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

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Time: July 2017

I was previously a marketing planner in the brand department of this company.

The supervisor and brand director, whose surname is Li and whose name is “Harry,” knows nothing about marketing planning.

He is good at driving away the people under him. During his two years there, more than 20 people had already left the brand department because of him (and he still doesn’t know it).

His other specialties include nitpicking and making employees clean up his messes.

I worked there for two months and could no longer tolerate the head of this brand department, so I resigned.

The following are several of the main reasons:

1. He did not understand Google keyword advertising but pretended that he did, and accused employees of being lazy for not making proposals.

It was not that we did not want to operate Google keyword advertising. The main reason was that it must run for more than six months before producing meaningful results.

A fixed amount of the marketing budget must be allocated every month to generate exposure. Otherwise, using a lower budget would not only be ineffective but would also cause the advertising expenses to disappear without results.

I had explained this to the supervisor, but in the end he thought I was slacking off and simply did not want to run the ads. This was ridiculous. The supervisor also did not understand keyword advertising, and even after I explained it, he still could not understand. That was truly unbearable.

2. He held one-on-one meetings with me and criticized A for mistakes.

The company is a family business: the father is the owner and the son is the vice president.

During the days when the vice president was away, he repeatedly called me into the meeting room for “one-on-one” meetings (this supervisor became very arrogant whenever the vice president was absent).

He told me to independently handle the marketing planning activities for “all headphones” and report to him “the day after tomorrow.” Is there a problem with that?

Me: Can I ask A to attend the meeting as well?

Supervisor: A will be leaving soon. You are the marketing planner, so this is your responsibility.

From the time I joined the company until I resigned, I can say with certainty that he completely failed to fulfill his responsibilities as a supervisor.

As the brand director, I never heard a single proposal from him.

On the surface, he said I could make my own decisions, but in practice, he not only rejected the proposals I submitted to him, he also provided no guidance on what to do and no examples.

In addition, during one-on-one meetings with me, he would complain about people in the other brand-department teams, saying that they had poor attitudes toward him and so on.

Why, during a private meeting, would he fail to discuss the main points and instead talk about other people’s mistakes? Was this because he did not dare to hold a meeting with A present as well?

3. He wanted to change the campaign only after the MOMO e-commerce information-month campaign had already started (he had no objections during the meeting discussions or in the daily reports), ignored MOMO’s e-commerce rules, and blamed all the mistakes on subordinates.

- Previously, e-commerce promotions could be offered at 20% off, but because he wanted to make things difficult for me, when I set it at 20% off, he said I was “slacking off.”

- He wanted to make changes only after the campaign had started, even though the matter had been mentioned in the daily emails and weekly meetings beforehand and he had raised no objections.

- He harassed me via Facebook on multiple nights.

- After I explained why the price could not be changed, he still acted as though it was the subordinate’s problem (why had he raised no objections in the daily emails and weekly meetings?).

- In the end, he told MOMO that it was all the subordinate’s fault.

4. The content of his report at each weekly meeting was almost identical and essentially had no substance.

5. The supervisor handled the image advertising video, and he participated in both the pre-shoot discussions and the filming itself.

However, the final filming and post-production of the video were poor, so he dumped all the problems on A to clean up and told her to meet with the advertising agency.

A went to the meeting without understanding what was going on. The supervisor said, “A can decide how to revise it; do whatever she decides.”

After the revisions were completed, the supervisor was still dissatisfied and continued telling her to meet with the advertising agency.

6. If he wants to drive you out, he will first overwhelm you with a pile of work, and then, once you submit your resignation, he will send you to the warehouse to do useless miscellaneous work.