Workplace reviews and discussion: 欣新印刷文具股份有限公司

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Design assistant, salary 26,000. During the interview, they said overtime was uncommon, and that even if work went past 8 p.m., employees would be urged to leave the office. After joining, I found that there were actually hardly eight days in an entire month when I left work on time. Employees were not urged to leave after 8 p.m. either. I once stayed at the company until after 11 p.m. Regular overtime until 9 or 10 p.m. also occurred, and the company did not pay overtime; it was entirely a “responsibility-based” system.

The company has an error-report system. If there is an error in print production or artwork, employees must fill out a form and pay compensation. There are group options (such as deducting from everyone’s travel budget) and individual options. After completing the form, it must be signed and stamped by a supervisor, so employees almost always choose the individual option. During weekly meetings, everyone is informed of the compensation amount and whether the individual or group option was chosen. Some people had to pay one or two thousand, and there were also cases of having to pay more.

You often have to work overtime and call the supervisor for proofreading after finishing the artwork. The supervisor has often already gone home or left the company, so you have to spend time waiting for a return call. At best, the call comes within five minutes; at worst, I once waited from 30 minutes to an hour and a half. When artwork cannot be delivered on time, it is not because you have not done it. The supervisor has very high standards and often does not provide clear directions for revisions, instead frequently asking you to think for yourself and find the answer. There can be many rounds of revisions; cases involving 20 or 30 revisions have occurred.

Work is subject to a responsibility-based system with excessive hours and no overtime pay. If the supervisor does not approve the artwork, you must keep revising it until it passes. If you work overtime today and it still does not pass, the delivery date tomorrow remains fixed. Therefore, you have to work overtime on your own to revise it until the supervisor approves it, or take it home and contact the supervisor afterward to deliver it on time. If it is not delivered on time, the supervisor will personally keep urging you to finish the artwork and show it to them.

A design assistant often has at least three to five projects in progress at once. Sometimes they involve extending an existing design, and sometimes redesigning the visual concept from scratch. While you are busy with current projects, parts of previous projects that have not yet been closed may also come back for revisions. You are expected to manage your own time and meet deadlines. The only reason you cannot finish is supposedly that you are poor at allocating your time or lack ability, so overtime is considered only natural under this responsibility-based system.