At the yoga studio behind Eslite Dunhua, I worked in customer service for about two years. The customer service colleagues were fairly easy to get along with, and the salary was around 30K. As for leave, you got as many days off as there were red-letter holidays. Employees could take classes for free. Since the owner also runs a music company, people from the entertainment industry—Alex, for example—were often seen coming and going. Those were pretty much the only advantages.
1. Most supervisors were parachuted in and did not understand the work or hardships of frontline staff. The business supervisor loved filing petty reports, while the training supervisor would only lead everyone in playing games. The senior customer service supervisor, whose surname was Chen, had extremely low EQ and only ever yelled at people; they never encouraged employees.
2. The entertainers who came and went were also more arrogant than the next in private. There was a former model surnamed Yin who had acted on PTS, as well as members of the Star Light Gang and the like. When they acted like difficult customers, they were completely different from how they appeared on television.
3. Because of the company’s style, customers were easily spoiled, so there were particularly many difficult customers. They would complain at the slightest thing, and the customer service supervisor did not dare call them back, leaving the people below especially overworked. Even though there was already not enough classroom space, customers were continually allowed onto the waiting list, which triggered even more complaints.
4. Year-end bonuses were sometimes given and sometimes not. Even when there was one, it was not much. One colleague called Human Resources to ask how the year-end bonus was calculated and was fired that very day.
5. In short, the personnel system and workplace culture were terrible. The supervisors were low-caliber and infighting was severe. There were supervisors who slacked off, those who only talked without doing anything, and those who did nothing but bully employees—every kind of lousy supervisor could be found there. General Affairs would only tell customer service to arrange repairs, and miscellaneous tasks from every department were dumped on customer service. The virtually nonexistent rules had nurtured a group of difficult customers, whom employees had to deal with constantly.