Workplace reviews and discussion: 奇妮國際有限公司

Recommended for people who want to retire early—you can chew through their nest egg.

The company is very wealthy.

It has never taken out a loan.

[Company names]

1. Chini International Co., Ltd.

2. Panama-based LIAADI International Co., Ltd.

3. Taiwan Jou Bei Co., Ltd.

Why three companies? Because all three are the same—they all work for the Chini Maternity & Nursing brand. Many companies like to establish branch offices on small islands~

Chini Maternity & Nursing is a counter brand found in department stores throughout Taiwan, yet it managed to do something like this. As expected, traditional industries really are unsurprising 🙂

[Reasons for calling them out]

1. “Asked” employees to take 20% of their salary to buy company gift certificates

During the pandemic, because the company’s sales had dropped by more than 50%, even after successfully applying for government subsidies, it still couldn’t make up for its losses. So, verbally, the company “asked” employees to take 20% of their salary out of their salary accounts in cash after receiving their June pay, and use it to purchase company gift certificates to help cover the company’s losses. The 20% referred to here was 20% before labor and health insurance deductions.

For example: assuming a monthly salary of 30,000, you would need to take out 6,000 to buy company gift certificates.

What if you can’t come up with that much cash, or you have student loans? No problem—the company said you could pay in installments. You had up to three months to produce 20% of your salary. Everyone was asked to stand together through the difficult times and get through the hard period with the company.

2. “Asked” employees to use annual leave for make-up workdays

This seems to be quite common. As everyone knows, they tell you to use annual leave in advance. If you’ve just joined and don’t have any annual leave yet, you can owe it in advance; once you have leave after six months, the company will automatically deduct it~ The company is truly so considerate 🙂

3. No air conditioning

At the time, Taichung was subject to water restrictions, with water shut off two days a week. There was no air conditioning on those two days, and the office was unbearably hot and stuffy. Two-thirds of the exterior windows were broken and couldn’t be opened. Why weren’t they repaired? I don’t know either. After repeated reports, the company always said it was working hard to repair them. One colleague even suffered heatstroke, and when they reported it to the supervisor, the supervisor said: “It’s just that there’s no air conditioning. You’re making too much of a fuss!”

But, supervisor, you were sitting near one of the few windows that could be opened!

Chini has a “system” of treating employees as responsible for their work from clock-in to clock-out, so as long as the work is completed, you can work anywhere. But when I applied to work remotely under this “system,” it was rejected 🙂

During those two days without water, I wanted more than anyone for it to hurry up and rain. The two months were simply a nightmare. By the afternoon, the stuffiness made me dizzy and foggy-headed, and at night I had to get gua sha to dispel the heat toxins ☠️

4. Lots of meetings

Many companies probably have this issue, so I’ll briefly describe Chini’s situation. Out of five days a week, three or four are spent in meetings. Are there really that many meetings to hold? Because the boss wanted every department to understand what the others were working on, even if something had nothing to do with you, you still had to attend the meeting: “Learn as much as you can—it will help you a lot in the future.” That’s a catchphrase of exploitative bosses; it’s basically the same few lines on repeat~

5. The boss has very poor emotional control

If you want to cultivate patience and develop self-discipline, I highly recommend working at Chini. The boss is an unpredictable animal; for the rest, you can look at Job Eye, where former colleagues described things in greater detail. Oh, right—although they say it’s a responsibility-based system, you can’t leave immediately at 5 p.m. The boss will wonder whether you don’t love the company and will think you’re running away as if you had wings.

Those are probably the main reasons it was so bad. As for benefits, there were none: no overtime pay and no compensatory leave, so no one was willing to work overtime~

The only advantage was that you could work remotely one flexible day per week. This was quite suitable for mothers with children, who could arrange their schedules freely. In fact, working at Chini wasn’t very stressful—there were just endless meetings, and you couldn’t learn anything at work. You were simply biding your time in early retirement. If you want to retire early, I highly recommend Chini Maternity & Nursing! 👍

If you want to learn more gossip about Chini, feel free to Google: Chini property dispute

The news articles are still available, and they’re written in great detail~~