Workplace reviews and discussion: 員邦室內裝修設計股份有限公司

1. The company benefits are good, but they were not very okay in the year I left.

2. The 18F reception area is reasonably well designed and presentable.

3. A gift box of fish is provided during holidays each year.

4. Free snacks and fruit are provided from time to time.

1. In practice, an administrative assistant is basically a jack-of-all-trades. You do many things that were not listed on the job website; the listed duties account for only about one-third of the actual administrative work, while the pay is very low.

2. They like making administrative staff redo work. The same information is routinely required to be processed in two or three different ways, which is extremely time-consuming when you already cannot finish your own work.

3. Tasks that should be handled by on-site staff or case officers are pushed onto administrative staff. What was originally just helping out becomes taken for granted.

4. Administrative staff are not responsible for making payments. There is no problem with forwarding all payment-request documents upward, yet upper management instructs vendors not to ask the accounting assistant about payment dates, but to ask the administrative staff instead. This makes no sense, and vendors will hound you relentlessly for payment. It happens every month; just dealing with this leaves no time for anything else.

5. Although I was only a very junior administrative employee, overtime was routine—it could run until 10 or 11 p.m. Sometimes I also had to work overtime on Saturdays and Sundays, or was suddenly asked to work overtime at the end of the day. Even with overtime pay, it was not enough to make up for the exhaustion.

6. When the company changes its policies, it does not communicate clearly with case officers and vendors. The company, case officers, administrative staff, and vendors all end up understanding things differently, but somehow it all becomes the administrative staff’s fault and responsibility. The company often makes a decision and then assumes everyone knows about it.

7. The administrative supervisor does not speak up for subordinates or fight for their rights. When case officers ask administrative staff to handle matters outside their responsibilities, the supervisor tells the administrative staff to swallow it themselves.

8. Case officers pass their own responsibilities to administrative staff, asking them to deal with matters they cannot handle.

9. Upper management thinks administrative staff should be understanding of how hard case officers work out in the field, but no one ever shows understanding when administrative staff are unfairly scolded by case officers. We are even expected to comfort the case officers afterward. Is this position supposed to include working part-time as a psychological counselor?

10. They will reassign your position arbitrarily after you have joined and reported for work.

11. It is basically a family business. The boss’s son often has far-fetched ideas and loves assigning administrative staff pointless extra work.

12. Calculating salaries, including those of contract employees, should originally be HR’s job. However, because of the company’s online system, administrative staff are required to calculate contract employees’ salaries. Am I also supposed to work part-time in HR?

13. After administrative meetings, we are asked, “Do you have any questions? Feel free to raise them and we’ll solve them together.” Every issue raised is shot down by the boss’s son or we are told to swallow it. Was the question just for show?

14. Tasks that should be handled by another department are assigned to administrative staff because the person in charge there cannot do them, and we are not allowed to refuse. Just eat it up—complete it thoroughly and to the fullest, with maximum “nutrition.”

15. The administrative supervisor does not carefully assess the administrative staff’s workloads, so work is distributed unevenly. The attitude is simply to keep piling it on; if you do not complain, they assume you are fine.

16. Matters that should be communicated with clients by the supervisor began, at some point, to be assigned to administrative staff. It then became the norm.

17. When vendors cannot prepare the payment-request documents they are supposed to handle themselves, case officers tell administrative staff to do them. Shouldn’t the administrative staff be paid extra for this??

Conclusion: If you are not emotionally resilient enough or not willing to be exploited, please think carefully before applying.