Workplace reviews and discussion: 安益國際展覽股份有限公司

1. The office is beautiful, located inside the World Trade Center.

2. Most of the entry-level employees are decent people.

I hesitated for a long time about whether to write this article. After all, it does not benefit me in any way, and it also takes time to think about and write. However, based on the following two reasons, I ultimately decided to do it:

1. To provide job seekers with more information to help them determine whether the work environment and job duties of this position meet their needs, or even whether they can accept this way of life.

2. We all envy labor conditions overseas, but they did not fall from the sky; they were achieved through the gradual efforts and advocacy of every individual. Perhaps I cannot immediately change anything, but at the very least, I want to tell everyone, guided by my conscience, what I have seen, heard, and experienced. I firmly believe that disseminating information is itself a form of power, and I hope to make a small contribution to Taiwan’s labor environment.

Based on the following reasons, I personally believe that the owners or management are habitual exploitative bosses or managers:

1. They force employees to work overtime illegally. Employees are still forced to work beyond the statutory working hours (including being called in on weekends), with no overtime pay and no compensatory leave.

2. Their management mentality is appalling. First, they believe that employees should work overtime, and they feel no guilt assigning work after hours. Second, they knowingly violate the law. The company has a clock-in system, and employees are required to clock in and out themselves; if it is too late, they cannot clock out, exploiting loopholes in the law.

3. This is a company that will stop at nothing to make money. This is the main reason employees work unpaid overtime to the fullest extent. Personally, I believe that a gentleman should acquire wealth through honorable means. Who does not like achievement or wealth? But if they are obtained by violating the law or bullying employees, the more money they make, the more bad karma they are probably creating. Furthermore, although it appears to be a large company (around 150 employees), it has neither the structure nor the benefits of a large company. For a company of this size, I have heard that employee salaries are quite low. It does not cooperate with typhoon-day closures, and employees who do not come to work have money or leave deducted. (Apparently this is legal, but I had never heard of it before; I have never encountered a company this stingy.)

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The following describes the actual situation; it is a long post.

Under the Labor Standards Act, outside of the agreed-upon working hours, employees have no obligation to work. “Working regular hours is a basic labor right; overtime must be paid”; furthermore, under the Labor Standards Act, this job does not meet the conditions for an “all-inclusive salary” or “managerial responsibility” arrangement. So it is illegal, plain and simple.

Here, leaving work at 8 or 9 p.m. counts as early, and you still feel somewhat guilty when leaving because your colleagues are still working overtime. Leaving at 11 p.m. or midnight is common. It is not occasional; it is the norm. (At the design companies where I worked previously, one required overtime when rushing projects and sometimes offered compensatory leave depending on the circumstances, but it was not the norm, and employees could usually leave on time. At the other, employees almost always left on time, and the boss would even tell people to go home if they stayed too late.)

The management’s attitude is that overtime is simply expected. (At my previous job, the boss would ask designers to work overtime. There was no overtime pay, but at least the boss appeared somewhat apologetic.) Asking designers to come in and work overtime on weekends is common. Even after working hours have passed—8, 9, or 10 p.m.—they continue stuffing work onto designers without the slightest embarrassment. If you remind them that it is already after work and that you have something to do in the evening, they may say, “Do you expect the account managers to design it themselves?” They feel no embarrassment at all. If you say you have to leave, they will lie and tell you that it has to be given to the client at 10 the next morning, implying that if you do not finish it, you have not done your job properly. But it is simply a lie: they bully the weak and fear the strong, and are just taking advantage of the designers. Even when you have worked until 10 p.m., the account managers will pressure you by saying, “Give it to me before you get off work.” (Wasn’t work already over? Huh?) However, it must be said that the entry-level account managers are also victims; they work themselves to death as well.

The reason everyone works such excessive overtime is that the company does not merely want to make money; it wants to make “a lot” of money. At other companies, if a workload would reasonably take five days, here they schedule it for three days or less. Completing that workload still takes the same amount of time, so everyone has no choice but to work overtime. Since the overtime is free, the company’s profits can be very high because the hidden costs are paid by employees working as volunteers. Personally, I believe that wealth should be acquired through honorable means, and that one should not create bad karma. I hope management will examine their consciences: Is it really acceptable to build achievement and wealth on unfair methods that crush other people? This work environment also results in an extremely high turnover rate, which leads to even greater understaffing and creates a vicious cycle. (However, if they hire replacements, they will only assign even more projects; they will not let you off the hook.)

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Personally, I feel that this work environment has distorted people’s humanity to some extent, creating friction and awkwardness between people. After all, spending eight hours a day at work while constantly feeling uncomfortable is extremely unhealthy.

This environment makes people become somewhat twisted. If you are too nice, you will be exploited endlessly and work overtime until the end of time. But if you do not want this and try to stand up for yourself by refusing to work such excessive overtime, the work does not disappear automatically—it is simply shifted onto the colleague next to you, who then has to work even later. Wouldn’t that make things awkward between colleagues? And if you leave on time, everyone will notice.

I also cannot stand some of the distorted and misguided ideas that this environment has instilled in management and senior colleagues. More senior colleagues and supervisors have probably convinced themselves to accept this abnormal work environment and have consequently become accomplices. When they want to pile work on you that is fundamentally impossible to finish, they will “be nice” and ask you to “help,” telling you that you have “worked hard.” Then you can only “be nice” and swallow it, after which you work overtime until dawn. But if you are a good person, how can you not “help”? If you do not “help” your colleagues, how are you supposed to get along with everyone? In the end, you can only work overtime together with your colleagues and develop a kind of shared revolutionary bond. (It is extremely bizarre.) If you do not “help,” you even feel guilty, but in reality this is emotional blackmail. The fundamental issue is not whether you help or not; the company itself has a problem. If employees are required to work overtime, they should be paid overtime. If overtime is necessary because there is too much work, the company should hire more people or reduce the workload. Supervisors and senior colleagues often use soft pressure to force subordinates to comply. Although they also work overtime until dawn, I still believe they are merely accomplices of habitual exploitative bosses. This is like what James Dawes says in *Evil: Why Ordinary People Become Demons*: the characteristics of evil are not necessarily monstrous wickedness, but rather a frighteningly ordinary form of banality. During annual evaluations, the supervisor may pat you on the head and tell you that you are great, obedient, highly cooperative, and very responsible for working overtime. (As an aside, the soldiers who helped Hitler send Jews into gas chambers were later court-martialed. Everyone should carefully examine what they are doing!) To supervisors who ask their subordinates to “help”: “I have rent to pay next month—could you help me out?” “I want to travel abroad—could you help me out?”

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Regarding the work itself:

1. The company mainly handles exhibitions, trade shows, forums, and similar projects. The work may be more commercial, with less artistic or creative content.

2. It is a business-oriented company. Design is not decided by the designers; it only counts once the account managers approve it, and then the clients revise it again and again.

3. Because deadlines are often extremely tight, the account managers have usually already decided on the topic or concept, leaving the designers simply to draw. There is relatively little room for creativity.