Workplace reviews and discussion: 台灣番薯傳播事業股份有限公司

Considerate: The company provides toilet paper for wiping your butt.

Fun: You must listen to the company’s own broadcasts throughout working hours, including breaks (you are not allowed to turn them off). The company operates two types of media outlets at the same time.

Benevolent policy: Deductions for being late become part of the funds for employee gatherings, so if you are late, you can go eat your wages back.

Grateful: The head of this unit accidentally revealed that in thirteen years they had only issued Mid-Autumn Festival gift money twice. Knowing in advance about the boss’s Taiwan-style management practices is truly exemplary.

Energy conservation and carbon reduction: There is an indoor parking lot, but parking for employees at the basic level is not provided; only motorcycle spaces are available.

Time-conscious: Overtime is not encouraged. If you do not finish your tasks, that is your own problem.

Excellent equipment: The exterior looks grand, while the salary is so lean that it is extremely sexy.

High quality: They hope to recruit administrative and communications professionals with university degrees, so they can produce large quantities of sales advertisements in a short time. In addition, their administrative abilities must be exceptionally strong.

This only targets the unit that is both stingy and exploitative.

No comment on the other units.

This situation has persisted in the unit for many years. The secretary and company veterans are fully aware of it, so there is no need to waste energy communicating or expressing dissatisfaction. Simply consider your physical, mental, and spiritual condition when deciding whether to work here.

Also, during a meeting, the head of this unit once publicly stated that if working here caused someone to develop problems, he could introduce psychiatric resources that he personally considered good. If you feel unwell while holding this position, you can ask him directly for relevant information.

1

One of the company’s privileged insiders; this person is extremely strong-willed.

They like to blast air conditioning with the coolness of a department store, ignoring the fact that the vent is not above them, and even making personal attacks, asking whether someone is on postpartum confinement because they are physically weak.

They will tell you to speed up because there will be many ad hoc tasks to handle (?).

They are prone to becoming emotional at work. Any matters related to them must be completed according to their self-defined specifications; if a colleague says they have other tasks on hand, they will be reprimanded.

Any work this person does not want to do becomes someone else’s work. Their own work consists of supervising whether you finish within the deadline they demand.

They desperately want to produce programs but keep getting rejected. Therefore, if you graduated from a related department, or if the company says it will train you to produce programs, they will be extremely hostile toward you, demanding that you demonstrate your professional abilities while making you do even more miscellaneous tasks.

They will photograph people and upload the images to their own social media without the subjects’ consent. If they ask you to help photograph what they want to shoot, consider your own finances carefully so you do not end up facing a lawsuit—or unexpectedly appear on their social media without being informed.

2

This person appears very courteous and friendly in dealing with others, but likes investigating other people’s privacy. Their personal network of informants is distinctive. They especially like taking care of new employees, ensuring that the person does not know how they were ruined until the day they resign. When speaking with them, it is strongly recommended that you retain relevant audiovisual and written evidence. Do not take this lightly merely because you are new.

They like a certain rice-themed internet celebrity. In meetings, they have used the influencer’s articles to lecture colleagues and may have the power to transfer people between units. Their actual power exceeds that of the supervisor. They frequently assign work to other colleagues without authorization, causing them either to do unpaid work or to misunderstand that something need not be done and then be reprimanded.

At first, they may use the pretext of managing the company’s social media to ask for your private social-media accounts. They will then search into your daily life and turn it into conversation material with others; their storytelling ability is outstanding.

If you want to work here, under no circumstances interact with them—but that is extremely difficult in the same unit. Try not to eat lunch with them. Your image, as described by colleagues in other departments, will be completely different.

They can say things in front of others that are completely inconsistent with the facts simply because this person personally believes them. Because the unit head trusts them immensely, they once falsely accused another colleague of going out to buy breakfast after clocking in. They could even pretend in front of this person that they had not been the one spreading the story, then privately report it themselves, ultimately causing the supervisor to be publicly humiliated.

They fabricate many stories. They may occasionally apologize, but their method is “beat someone in the middle of the street, apologize in a back alley”: spread the story first, then say privately that they never expected it to turn out this way.

They also like privately messaging you to ask for help with their personal work, while telling other superiors that they completed it, displaying their extraordinary abilities.

The unit had originally tried to find someone to rotate into this employee’s duties. During the newcomer’s evaluation, they told the supervisor that the person was incompetent. When the newcomer learned and asked questions, they said the person was too nervous; when the newcomer offered opinions, they said the person was uncooperative.

The unit head follows this person’s every word to an unbelievable degree. During meetings, the two of them take turns speaking and echoing one another. It is recommended that you also retain audiovisual and other relevant evidence during meetings.

3

The head of this unit appears extremely ambitious and very busy. They will tell you that there is great potential for development here and that you can learn many skills—ones that are of no use outside.

Later, however, you will discover that talking with them can feel like going around in circles. As for what they are busy with, you will have to work here yourself to find out.

Opinions raised by subordinates and problems with internal company execution will be ignored. If they speak faster and faster while you understand less and less of what they are saying, it means they can no longer persuade you and can only raise their voice.

They contribute greatly to the company. They take on many special assignments and even tell their superiors that they can complete them within a certain timeframe, yet they do not dare ask the first two people to handle these assignments.

As a matter of course, after excluding those two people, they require others to complete additional tasks within their existing work schedules. If they are not completed, it is your personal problem.

They follow the informant employee’s every word and therefore often use their authority to make other colleagues—excluding the previous two—clean up the messes those two created themselves.

They most often say that everyone is one team and emphasize what they consider fairness. At such times, employee 2 will echo them from the side, but unfortunately they cannot win public support.

Taking annual leave depends on this supervisor’s mood. If they do not want you to take leave, there will be all sorts of absurd reasons. One group, multiple sets of rules—again excluding the first two senior employees.

Overall culture

Every system represents the extreme of Taiwan-style enterprises. They will require you to sign confidentiality and employment contracts but will not give you a copy to keep, so some incidents cannot conveniently be looked up online.

The big boss likes lecturing employees in group chats; imagine the wording yourself. They have no concept of working hours.

Senior employees remain in their comfort zone. When an employee who has been worked to the breaking point is about to escape, they start finding ways to pressure them into staying, until one day a genuinely naïve newcomer comes to put out the fire—an endless cycle.

People in the relevant field will be very disappointed and unable to accumulate the skills and work they expected, because graduates in the field already surpass the unit’s senior employees professionally. They will be asked to share their materials.

Coming here lets you serve as toilet paper and disposable chopsticks. It is extremely, extremely fulfilling: you can enjoy a life of the ultimate imbalance between salary and workload, while also having to retain as much evidence as possible of assigned work to protect yourself.