Workplace reviews and discussion: 力譔堂整合行銷股份有限公司

Seeing the reviews from the previous “former colleagues,” I really felt a deep resonance! The only advantages are probably the camaraderie forged with colleagues through working around the clock, besides doing backbreaking labor at on-site events! (Except for the supervisors and boss.)

Oh right, there’s also the benefit of the company providing 24-hour uninterrupted electricity for overtime work and unlimited drinking water from the water dispenser (lol).

Other than that, there really aren’t any!!

Company structure:


1. The company mainly handles government tenders. For the sake of performance, the boss usually takes a scattershot approach: whether a project is suitable or whether you can do it, if it might help make up the performance figures, they bid for it first. It is very common to be told suddenly on Wednesday or Thursday that you have to bid for a certain project, because it may close for bids the following Monday or Tuesday. At that point, you’d better prepare to work overtime on Saturday and Sunday!

2. It is not unusual for each person to be responsible for three or four projects at once. You may have projects you are primarily responsible for, but you may also be pulled in to support other projects or sent to the site to work like a laborer. Why not assign the work to part-time employees? Because part-time employees can leave once they have completed their scheduled hours, and the company also has to pay them separately. Of course, regular employees receive that fixed monthly salary with no overtime pay, so naturally they are used to the fullest!

3. Basically, your days off are not really your days off. You are either coming to the company to continue working overtime or on your way to an event site. If you genuinely have personal matters to attend to and are doing neither of those two things, be careful—the supervisors may start deducting points from you in their narrow-minded hearts.


The boss and supervisors:

1. The boss teaches at a certain university, likes to recruit graduate students as free labor—oh, sorry, interns—and hire them directly after graduation if they do well. He is a very pragmatic person: he treats you courteously when he needs you, but once he no longer does, he treats you like a tissue and throws you away after use. To him, working overtime is normal. He has no ability to allocate time, resulting in several projects being carried out simultaneously through overtime. Never mind that your time after work is private time—you still have to keep receiving messages from him and the other supervisors after you clock out. You must remain on standby on your phone before work the next morning; if you do not reply immediately, you will be harshly berated. If you tell him the schedule is too tight and you cannot finish, he will only say that all of you must have been leaving work too punctually, so you must have been pretty idle lately, huh? (The boss’s theory.)


2. The company has several departments. There is a male supervisor in the design department who has a terrible temper and is very difficult to deal with. Because he is supposedly extremely senior, he is basically second only to the boss and above everyone else. He does not know how to lead or communicate properly. He practically does not want to handle any of the company’s projects: if he can avoid doing them, he pushes them onto the designers below him; otherwise, he puts them off for as long as possible, then starts ranting only after something actually goes wrong. The people under him are truly miserable too (crying).

3. If you want to learn design and work in design, the only things you can learn here are how to read people’s moods and how to soothe this grand gentleman’s tsundere ego. You cannot offer any substantive opinions, nor can you learn much about design aesthetics or skills. He acts as if everyone owes him something. Whenever you go to discuss a project with him, he either wears a sour expression or deliberately treats you like air and ignores you. You have to ask him repeatedly and soothe him before he is willing to cooperate. Otherwise, you first have to ask the designers under him what kind of mood he is in that day. Every discussion becomes nerve-racking. Over time, though, you learn to bring a snack or coffee when discussing things with him; alternatively, if there happens to be a more handsome colleague, it goes more smoothly if you go discuss it with him together. He often does not participate at all in the early stages of a project, then starts ranting when it is time to execute it, criticizing everyone for not consulting him. This leaves everyone caught in the middle. Oh, and he loves drinking until he gets completely drunk; then he comes to work saying he has a headache and not to disturb him. You have no idea whether he came to work or to sober up.


4. Several supervisors have been with the company since very early on. Either they could not leave, or they went elsewhere and later returned, saying that the outside world was not suitable for them. Whenever someone displeases them, they start criticizing or complaining about everything wrong with that colleague in their private supervisors’ group chat. Be especially careful around the company’s female supervisor (with a reduplicated first name) and another female supervisor who is also in the design department (who loves wearing revealing clothes and showing off her body). Both of them speak to you gently and pleasantly on the surface, but say extremely nasty things about you in private group chats. According to former colleagues, they wanted to dismiss employees without paying severance, so they would devise schemes to pin nonexistent offenses on you and summon you for a meeting, humiliating you until you voluntarily left. It is truly heartbreaking—you work yourself to death without even knowing how you died; I suppose that is what it feels like.


5. The company also has a branch in Taitung. The female supervisor there is also quite “amusing.” After work, she does not consider you off duty and continues sending messages late at night or at seven or eight in the morning. If you do not reply, she badmouths you behind your back, saying you have a bad attitude or are uncooperative. She also often makes unreasonable demands over trivial details. Unless you are driven crazy by her, she assumes you are not doing any work. Oh right, according to local colleagues, this woman also “evaluates” your overtime hours and abilities. If you worked three hours of overtime that day but she decides that the work should have taken only one or two hours, she will cut those overtime hours.

6. There is also a very strange fellow in the equipment department. He is always bringing bizarre cleaning staff into the company. As they clean, people’s belongings frequently go missing. Even when concerns about the cleaners are reported, nothing comes of it. Only later do you learn that this fellow thinks the company’s employees are boring, so he deliberately brings in people who look strange to see what new developments might occur. He also frequently disappears for an entire afternoon without anyone knowing where he went. When there is an equipment problem, he only wants to deal with it at the lowest standard and efficiency. If your computer breaks, he will only repair it enough to boot normally; whether the programs and software inside can open is none of his concern. He is extremely apathetic. How has he managed to stay there so long?


Summary:


1. Taken together, all I can say is that after enduring several days of late nights and overtime, the colleagues below usually develop some camaraderie. In contrast, the supervisors above (not to mention the boss) are practically immovable toxic tumors. To be fair, a few of them may—“perhaps” (who knows)—be capable at their jobs, but they truly do not know how to lead people. The only thing you can learn is how to read their moods and avoid being blasted in their private group chats. On top of that, the boss keeps taking on projects like crazy to boost performance without caring whether everyone lives or dies. People come and go in batch after batch. Truly good supervisors who are worth learning from are extremely rare; there are very few good people, and surprisingly many who will scheme against or undermine you.

2. After almost every project is completed, another wave of resignations comes. Of those who joined at roughly the same time, usually only one or two survive. At every supervisors’ meeting they talk about changing direction, but when the leaders set a bad example, those beneath them continue to go astray. The boss goes without saying. The supervisors seem to want to change the culture, but they never seem to implement any meaningful reforms. It is genuinely puzzling: if they are all so experienced, how do they still let the employees below them keep leaving? (呵呵)