Workplace reviews and discussion: 亞立田股份有限公司

None

Time: 2016

-I originally applied for a position in overseas sales. On the day of the interview, the company asked whether I was interested in e-commerce. I said I was willing to learn, so I was hired. The salary was 30,000, plus 1,000 for perfect attendance.

-What they called e-commerce was actually online customer service: replying to customers' inquiries every day, which was quite boring. The company's headphones were very expensive, and the boss was unwilling to lower the prices. Basically, everyone was scared off by the prices, which were often double the usual price. But if you didn't get any orders, the boss would keep asking from time to time, "Any orders lately?"

-The job listing said there were 200 employees, making you think it was a large company. Most employees were at factories in mainland China, while the Taipei office had only a little over ten people. However, quite a few employees were very scheming, and there was severe infighting.

-It was a family business: the father was the general manager, and the son was the vice president.

The son did not have very good emotional intelligence. Once, I needed him to reply to a customer about an issue. The company used Skype for internal communication. I messaged him several times, but he simply refused to respond, so I had no choice but to walk over to his desk and ask him directly. However, he was playing a mobile game and did not want to deal with me. He just shouted, "You're so annoying."

-When I received my first month's salary, I discovered that I had only been paid 29,000. When I asked about it, the boss said that because I had started work in the middle of the month, I was not eligible for the perfect-attendance bonus. Okay, fine—but that was still 1,000 short. He said that the 30,000 he had agreed to with me included the perfect-attendance bonus, rather than being 30,000 plus 1,000.

So I argued my case, and in the end, he reluctantly paid me the missing 1,000.

-Everyone at the company pretended to work overtime. I left on time every day, and eventually the boss directly said, "If you don't work overtime, then resign." So I resigned.