Workplace reviews and discussion: 華郁旅行社有限公司(高雄分公司)

Three holiday bonuses, plus a year-end bonus and a travel bonus

Annual salary: According to the boss’s wife’s calculations, it is NT$400,000, but if you do not win the boss’s wife’s favor, the total will definitely be less than NT$400,000, including the year-end bonus.

Working hours: 08:30–17:30

Year-end bonus: Determined by the boss’s wife.

Bonuses: Three holiday bonuses (originally half a month’s salary for everyone regardless of seniority; later changed so employees who stayed for three years could receive a full month’s salary, although very few young employees stayed for more than three years) + travel bonus (according to the boss’s wife, this bonus is given whenever she feels like giving it and may be withheld whenever she does not; I received it throughout my time there, but during a discussion at one point, it was used as a bargaining chip).

Job duties: Arranging seafarers’ itineraries, booking flights, and handling related documents. It is indeed challenging work because seafarers of various nationalities travel to all kinds of places you may never even have heard of to board ships. Therefore, you must research the relevant regulations, arrange routes, and contact agents to ensure that the seafarers arrive safely at their destinations.

Impressions:

The company environment is not bad, but there are many older, more experienced employees. They are all very friendly toward younger employees in private, but at work, because they cannot keep up with the times and are unwilling to learn new things, there is a generation gap between them and younger employees. They refuse to listen to younger employees’ suggestions and deliberately work slowly, leaving late as if they were very busy. In reality, everyone handles roughly the same amount of official business, and younger employees even have to help deal with tasks that senior employees cannot finish because they work slowly. Under these circumstances, younger employees can still leave on time because they use more efficient methods, but the boss’s wife only notices the senior employees working overtime and assumes that the younger employees, who leave early, have little to do. She then assigns even more work to the younger employees. The boss’s wife is always very concerned about how colleagues get along, but if you tell her about problems with senior employees, there will absolutely be no improvement, because the senior employees are “very busy and working hard,” while young people “do not understand”;)

Also, when applying, make absolutely sure whether you are being hired as an operations (OP) staff member, because the boss’s wife may only tell you after you have been working for a while that you are merely an assistant. In the end, all the work you do is attributed to the senior employees’ hard work, not yours, because you are “just an assistant” and supposedly not capable of handling that much.

Additional information:

Before 2019, employees who had completed one year of service were entitled to 10 days of leave (not including bereavement leave, sick leave, and similar types of leave). The company originally did not reimburse expenses based on actual receipts, but in 2019 it decided to start doing so, and leave therefore became governed by the Labor Standards Act.