Workplace reviews and discussion: 可夫萊食品股份有限公司

1. The location is not very far from the MRT station (commuting to and from Taipei is fairly convenient)

2. Overtime is paid (but excessive hours will attract scrutiny)

3. Inexpensive food options nearby

1. Unclear division of responsibilities: The position you were hired for may be reassigned at any time, or you may be given many unusual additional tasks (handling supervisors’ personal errands and group purchases for their relatives and friends).

2. Meaningless, excessively long meetings: In addition to regular meetings, employees are frequently called into meetings, supposedly to develop new projects, but these often lack planning and ultimately come to nothing. The weekly and monthly regular meetings are meant to help everyone understand each other’s work, but it often happens that department supervisors have no idea what projects their subordinates are working on, or question your progress and publicly berate employees in inappropriate language.

3. Family business + parachuted-in personnel: A common problem in traditional industries. The family-business structure makes titles and positions effectively meaningless at this company, and conflicting instructions from different bosses are common: A agrees while B disagrees, delaying projects, after which employees are blamed. Inexperienced personnel are put in charge of multiple departments at once, while employees must also remain mindful of their supervisors’ moods.

4. Employee work time is occupied: Courses are scheduled during working hours, ostensibly to help department employees learn, but the content is repeatedly recycled. Employees are also required to carry out projects without any marketing budget, leaving them to mechanically repeat the cycle of proposal → decision → no budget every week. Meanwhile, employees have to work overtime every day to handle other business, completely putting the cart before the horse.

5. High departmental turnover: An average of two to three colleagues resign each month. The company’s approach is not to hire replacements, but to leave all the work to the remaining colleagues. If you work too much overtime, you will be reminded about it. Even after passing the probation period, the company will not proactively raise your salary; instead, employees are told: “I’m afraid that if I raise your salary, you’ll become lazy,” and “Unless you can do much more than you do now.”

- The food industry does fairly good business year-round. If you live nearby and want to experience a traditional-industry company, you could consider it.

The salary is not very competitive, but if you work plenty of overtime, you can barely make a living here.

It can also be a good place to test your stress tolerance.