Workplace reviews and discussion: 寬瓏有限公司

1. Convenient location

2. Employee discounts

1. Not allowed to eat breakfast in the office

2. Not allowed to eat potato chips because they’re too greasy, but Doritos are fine

3. Originally, employees could listen to the radio at work, but later, because there was too much negative news about a certain political party, employees were no longer allowed to listen

4. No salary breakdowns. The perfect-attendance bonus keeps changing between 1,000 and 500, and whether pay is deducted for being late depends on the boss’s mood. When no deduction is made, she turns around and emotionally blackmails employees for the favor

5. Time is taken extremely seriously. Employees must be very punctual when starting work. During lunch, they say there is “10 minutes of flexibility,” but if you actually return during those 10 minutes, they still get annoyed. Even tooth-brushing and bathroom breaks are scrutinized, and they calculate how long you spend in the bathroom. Yet you cannot leave exactly on time after work. If you do, they assume you have not done enough and start increasing your workload, or call you in to review and criticize your work. There is no overtime pay. They say overtime can be exchanged for compensatory leave, but provide no records or process for calculating or applying for time off. It always feels as though the employees are the ones being accused of quibbling over a few minutes

6. Even though they clearly dislike employees laughing and joking during work hours, they tell new hires that the employees do not like chatting. You are only allowed to laugh when they themselves think something is funny

7. They do not want employees to help one another with work

8. They expect one person to be able to do many things, even if those tasks are not part of their job

9. Photography planning, styling, layout, graphic design, photo retouching, uploading, video filming and editing, social media management, livestreaming, newsletter publishing, influencer collaborations, data analysis… all of these may be assigned to the graphic designer

10. Marketing staff will be fired if they do not work on holidays

11. Product development is not allowed to draw its own designs; they can only copy and modify other brands’ styles, even though trends always reach them slower than everyone else

12. They hired a consultant, but it was just more empty promises

13. They often ask employees for their opinions, but do not genuinely want to hear them. They already have an answer in mind and only want someone to agree with them. So when your answer differs from what they expected, they start saying, “But I think…”

14. Employees have to use their own phones for livestreams. They have always said they would buy a company phone, but never did. On one occasion, the boss’s wife’s phone really had to be used, and only then did the boss immediately buy a new phone

15. They always think they are better than their competitors, but the others’ name recognition left them several cities behind long ago

16. They love comparing themselves with a certain brand from another industry. In private, they think they are several levels above that brand, while envying its decor, sales, and reputation. They also keep telling employees to copy that brand’s work, wanting to be like them without wanting to spend the money. The same goes for marketing: because the owner of that other-industry brand said she did not recommend a certain approach, they simply stopped using it, while the other brand continued marketing that way

17. The annual plans look beautiful on paper, but not a single special project, collaboration, or anything similar has ever been completed

18. Extremely suspicious; the surveillance cameras monitor everything with 360-degree, zero-blind-spot coverage

19. Employees are not allowed to stay in contact with people who have left the company

20. If a discussion about the work ultimately does not align with her ideas, she says, “If you want to leave, I’m not going to force you to stay.”

21. She considers the benefits better than those at other companies, but people stay at the company for reasons other than exceptionally good benefits. Yet she tells employees, “If you think another company’s benefits are better, it’s fine for you to leave.”

22. There was already someone assigned to be the primary livestream host, but the boss loves taking over the work—changing the set, hogging the camera and the conversation, and setting up her own punchlines that only the boss and the boss’s wife find funny

23. Be careful not to become the subject of rumors while working here

There are plenty of other incidents I could talk about. Anyone who wants to study human behavior or enrich their life experiences can come here