Employees receive discounts on shopping and dining. Tea and drinks in the company’s self-service area are available without limit, and sweet soup can be enjoyed after meals. Sometimes, you can also have their own brand of organic bread and cakes.

Overall, the work is extremely exhausting. Breakfast (one session from 8:30–10:30), lunch (two sessions from 11:00–15:00), afternoon tea (one session from 14:30–16:30), and dinner (one session on holidays from 17:00–20:30) run consecutively.

The company cuts staffing to an extremely, almost absurd, degree. One person is genuinely worked like five people. If you want to work there, you need to be prepared to treat yourself as someone who can be worked to the bone. Every day, you have to handle several different positions.

If you work in the front of house, you also cover the central station. When the dishwasher is on leave, you still have to help with dishwashing. Sometimes you have to assist at the bar. If the shop is too busy, you may also be called over to help. Sometimes, when the shop is busy during a meal period and someone goes out to deliver bread and lunch boxes, you have to help check out customers for them.

During the interview, they said the salary could reach 27,500, but after officially starting work, you receive only 24,000. That is just the basic wage required by the Labor Standards Act. After deducting labor insurance, health insurance, and group insurance, you actually receive 22,800. As for the performance bonus that is supposedly distributed proportionally, the amount received is never more than 100. The gifts for the three major festivals are simply company gift vouchers and meal vouchers.

In the past, the entire dining area could be filled with more than 100 customers; now, a full session has around 60 customers. The front-of-house staff are often left alone to face more than 100 people in total (counting the breakfast, lunch, and afternoon-tea sessions together). When you are the only front-of-house employee while also having to cover other positions, you feel mentally and physically exhausted every day, with your energy completely drained!

Anyone considering working there should think twice. Of course, the supervisor is not someone who is impossible to communicate with. However, when you try to communicate with him, he has to be willing to pay attention and listen. Otherwise, communicating with him feels like mutually playing Tai Chi: first deflecting serious issues with a light touch, then using evasive tactics, occasionally offering a conciliatory approach, or making solemn promises that things will improve—but ultimately nothing comes of them.