It began, as most modern tragedies do, with data. A man in China’s Jiangsu province—known publicly only as Cheng—was recovering from a leg injury when the numbers on his step-tracking app became the grounds for suspicion. Sixteen thousand steps. One day. Too many, said his employer, for someone supposedly too hurt to work.
The company didn’t stop at numbers. They checked security footage, saw Cheng walking briskly near the office, and decided the evidence spoke louder than any medical note. Within days, he was dismissed—accused of falsifying his sick leave.
But numbers, as always, tell half-truths. A step is not a sprint. Sixteen thousand of them could mean a gentle walk, a restless night, or simply a day spent trying to heal in motion. Yet in a world obsessed with metrics, nuance rarely survives.
Cheng fought back. He filed for arbitration, then for justice. The local court eventually ruled that the company had acted illegally, ordering it to compensate him nearly 120,000 yuan. The ruling wasn’t just about one man’s job—it was about the line between surveillance and scrutiny, between performance data and personal dignity.