I am Stephen, the person in charge of Tai Rui Design. Here, I would also like to express my own philosophy and attitude toward working in the interior design industry, as well as respond to the comments and feedback above.

In fact, I saw the comments above approximately two years ago, and I know which colleagues left them. Recently, they have indeed had some impact on our company's recruitment efforts.

The “interior design” industry certainly sounds as though it offers the illusion of professionalism/taste/creativity/making lots of money??/, but once you actually enter the industry, whether you are a student who majored in the field or not, you will feel that the workload and pressure of this job are enormous—and surely all of it must be the fault of an exploitative boss. The boss must be exploiting the employees; this company is super lousy.

And indeed, you are not wrong: this really is a very lousy company. Compared with McDonald’s, the hourly wage is even less than 100, and even I feel that you are being treated far too unfairly.

But what is the reason I insist on making you endure this unfairness and take responsibility for your complaints? The reason is that I know how to build a lasting career in the interior design industry without failing to live up to the professional standards of “interior design.”

I know that the work standards I set for you exceed what you feel you can bear. But “strictness is actually a standard; when you feel that something is strict, it is because you have underestimated your own abilities.”—Jiang Zhencheng.

Yes, I cannot tolerate the construction drawings you produce being full of errors, so I have to spend time explaining every detail of the drawings to you, making up for the drafting skills you failed to learn properly at school. And the extra time spent at the company is what you call “overtime”??

The company is willing to give you time to hone your designs and organize your thoughts, and the additional time spent is also “overtime”??

Indeed, I was wrong. My expectations of you were too high; I believed that you should hold yourselves to higher standards at work. As a result, the requirements I set for you at work have felt like harsh treatment to you.

Children, interior design in Taiwan is inherently a malformed industry. We are responsible for drawing, as well as supervising construction and handling contracting. In terms of the job categories in society, that is equivalent to the workload of doing two jobs. I know how much work a professional designer can handle in a year, what level of workload constitutes excessive working hours, and how long it should take to complete a professional set of drawings. In fact, there are established working-hour standards for all of these. And children, you do not even have the ability to do one thing correctly and properly, yet you say that the company makes you work excessive hours.

Ultimately, this was my fault, because I thought you had passion for the interior design industry, were willing to establish your own standards and sound professional competence, seriously confront the shortcomings in your professional abilities, and be willing to learn.

Children, in fact, the career that suits you is working part-time at McDonald’s.

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