Workplace reviews and discussion: 台灣奇士美化粧品股份有限公司

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1. Company working hours

Flexible working hours—many people have mentioned this.

Start time: 08:30–09:30

End time: 17:30–18:30

The company once announced that it would start turning off the air conditioning at 17:30.

2. Leave policy—the company does everything it can to prevent employees from gaining any advantage

Although it sounds nice to have one hour of flexible working time, if you want to take leave, you must start counting it from 8:30 a.m., regardless of whether it is personal leave, annual leave, sick leave, or lateness.

If you take leave that day, you cannot apply for overtime, make-up work, or anything else.

But of course, you were not actually allowed to apply for overtime in the first place, because the princess will get angry.

Annual leave is provided according to the Labor Standards Act, at the minimum number of days.

Depending on the princess’s mood, the company may require employees not to work on make-up workdays, while deducting one day of leave or withholding one day’s pay.

On typhoon days, if you do not work, one day of leave is deducted or one day’s pay is withheld.

If the employee trip lasts two days, one day of leave is deducted or one day’s pay is withheld.

If the employee trip lasts one day, you must assemble earlier than your normal work time, and they take you shopping, out to eat, and to buy local specialties through the travel agency before sending you home—roughly the itinerary.

The minimum amount of leave is two hours. If you arrive at 9:32 a.m., your leave period is 8:30–10:30.

The leave system is closed every week, meaning they simply do not let you apply for leave anymore!

3. Company supervisors? They are all merely nominal—the department heads for all employees are the princess

This company has four divisions. The head of one division is the princess, and the division’s responsibilities cover everything under the sun, including human resources, general affairs, finance, IT, procurement, and customer service. However, the princess’s actual specialty is product development; this can be found through an online search.

The princess wants everything reported to her, regardless of how big or small it is. I mean really small things—even something like replacing a toilet seat at the company requires asking her for approval.

If you think having the princess serve as the department head is an expression of being close to the people, you are completely mistaken, because the princess asks many questions that leave employees speechless, without realizing it herself.

An example of such a speechless moment would be asking an employee giving a presentation: “Was this task completed by X alone? Was X able to complete this task because she is pretty?”

Or suppose a task has five stages, and it has already reached the fourth stage very successfully. The princess asks: “Did you do XX in the first stage? You didn’t? Start over from the first stage.”

4. Kishimei is very popular with retirees returning to work

The princess has about six supervisors under her, two of whom are old—in terms of age, not because they have deep seniority at this company.

This company really likes employing retirees, hiring them to use knowledge and skills that many people consider outdated. Writing this out makes me realize that perhaps this is why the company has remained stuck in place, or even moved backward.

There are also employees who worked at Kishimei for a long time, retired, and were then rehired. The princess likes this employee very much, but the other employees do not. The reason is not competition for favor; it is that this employee is very good at pushing work onto others. Even if the employee says, “That’s not my job,” nothing happens.

5. Organizational changes far exceed industry standards

Over the past five years, the average has been approximately 1.5 to 2 changes per year. You have not even become familiar with the work before being transferred again, and then they ask, “What’s going on? Isn’t this your job? Why aren’t you familiar with it?”

6. Taking shameless advantage of people

The latest organizational change was layoffs. H Department’s way of doing things was to lay off employees first and then ask other departments to take over the work. Some of it should have gone to F Department and some to H Department, but both F and H refused to accept it. So H Department told an employee from S Department who was laid off at the end of June: “Since the handover isn’t finished, could you work for one more month?”—extending the layoff until the end of July.

However, because H Department can reliably carry out practices such as underreporting XX and requiring employees to work on national holidays without paying double wages, it is still heavily relied upon. In fact, H Department is also an accomplice. That is clearly evidence of a crime, isn’t it?

7. You have to swipe your card both when entering and leaving

This was my first time encountering a small company where you have to swipe your card both in and out. Swiping when entering is fairly common, but also having to swipe when leaving—the company has a very strong desire for control.

8. Small-company mentality

In every respect, the way this company operates reflects a small-company mentality—or else the mentality of a company from 50 years ago—in other words, employees are treated like dirt.

If the princess tries to bluff you by saying that the company is a large company in terms of headcount, funding, and scale, perhaps that is true. But all the employees inside feel that this is how a small company operates.

If the princess says she is generous and always wants to improve employee benefits, all I can say is: don’t listen to what the boss tells you; if you do, you lose.

9. The company is not large, but it has an enormous number of procedures

For the past three or four years, the company has been working on BPR and saying that it wants to simplify processes. The idea is good, but in practice things have become increasingly complicated, chaotic, and full of procedures. Much of this is because the princess is up in the clouds. This does not mean the princess has died; it means her ideas are up in the clouds and cannot be implemented. The reason they cannot be implemented is not that employees refuse to carry them out, but that they are vague and unrealistic.

10. Frequently doing pointless work

Pointless work happens very often at this company. They lay off the driver, then immediately realize that they cannot function without a driver and open a vacancy to hire one. They lay off the employees in Taoyuan, then immediately ask employees from Taipei to go to Taoyuan to help.

11. A meeting early every Monday morning

Many people have mentioned this meeting. The company distributes a small booklet produced by the “Asia Taiwan Corporate Ethics Promotion Association.” It contains many short stories, such as “Remember to bring an umbrella during the plum rain season; this demonstrates planning.” Stories of roughly that kind. Every week, employees have to read one story and then share their personal reflections. The princess also shares her reflections. Every employee has to stand; this week, it seemed we stood for half an hour before it ended.

12. Members of the Asia Taiwan Corporate Ethics Promotion Association who are unethical

Ironically, a member of the Asia Taiwan Corporate Ethics Promotion Association committed an illegal workplace-ethics violation. The entire company already knows about it unofficially.

13. Besides saving paper, they also save electricity

In addition to saving paper and putting up slogans discouraging employees from using it, the company still makes you sweat even when the air conditioning is on inside the office.