None.

A generally normal company will regard interns as future additions to its workforce—in other words, it will gradually train and develop interns into future full-time employees. Even if they do not become full-time employees, they should still be able to speak highly of the company after leaving and encourage others to support it. Of course, this assumes that it is a “generally normal company.”

Perhaps this view is biased, subjective, and arbitrary, but my impression of the association is that those in charge treat interns as disposable chopsticks—used once and thrown away. After the CEO cheerfully told me on the first day how great the association was and how wonderful its people were, they never seriously looked me in the eye again. The work schedule was eight hours a day, three days a week, for a three-month internship—nearly two-thirds of the hours of a full-time position, yet without labor or health insurance. The daily transportation allowance was only NT$200, which was presented as a tremendous benefit. It was disgusting.

The intern’s work is described favorably as providing exposure to many different areas, but bluntly speaking, it is miscellaneous labor. Every week, interns have to spend one or two days as the “duty person”; if the association is short-staffed, this can increase to three days. What does the duty person do? Clean the association. On several occasions, simply cleaning up dog feces and urine in the basement, as well as floors trampled by dogs over the course of a night, took several hours. By the time I left the association, I had reached the point where I could handle feces with my bare hands without feeling nauseated—of course, I never expected to acquire that particular skill. In addition, every time we came in, we had to act as the receptionist and run errands to the post office. Sometimes, if a dog relieved itself during work, the interns had to clean it up as well. In the end, the interns’ work became extremely scattered and distressing.

I have also interned at many other organizations, and I honestly have never seen such a terrible internship environment. This association is not really offering internships at all; it has simply created extremely low-paid work to cut costs, without even basic labor insurance, health insurance, or the minimum hourly wage.

My direct supervisor (of course, not the boss who sometimes only came to work in the afternoon and left before five) treated me well. However, I also saw that some interns had extremely terrible direct supervisors who assigned them alienating work from which they could learn absolutely nothing. Every time I saw how my friend was treated, I found that supervisor utterly detestable.

In short, if you are considering an internship here, I strongly recommend against it.

As for full-time employment, you might see even more bizarre, incomprehensible, or infuriating things from senior management. However, since I have not experienced this personally, I will not elaborate lest it become rumor-mongering. As for why I did not raise these issues directly, just look at how benevolent the work environment, atmosphere, and communication channels there are, and you will understand.