1. All the colleagues are very nice.

2. You leave work on time; even if you cannot finish everything, you do not need to worry about it.

There are simply too many to list—they are practically endless. If you really want to know the details, I suggest talking with your colleagues after you join the company.

1. The boss’s and the boss’s wife’s desks are extremely dirty and disorderly. They do not proactively organize their own spaces, which are roughly comparable to the garbage-house rooms featured on Videoland Japan Channel. (The company does hire a cleaning lady, but she does not touch or tidy the items on the office desks.)

2. The boss may sound humorous when he speaks, but in practice he is unable to offer effective directions for improvement. He always says things that only he understands, then expects you to figure out what he means. In reality, he is merely shifting responsibility for execution onto his subordinates. The boss’s wife only provides design references found online and asks you to pursue that feeling. Not only is there no creativity involved, but the references are not even helpful. When the two disagree, the boss’s wife’s originally emphatic position will inexplicably be automatically silenced. (In other words, you have done extra work for nothing once again.)

3. The company’s salary includes a perfect-attendance bonus. In other words, the perfect-attendance bonus is not an additional reward; NT$500 is taken from the originally agreed salary and designated as the attendance bonus. This was not mentioned at all during the interview. Put another way, if you have no absences whatsoever during the month, you receive your full salary (obviously, after deducting labor and health insurance premiums). If you are absent at all, your daily salary will be deducted, followed by another NT$500 deduction—the attendance “secret technique” is used here—and then labor and health insurance premiums will also be deducted. Of course, from the second day of absence onward, only that day’s salary will be deducted; the additional NT$500 will not be deducted again.

4. The company’s salary is not always transferred first thing in the morning on payday, because it must first be approved by the boss. The boss sometimes does not come into the office until the afternoon, so it is very common not to receive your salary until that afternoon. If payday falls on a holiday, the salary absolutely will not be paid early—that is impossible.

5. The boss is extremely stingy. After four months at the company, there was no year-end banquet, no spring banquet, and no start-of-year bonus—not to mention ever being treated to any drinks or snacks by the boss. (At first, they said there would be no year-end banquet because it was too close to Lunar New Year; later, they changed it to saying that there would be no spring banquet because of the pandemic.) The only company-provided food I ever had was pineapple cakes sent by a supplier; everyone got two to take home.

6. The company uses every employee as if they were three people. Senior designers also have to act as design assistants and handle miscellaneous tasks, and occasionally help revise the wording of crowdfunding materials.

7. The boss and the boss’s wife are short-sighted. They only look at immediate profits and have no concrete ideas for the brand’s long-term plans. Many of the company’s products are sourced from manufacturers in China, with the company designing its own labels and packaging. The business is developed in the form of gift products. Do not assume that because Mr. Sai has a counter in department stores, all of its products are developed and designed in-house! If you have imaginative, unconventional ideas, this is absolutely not a suitable place for you. I personally was a victim of having my creativity ignored.

Finally, based on my own observations, I believe the boss and the boss’s wife treat employees with an attitude of distrust. I will not give detailed examples. They do not want to cultivate talent; they treat employees like servants.

Of course, everything above is purely the personal opinion of this servant. If you cannot stomach it, just regard it as me venting and talking nonsense.