Workplace reviews and discussion: 班可諾有限公司

1. Great company location, lots of delicious food, and convenient transportation—right next to Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.

2. The colleagues are all easy to get along with and help one another.

3. The boss places great importance on “eating” and often treats everyone to lunch at restaurants. If you really enjoy eating... this might be a pro, but the boss loves ordering excessive amounts of food and then forcing everyone to finish it. I found it very stressful... and it was a huge waste of food.

4. The company has to worship on the 2nd and 16th days of each lunar month. There are always snacks, local specialties, and alcoholic drinks that we cannot finish, and we work overtime at night.

1. The company’s turnover is extremely high. The boss herself even said that some people stayed for a month, a week, or just three days. Personally, I stayed for a month and a half before I could no longer stand it and resigned.

2. During the interview, they said that an event PR company often requires overtime, and that overtime comes with neither overtime pay nor compensatory leave. However, meetings are often called at 6 p.m. at short notice and run until 11 p.m.... We also had to come into the office to work overtime on both weekend days. But unless it was because we had to be on-site for an event, it was not counted as overtime. The boss believes that working overtime reflects a lack of personal ability, but I felt that much of it could have been avoided. With clear instructions and procedures from the boss, there would not have been a need to do so much pointless work or waste so much time.

3. The company claims to have a flat organizational structure with no supervisors, and that the only difference between colleagues is their seniority. In reality, this is because the boss has a Wu Zetian-like personality: everything has to go through her approval before it can be done, and employees get scolded whether they do too much or too little. When problems arose while the boss was away, asking more senior colleagues was useless. As a result, work efficiency was extremely poor—everything had to be brought to the boss and approved by her. In reality, it was a “nominal democracy.”

4. It is expected that a small company will lack systems, but deducting five days of leave because I was two hours late on the day of an event was completely unreasonable. In reality, it is essentially a family business...

5. The final straw that drove me to resign was the boss’s frequent personal attacks when speaking. She did not address matters objectively and did not demonstrate the standards or professionalism expected of a boss. She criticized employees’ ideas about projects as well as their private lives, while thinking she was being humorous and objective. In reality, the boss was the most subjective person of all.

6. There are no clear rules for salary increases. Some people received a 2,000 increase after working for a year and a half, while others got a raise because they submitted their resignation. It all depends on the boss’s personal whims.

The drawbacks are too numerous to list. I’ll leave it at that. Those who are prepared for it can give it a try.