Workplace reviews and discussion: 韓國商辛普萊斯貿易有限公司

1. All of my colleagues are incredibly nice; good colleagues are hard to come by.

2. The company is located downtown, less than a five-minute walk from the MRT station.

3. You really will learn quite a lot of business Korean terminology, provided you can accept this kind of manager and work environment.

Salary and benefits

1. The salary level is basically that of a fake foreign company that is actually a Taiwanese company, and is even worse than a typical Taiwanese company.

2. None of the leave or benefits available at the company’s headquarters in Korea are provided at the Taiwan branch. Benefits commonly offered by Taiwanese companies (such as employee trips and year-end bonuses) are dismissed by saying that because they do not exist in Korea, the branch will not have them either (but in Korea, compensation is discussed as an annual salary, and you can even get paid for taking a leisure day).

3. At first, I thought that since the company had just been established, bonuses would come once it became profitable. In reality, the manager believes that your salary already includes the bonus. (So how low is my base salary, exactly?)

4. The manager loves to say that people in Taiwan get many days off each year and even have typhoon days off, unlike in Korea. (This is the first time I’ve heard typhoon days off described as a benefit.)

Company policies

1. Working hours are 8:00–17:00. Even when we leave around 5:10, the manager will email us saying not to leave too early because other people are still busy, and that we should ask our colleagues whether there is anything we can help with. (We are in different departments—how exactly are we supposed to help?)

2. It is usually very busy after long holidays. We can apply for overtime pay (in accordance with the Labor Standards Act), yet we are then questioned about whether we are doing it just to earn overtime pay. (Don’t make me leave early, but don’t let me work overtime either—the confused-black-person meme face.)

3. There are regular meetings every Monday and Friday morning. Meetings that could be finished in about 10 to 20 minutes can last more than an hour, with the vast majority of the time spent listening to the manager talk nonsense or brag about himself.

4. At noon, we “must” eat together with the manager in the conference room. If we get up early after eating, the manager will even tell us not to get up early next time. (But isn’t this supposed to be our own break time?)

5. Sometimes, having to take a late break due to a busy workload is unavoidable, so naturally the break time gets pushed back (for example, when the manager’s meeting runs too long and delays lunch, and we also have to eat together, which drags out the entire schedule). However, the manager tells us that we must return to our seats when the break is officially over.

6. When I first joined the company, I would put my head down on my desk for a nap during lunch, but the manager told me not to sleep at my seat because it is a work area and seeing someone sleep while everyone else is working would affect them. So afterward, everyone could only sleep in the conference room, but there were not enough seats. (What other people want to do during their break is their business, and whether I want to sleep is mine, right?)

7. Every Thursday, we have to stay unconditionally for 30 minutes to an hour of overtime to study the company’s platform content. The material is assigned to each person, and every employee has to explain their assigned content, followed by an extremely pointless test!

8. One person is made to do the work of three. I think this is unavoidable in a new company, and it is obvious that there is not enough staff, yet they still refuse to hire anyone. When we report that we are struggling to keep up, we are told in response that we will make other people think we are incompetent.

9. After the air conditioning has been on for an hour, we are told to turn it down to the minimum to save energy and reduce carbon emissions. But when the manager goes out, the fan is left on all day; he throws away half-finished coffee instead of bringing an insulated bottle; and he uses more than two paper cups a day for drinks. He even requires the lights in empty conference rooms to be left on.

10. Every payday, everyone has to play a game together. The losers have to buy drinks for the entire company, with the cost divided according to salary bands. When someone feels unwell and does not want a drink, and tells the manager they will not participate, the manager still insists that they must participate because everyone is supposed to do it together.

Other

1. When the manager works with other companies, he often makes many unreasonable demands. Does he think Taiwanese people are easy to bully? He gives people the impression of looking down on others.

3. The manager is the kind of person who has to say whatever comes to mind immediately. Even when something is not urgent, he likes to call people into meetings during their break, or, at 8:00 in the morning before anyone has even sat down, call someone into the conference room to talk nonsense.

4. Colleagues are criticized even for having expressionless faces or not smiling. If, during casual conversation, someone mentions another company’s year-end party raffle with a car as a prize, the manager will call them in for an interview, saying that they should not compare other companies with this company. (Am I living in North Korea? Are we even restricted in what we can say?)

5. The manager cannot speak Chinese, so employees handle everything for him. Although he receives an ordinary employee’s salary, he makes employees do secretarial work. For example, if the manager forgets to bring money, he does not go back to get it himself; he asks an employee to deliver it to him. If he cannot find his credit card, he does not look for it himself; he tells an employee to rush back to the company and find it for him.

6. Employees are criticized for taking a taxi to an off-site meeting, being told not to take taxis, while the manager can show off by treating friends to meals and charge the expenses to the company account.

7. After deciding on something and instructing employees to do it, the manager keeps changing it after the work is completed. The standards change from one moment to the next, wasting time and greatly reducing efficiency. (And this happens extremely frequently.)