Workplace reviews and discussion: 安捷新科技股份有限公司

1. Colleagues are all fairly easy to get along with

2. Punctual working hours

Interview:

The process was neither particularly good nor bad—just ordinary. Apart from initially interviewing for 安X新 but then being told that I would be working at 艾X, everything else was fairly standard.

<Event One>

On my first day, the chairman of 艾X (an elderly man) took me to work at 艾X. As described above, there were so-called “etiquette classes.” Overall, they were absurd. The instructor was a Taiwanese elderly man.

In the first class, about telephone-answering etiquette, the elderly man learned that I had previously worked at the front desk of a hotel overseas, so he was very interested in learning about our front-desk telephone-answering etiquette.

I briefly explained: “When answering, we would say, ‘Hello, this is XXX Hotel. My name is XXX. How may I help you?’” (The above is translated into Chinese.)

The elderly man’s expression gradually became strange.

He asked: “That’s it? Didn’t you write the guest’s mobile number in a telephone book? How did you contact the guest afterward? Didn’t you need to report to your supervisor?”

Me: “Yes, because after saying that, the guest would start explaining their needs. If they needed to make or cancel a reservation, we would handle it directly in the computer system, so there was no need to write it down separately and submit it to a superior.”

The elderly man: “That’s very crude of you!! How could you do that?...”

The process lasted about an hour. In short, according to him, the way we answered and responded to calls was very impolite = =

(BTW, I had to stand and listen to him the entire time.)

For the next two weeks, I was periodically dragged into “etiquette classes,” regardless of whether I was busy!

<Event Two>

Because the company’s supervisors placed great emphasis on employees being polite... yet the supervisors’ words often made you uncomfortable :)

When entering the company in the morning, you had to greet everyone you saw. Whenever I saw the elderly man, I would say: “Good morning, Director X!”

One morning, he told me to attend an “etiquette class,” where he taught me how to say good morning for the entire session!!

The elderly man: “You speak too gently and too softly! If you continue like this in society, you are destined to be treated like a worm and destined to fail! You should say, ‘Good morning, Director X!’ The first three words can only take up a quarter of a measure, while the final word, ‘morning,’ must take up half a measure. Now say it to me ten times! Say good morning to the projector, say it to the door!...”

I spent the entire morning saying good morning to objects... He even required me to say good morning to my quilt when I got up, to the sun, the large trees along the road, and strangers :))

All because I didn’t pronounce the final word “morning,” I was lectured for an entire morning...?

<Event Three>

The elderly man suddenly said he wanted to help me develop my potential. At first, he said he wanted to understand my interests and personality, and asked what I wanted to get from work.

Me: “Ultimately, people work to make money. Besides that, I want to learn some professional skills and knowledge from the job. Other than that, I also want to learn about investing.”

The elderly man: “I understand. You just love money (...= =?). So how do you usually improve your knowledge and learn?”

Me: “I read some business magazines and materials related to investment and financial management. I’m also studying foreign languages.” (I graduated from a foreign languages department.)

The elderly man: “Oh, reading that XX Weekly is useless! You just don’t have anyone who can help develop you. You couldn’t find a single person in all of Taipei who could develop you. Fortunately, you’re lucky enough to have met me. You’re really greedy! You’re already developing yourself, yet you still expect me to help develop your potential (...???) ... Even esports players have better reaction times than you. People who study the humanities only get stupider the more they study. ...” (The entire process lasted nearly 2.5 hours.)

After leaving the meeting room, I hurried back to my seat to work on copywriting that was due before the end of the day.

About half an hour later,

the elderly man came over holding a map of the Taichung Metro and asked me: “How many stations are in the circled section?”

Me (very busy): “You want me to count them?” (I was already getting somewhat impatient.)

The elderly man (smiling): “Yes!” (I thought that if I didn’t count them, he wouldn’t leave.)

Me: “18.” (While I counted, he counted along: 1, 2, 3....)

The elderly man: “It took you ten seconds to finish counting. You’re so pathetic! You should know how many stations there are as soon as you receive it!! From now on, I’ll conduct this kind of potential training on you from time to time, and I’ll always choose when you’re busiest. I suggest you give up specializing in languages; that will make your development go more smoothly.”

<Event Four>

One day, the elderly man spoke with an engineer and hoped he could switch to sales, because the company was truly chaotic. Employees kept leaving in batches, so there was not a single salesperson when I joined the company.

At the time, I was a rookie. I heard from colleagues that new employees stayed an average of one or two months before resigning. I had been at the company for less than a month, and two people had already resigned, while another was waiting for their last day.

He kept telling the engineer that, in this capitalist society, what he needed to teach us was competitiveness—money, money, money, money!

(The talk lasted about two and a half hours.)

The elderly man came out and looked at me: “You look very happy whenever you hear the word money. I’ve never seen anyone who loves money as much as you do. But you’re too thin-skinned, so you can’t accomplish anything significant yet. Come back and talk to me when you’ve grown thicker-skinned~”

<Event Five>

One day, the elderly man asked me to attend a class because he wanted to instill in me the idea that “because I’m poor, I can make more money.”

The elderly man: “You can’t have your own opinions, ideas, or negative emotions. You need to understand one thing: because you’re poor, you can make big money. Come! I’ll take you to different places in the office, and you have to shout at me five times: ‘I can’t have my own opinions or negative emotions, and because I’m poor, I’m going to make more money.’”

I spent another roughly two hours listening to the elderly man talk nonsense and walking through every corner of the company shouting that sentence...

<Event Six>

Both the young-miss supervisor and the elderly man required employees of the two companies (艾X and 安X新) not to communicate or have contact with one another. Since the two companies were different original manufacturers in the same industry, they were worried about confidential information leaking, which is understandable. However, the first group of employees and supervisors at 艾X had actually transferred from a branch of 安X新, so the supervisors on both sides presumably discussed a lot of work-related matters.

The young-miss supervisor once told me: “Remember this carefully: supervisors communicate because we need to support one another. But you must not think that this means it’s okay for you to go out to eat with employees from the other side. The original manufacturer is very sensitive about this.”

Simply put, the supervisors communicated much more than the employees, yet they were guarding against their own employees leaking confidential information. They even sent engineers trained by 艾X to work at 安X新, and so on. I’ll leave it at that. If anyone from either of the two original manufacturers happens to see this post, they probably know roughly what I’m talking about :))

<There are still many more incidents, but I won’t list them all. In short~ there was a new farce every day. The only fun at work was probably seeing what absurd thing the supervisors would do next.>

Summary:

1. Because this is a family business, you will discover after joining that the supervisors are all very absurd. There is no consistent management approach; everyone says something different. A tells you to do 1, B tells you to do 2, and then questions why you did 1.

Or A tells you to do 1 today and 2 tomorrow, then asks in an unpleasant tone why you did 1 :)

2. You cannot have your own ideas or opinions here; the supervisors will dislike you or even target you.

3. The supervisors all let the elderly man interfere with employees’ work, and none of them will help the employees.

4. The supervisors are all fairly emotional. When they are in a bad mood, they become aggressive and look for trouble, as if they bring their personal emotions into the company.

5. You won’t learn much. Not long after joining, you’ll start looking for a new job.

<Best of luck with your job search>