Workplace reviews and discussion: 特力集團＿HOLA＿HOLA CASA＿HOLA Petite＿Crate&Barrel＿特力屋股份有限公司

I worked at Hola in Taichung. Because of pressure from upper management, manager-level supervisors try to minimize employees’ overtime. However, evening-shift employees often have to work an extra hour to finish their tasks properly. The managers then tell employees who need to work overtime to clock out first and continue working on whatever remains unfinished.

Unless there is a changeover that requires more than three hours of overtime. Want to claim overtime pay? Ask the manager!

During changeover periods (when the promotional products and campaigns for each period are changed), many employees need to work more than 12 hours. Supervisors will ask you to clock out first, report two hours of overtime for that day, and report the rest the next day. Personally, during changeover periods, I often worked from a 10 a.m. shift until midnight before I could leave—not to mention the more highly skilled and experienced employees at Hola.

Arriving more than five minutes late results in a direct deduction of one hour’s pay. However, at the end of the day, employees are required to wait until the manager has finished inspecting the sales floor before leaving. By the time the inspection is finished, it is already 20 minutes past the scheduled end time, but employees are not allowed to clock more than half an hour of overtime, so they cannot report those overtime hours.

Although Hola is a large company that follows the Labor Standards Act, the store managers at each branch act like owners. To make their own performance figures look good, they end up stepping on frontline employees. And this is only the overtime issue.