Workplace reviews and discussion: 鼎極國際餐飲股份有限公司

I worked at this company for six years. Below is a general description of the job.

First, you should know that Ding Ji International Food & Beverage Co., Ltd. operates a chain of restaurants (Noodle House San Shi); I did not work at a restaurant location, but in the office.

There is not much to say about working on-site in the food and beverage industry. Without passion, it is difficult to stay in this industry, and this company is definitely not one that will offer you good待遇 or promising growth prospects worth looking forward to. Therefore, whether for front-of-house or back-of-house positions, I strongly recommend skipping this company.

As for office work, the advantage is that the workload is not heavy, and you can leave work on time. You can find quite a bit of free time to do things you want to do. You will have the opportunity to handle nearly all kinds of back-office tasks; with some time, you can learn how finance and accounting, general affairs, human resources, and insurance operate in the retail industry.

That is all there is to the advantages.

There is so much to criticize that it would be impossible to list it all.

1. First, regarding salary and benefits: I held a managerial title, but had absolutely no one working under me. My salary was only slightly higher than that of newly hired full-time front-of-house and back-of-house staff at the stores, and it had not been adjusted for more than five years. The bonuses for the three major holidays were NT$1,000, and the year-end bonuses in recent years were also a joke: NT$1,000 or NT$2,000.

I joined this company because I had Japanese-language expertise (Japanese was needed for ordering, emails, and interpreting at meetings), but opportunities to use it were very limited. People with language expertise absolutely should not join this company either. Without opportunities to practice, that expertise will slowly deteriorate, not to mention the insulting pay.

2. The company's systems are determined by the owner (you can look up this company's information and the owner's name through the Department of Commerce of Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs; this is exactly the kind of person you should avoid in your job search). His decisions are often unnecessarily urgent—if something could be decided ten days in advance, he would insist on deciding it on the same day or the day before—which frequently left us cleaning up after those decisions. His decision-making standards were extremely poor, and the rational and professional suggestions of the employees beneath him were almost never effective.

For example, one time a restaurant launched a new ramen dish topped with a whole grilled cuttlefish. Its original name was “Squid-Grilled Ramen,” but because the great boss thought the word “squid” sounded bad, he came up with the idea of renaming it “Pirate-Grilled.” He also asked me whether that was how you said it in Japanese. Following the basic conscience most humans are born with—and my unfortunate Japanese expertise—I told him that it was not. But for reasons I cannot fathom, it was ultimately launched under the name “Pirate-Grilled.” You can still search online for the name and images of this ramen today, confirming that what I said is true.

3. Building on the above, the operation of each restaurant was highly unstable. The owner conducted the interviews and also made the hiring decisions. His peculiar state of mind and evaluation standards often led him to hire people who were highly unsuitable for operating within the restaurants—whether they were unfamiliar with the pace of the work, unable to adapt to the monotonous and demanding duties of chain restaurants, had questionable ethical standards as employees, or simply did not care about cleanliness and hygiene. He would also tell people whatever they wanted to hear, casually agreeing to employee requests on-site, and then make those of us in the office play the bad cop. Under these circumstances, experienced restaurant employees were replaced extremely quickly and frequently, making it impossible to maintain quality and operational stability. The same problems kept occurring, and the root cause was precisely the owner and his unique, self-centered system, yet nothing could be done to resolve it.

Therefore, I strongly recommend that everyone think carefully before joining this company.