Workplace reviews and discussion: 皇嘉休閒育樂事業股份有限公司

I applied for the front desk position.

- The two current front desk colleagues are very easy to get along with; there’s only one who is somewhat…

- The hotel has a small number of rooms—only 23.

- The hotel is next to Xiziwan Paid Seawater Bathing Beach, with beautiful scenery that looks like Bali.

- You only need to rotate between morning and evening shifts; no overnight shifts are required.

- The evening shift ends at 10 p.m.

This is a very small, jack-of-all-trades hotel. The front desk alone has to double as the switchboard, reservations team, banquet reservations team, restaurant reservations desk, restaurant host stand, and housekeeping department! If you have worked at a larger, more structured hotel, this situation may be difficult to accept.

All calls are routed to the front desk. You have to know how to handle room reservations, restaurant reservations, venue bookings, and banquet reservations because guests will ask! The morning shift also has to sweep and mop the lobby (so you also double as public-area cleaning staff).

What is more baffling is that, even though there is a housekeeping department, the front desk ultimately has to go upstairs to inspect the rooms and check whether housekeeping missed anything, dust, and vacuum the floors. The evening shift also has to wash blankets used by guests…

When the front desk staff eat, someone from sales, wedding planning, or banquet reservations (another jack-of-all-trades position) has to cover the desk. So it is nothing like the one-hour break stated on 104: as soon as you finish eating, you have to hurry back out! There may not even be anywhere for you to sit and eat!

In fact, it is not just the front desk that requires you to wear many hats; everyone there does. If you think this means you can learn many things that cannot be experienced at a large corporation, please first prepare legs of steel, because you will have to stand, stand, stand, stand, and stand. The chairs nearby will be taken by the sales staff and senior front desk employees because they always have things to do.

Because the hotel is located on the campus of National Sun Yat-sen University, many professors and officials come to dine there on weekdays. The front desk staff also have to recognize these people by face; if you fail to recognize someone, you may get scolded.

So they not only violate Article 35 of the Labor Standards Act, which states: “When a worker continues working for four hours, they shall have at least thirty minutes of rest.”

The pay is not any higher either, and the female owner lives at the hotel :)

On my first day at work, I stood for six hours, sitting down for only 15 minutes to eat a few bites of food;

On the second day, I stood for six hours. There was nowhere to sit while eating, so I could only crouch in the Chinese restaurant kitchen and eat for 15 minutes.

There was no third day—I didn’t apply to be a security guard…