Workplace reviews and discussion: 正德國際藝術拍賣股份有限公司

No

Finally leaving this place.

Given that many people still aspire to work in this industry, my conscience compels me to present the reality here.

If any former Zhengde employees see this, feel free to add your experiences.

The main text begins.

I discovered that the company only needs obedient XXs, combined with all kinds of absurd and bizarre management methods, resulting in an extremely high turnover rate.

I sincerely advise all newcomers who aspire to work in art auctions⋯⋯

Their own website says, “The issues most likely to draw criticism in auction companies include unclear origins of artworks, sham bidding, buyers failing to pay, and so on.” And yet⋯⋯

Their treatment of part-time workers is also terrible: deducting pay for breaks (including meal breaks), not paying overtime according to the Labor Standards Act, being extremely penny-pinching after making workers do everything (some part-time workers said their pay was arbitrarily deducted), and worst of all, often paying several days late on the promised payday (sometimes even several weeks late). As employees, we felt helpless when we received furious calls from part-time workers, because if the boss’s wife refused to deal with it, she simply would not deal with it (and expected us to placate them with various ridiculous excuses).

You only need to go to Job Bank’s “Tianyan Tong” and search for “Zhengde International Art Auction” to see all kinds of angry comments from part-time workers.

Back to the inside of the company: first, a brief introduction—the company is run by a married couple.

***First, regarding the auctions

1. The auctions often run terrifyingly overtime over the two days, with the worst case lasting 24 hours—from 8:30 a.m. until 7:00 a.m. the next day. On another occasion, it lasted until the early morning, and they still expected us to report to work as usual the next day (claiming that customers would be coming).

2. Exhibition setup is delayed. To save money, they hire cheap movers to transport valuable artworks. The movers are slow and disorganized, delaying the other vendors and our setup time, and we always end up unable to finish setting up until midnight. (There are only four people at the company; to save money, we have to hang the paintings and arrange the pieces ourselves. Sometimes the vendors leave after setting up only the display panels because they are not paid to help us hang anything.)

3. During the busy, chaotic setup or on the day of the auction preview, the boss and his wife continue issuing all kinds of strange orders, completely disregarding the staffing plan that was confirmed in meetings. They frequently rearrange personnel randomly and change their orders from one moment to the next. Once staffing becomes chaotic, it creates a vicious cycle, followed by complaints about why the part-time workers are so difficult to use.

4. Any even slightly observant auction assistants can see how chaotic the company’s execution is and how casually it handles the auction lots. Not to mention the dismantling and packing after the exhibition (there is simply no time; it is like fighting a war)—transport is completed under nerve-racking conditions, and it is impossible to guarantee that nothing will be damaged during the process.

5. The packing before an exhibition is almost entirely done by the company’s four or five employees. Leaving aside the fact that they do not outsource it, they expect four or five of us to pack 400–500 lots for each season within three days. How refined do you think the packing can be? Working until after midnight is routine.

6. All kinds of chaotic instructions also come down during the packing process, disrupting your progress and often making your work pointless. If a customer suddenly comes to view something, you have to unpack it and bring it out to show off all over again.

7. If catalog mailing is delayed during the final week before the auction (that’s right—the only company in all of Taiwan that may still be mailing catalogs on the final day before an auction may be us), forget about finishing the packing. You may have to pack until midnight the day before the exhibition setup.

***Next, the company’s level of professionalism is also⋯⋯

1. The acquisition process is slow and terrible. They cannot even get basic Chinese or Western historical periods right, and what they say is riddled with errors. Sometimes it is embarrassing to correct them.

2. So, in reality, they are simply wealthy and overbearing: they have money to buy artworks, but when all is said and done, they have very little knowledge. (I do not believe Lin Bai-li, Tsao Hsing-cheng, or Tsai Chen-yang would even confuse basic dynasties.) They understand even less about Western art history and only know something about prices; it is essentially speculation.

3. The husband and wife handle all acquisitions themselves (they only trust themselves). Although they are supposedly responsible for acquisitions, they are not very capable of authenticating many calligraphy and paintings either, so authentication relies on consultants. Often, 90% of the items acquired are rejected, requiring another round of acquisitions, after which the schedule is delayed indefinitely.

4. At the start of each seasonal auction, the couple sets an unrealistic catalog schedule. Employees can only ignore it because the schedule is fundamentally impossible. When we explain in meetings that image retouching takes time, copywriting takes time, photography takes time, layout takes time, and mailing the catalogs takes time, all we get is the boss’s wife’s furious questioning about why it would be impossible. Well, you were slow to acquire the items in the first place—how could everything afterward possibly be fast?

5. For catalog proofreading, they trust only themselves. In the end, everything gets stuck with the boss’s wife, and cannot be sent to print because she does not proofread it. Although proofreading is her responsibility, she procrastinates and goes off to handle other matters. After proofreading, she says certain completely unimportant things need to be changed (such as changing English item-name translations that were not wrong at all; even when told the changes would make them incorrect, she refuses to believe it).

6. The catalog gets held up because of her endless nitpicking, and afterward she blasts the employees for working slowly and the printing company for working slowly—as if everyone else were magicians who could make things appear with a wave of Doraemon’s magic.

***All kinds of melodramatic drama and stinginess

1. The couple’s relationship is sometimes far from harmonious, and they are constantly putting on scenes of arguing. (They shout loudly in their own room, at a volume the entire company can hear; occasionally, we can even hear things breaking.) Every time, we consider whether we should call the police.

2. They make the company atmosphere toxic and like to sow discord among colleagues. (They call A into the office to badmouth B, then call B into the office to badmouth A—but everything they say consists of unfounded rumors.)

3. They frequently ask employees to buy brunch, but often do not reimburse the cost. The unpaid amounts accumulate, and we have to chase them before they pay. Employees also frequently advance taxi and car-rental expenses themselves. That would not be a problem, but reimbursement is always dragged out; if you do not remind them, they do not pay.

4. The most unacceptable thing is that the company does not turn on the air conditioning all year round. In summer, the office can be stiflingly hot, with computer towers throughout the room radiating heat, but they refuse to turn on the air conditioning to save money, switching it on only temporarily when customers come. Employees developed heat rashes. Alternatively, after we raised the issue, a meeting would decide that the air conditioning could be turned on every day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but when someone turned it on, it would be switched off again. (They bought several water-cooled fans that were practically useless.)

***Working conditions

1. We witnessed many people resign. It is not at all unusual for the art administration and graphic design staff to be replaced four or five times a year, because everyone can see what is going on; after staying for a while, they understand the company’s chaos. Who would want to waste their youth?

2. After so many people resigned, they blamed the long-term employees, saying we did not create a positive atmosphere or that we badmouthed the company to new employees instead of spreading joy and love. But the truth is that we wanted employees to resign even less than the bosses did, because the workload and auction schedule would be delayed, and we would be the ones suffering. Why would we do that?

3. The company often tells new employees that it does not encourage overtime, but in reality, overtime is routine. Lunch breaks are almost never taken, and they frequently think of holding meetings only right before the end of the workday. Overtime pay is not provided; only compensatory leave is offered. Evening overtime is counted from 6:30 p.m., in half-hour increments; anything under half an hour does not count as overtime.

4. They also frequently call or message employees after work asking about this or that. (Serious matters would be understandable, but they are often trivial nonsense.)

5. The most unacceptable thing is that regular employees’ salaries are also frequently paid late. (The boss’s wife handles payroll. The amount is the same every month, so it is hard to understand why payment is delayed. And, in this day and age, they do not even use electronic transfers; they go to the bank counter in person, dragging their feet and putting off going to the bank.)

6. We have never seen any gifts or gift money for the three traditional festivals.