Workplace reviews and discussion: 宜樂國際有限公司

Working hours are flexible by half an hour: either 9:00–18:00 or 9:30–18:30. However, in reality, there is a 90% chance that the company only opens its doors at 9:30 during the week. Except for senior employees who have keys, other employees absolutely cannot arrive too early because they simply cannot get in. Even if you happen to encounter a senior employee who opens the door at 9:00 and lets you clock in, you still cannot leave at 18:00, because although the boss has not said so, the internal atmosphere makes all employees afraid to leave early. If you like sleeping in, can this be considered an advantage? (Effectively 9:30–18:30)

You can be late twice within a month (within 30 minutes) without having your pay deducted. You can leave on time at 6:30, and they will not require you to work unpaid overtime under the guise of being responsible for your work. Your salary is deposited on time.

Regarding the work:

There are the common problems of a small company: one person is used as three people (you also have to take turns cleaning the office and taking out the trash). Although the position is only a sales assistant, basically, they expect you to know how to do everything in every position (except graphic design) so that you can provide support. During the interview, they said they could train you if you lacked experience, but in reality, they hoped you were already experienced in online marketing, could draw inferences from one example, and would avoid wasting their time training people. The sales assistant only gets a small-screen laptop that frequently lags. The company says there is no budget to buy a desktop computer?? Yet everyone else except me had a desktop computer; I was the only one without one. It felt extremely disrespectful and made it difficult to work (the laptop frequently lagged). HR required you to clock in when arriving at work, but not to clock out. HR implied that, regarding salary, you only needed to remember to clock in on time, and that you could leave on time because your salary definitely would not be undercounted. They repeatedly implied that everyone did this, so you should follow along. Since it was a traditional punch-clock system, even if the Labor Bureau conducted a spot inspection, it seemed they could immediately manually add proof of clock-in and clock-out times, right? I do not know why they did not allow employees to clock out.

The company’s employee turnover seemed quite high. Often, people who had only been there for a few months were training new employees. It also seemed that even the most senior employees had been there for less than a year. As a result, after A finished teaching you, B would say it was wrong; after B finished teaching you, C would say you were wrong. The same task was taught using three different methods, forcing you to revise it three times. Then, when problems still occurred, employees A, B, and C would discuss how to do it together. Finally, after reaching a conclusion, they would have me do it a fourth time before it succeeded. (You cannot try to solve things on your own, because then you would be accused of being presumptuous and messing around—even if what you produced was correct. You have to wait for them to give instructions before doing anything.)

Finally, I asked that in the future, whenever I was assigned a task, everyone discuss it first before having me, as a new employee, do it. However, everyone already had a heavy workload, and no one wanted to handle things that way. So eventually, I was the one who was dealt with—fired—because I supposedly lacked efficiency and had poor learning ability??

Benefits:

There were no bonuses or gifts for the three major holidays, and it was uncertain whether there would be a year-end bonus. It depended entirely on performance. You also had to remember to learn how to calculate your own monthly salary; if you could not calculate it, they would simply undercount your daily wage by one or two days. They also made arbitrary deductions for National Health Insurance premiums after resignation. If you resigned in the middle of the month, they deducted the entire month’s health insurance premium. When I raised this with HR, HR insisted that they had not overcharged for health insurance. In the end, I had to contact the National Health Insurance Administration before they were willing to refund the excess premiums. Since I resigned after working for nearly one month, I raised the issue once after leaving and recovered the salary that had been over-deducted. HR’s response was absolutely astonishing.

Based on an analysis of all the conditions above, the abilities they require (they preferably want someone experienced) do not seem proportional to the salary, benefits, and overall compensation. The company’s operating procedures also feel disorganized. When I resigned, I complained and offered suggestions to HR. Although I do not know whether they listened and will increase salaries or change the system for future employees, considering the office equipment and the bonuses and gifts for the three major holidays and year-end bonus, plus the fact that HR said they were an established company that had been around for ten years, change is probably impossible. I suggest that capable people consider the many other options available at other companies. If you urgently need a job and do not care about the salary, you could consider it. (HR was also the interviewer. She acted like a very nice person, but in reality, she was the one who fired me. She seemed extremely dissatisfied with me, yet kept praising me… haha.)

If you are going to work there… you absolutely must calculate your monthly salary and National Health Insurance and Labor Insurance premiums carefully. If you lose focus, they will deduct too much from you XD