of drama again. Ji-yoon wonders why Shi-woo specifically wants her, and he says he has been watching her since she joined the company. Other rookies lost their drive and enthusiasm as time went by and they faced the realities of the workplace, but she never did. Shi-woo assumed Ji-yoon had finally lost her spark when she pushed for the refrigerator launch despite its imperfections, but then he saw her notebook after the meeting with the company’s executives. The notebook was filled with her project ideas from over the years, indicating that she’s still driven but she’s just hiding. He tells her not to keep her potential locked up in the notebook, and her heart begins to flutter non-romantically.
It’s been a while since Ji-yoon’s heart fluttered in any way. Work-wise, she’s burnt out. Romance-wise, her boyfriend, JO GA-EUL (Choi Kyung-hoon), ghosted her for eight months. Ji-yoon and Ga-eul met in college, and she learned how to play the drums and joined his band because she had a crush on him. He knew about her feelings but he ignored it and enlisted in the army, and then went abroad after his discharge. He returned out of the blue a few years later to ask her out, but he spent the relationship avoiding marriage conversations and travelling to pursue his musical interests whenever he pleased. Ji-yoon liked Ga-eul’s free spirit so she didn’t mind his spur of the moment trips. But he left again the night she was going to propose to him and went no contact for eight months! Ga-eul is back, acting like he just went on a weekend trip, but Ji-yoon is done with their relationship.
Back to Ji-yoon’s work life, her final straw is when Young-sam berates a visibly-in-pain No-ah for requesting a sick day. He assigns Ji-yoon to prepare an unnecessary and tasking report when she speaks up for No-ah, and she’s forced to work overtime — which she never does — to finish the report. Ji-yoon goes home to type her resignation letter, but then she flips through her notebook and sees that Shi-woo marked her ideas that already became executed projects and scribbled suggestions for others. She begins to tear up at this silent act of encouragement, and comes to a decision when she sees he liked her idea for the refrigerator. The next day, Ji-yoon joins Shi-woo’s TF team, and this is where our premiere week ends.
See You at Work Tomorrow is off to a promising start. The story isn’t anything out of the ordinary so far, but this isn’t a bad thing. This week was mostly about the very relatable Ji-yoon. She used to be passionate about work and romance, and she gave her all to both until they ended up emotionally draining her. She’s resolved to not do more than necessary at work, and has sworn off romance for the time being. But here comes Shi-woo who is the symbol of both work and romance, and he has no intention of letting Ji-yoon marinate any further in her funk. *chuckles in dramaland irony*
We don’t know much about Shi-woo yet, but I like that there’s more to him beyond the workaholic and strict boss persona. He’s chill outside of work, and his habit of hiding a chuckle in amusing situations is cute. Shi-woo is exactly what the doctor ordered to get Ji-yoon out of her slump, and I can’t wait to see more of their interactions. In the meantime, can we also get No-ah and Ki-taek on the TF team? I’m also looking forward to exploring their personal and workplace struggles.
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