Workplace reviews and discussion: 南誠羽毛實業股份有限公司

Free meals are provided (but they’re unappetizing and there’s no choice).

Free company motorcycles are available for commuting (but fuel costs aren’t included).

They’re fairly generous with hardware equipment.

There’s almost nothing near the factory that you can order for delivery.

They love painting grand pictures, but in reality they don’t even have a sesame seed.

They’re very good at bragging. At the time, I heard them say that when they held an on-site pop-up event, 50% of the people who tried their pillows would buy one. In reality, there were 10 people total, and only 5 bought one.

Salary deductions can amount to as much as NT$5,000. When we first discussed it, the probationary salary was supposed to be NT$30,000, increasing to NT$35,000 after becoming a regular employee, with a separate commuting allowance. But when I looked at my payslip, I was being paid NT$25,000. I went to ask my supervisor, and he actually told me:

“Because I saw that you drove, I thought I’d add another five thousand as a fuel subsidy. But now you take the train.”

What the hell does that mean—is the Taiwan Railways free now? My round-trip fare alone is NT$120 every day, not counting parking fees. And that’s not even mentioning the time spent commuting.

Just helping him build an after-sales service and returns/exchanges system from scratch, writing a chatbot and a Google Form, and putting them on the fan page so customers could automate returns and exchanges was worth more than this dead-end NT$25,000 salary, okay?

They love assigning people outside their field to jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with their expertise (e.g., making the graphic designer handle e-commerce platform paperwork and payment platforms instead of having accounting do it—the company accountant doesn’t want to do it either).

Getting reimbursed is incredibly damn troublesome. Even when buying something worth only a few hundred dollars on Shopee, employees have to pay first and then submit a reimbursement request after the goods arrive.

This traditional manufacturing company wants to transform into an e-commerce business, but the boss isn’t proactive, the supervisor is single-mindedly rushing ahead and making a mess, and the old-school administrative staff complain about every little inconvenience. The marketing team has to chase everyone, block problems, and figure everything out. At that point, why don’t we just start our own business and buy products from the factory to sell?

The supervisor has lots of ideas, but most of them are based on gut feelings, and the employees underneath are often exhausted by it.

The supervisor pretends to let everyone discuss new products, marketing strategies, and other interesting topics in meetings, then overrides everyone at the end and announces what he actually wants to do. But when our opinions genuinely aren’t needed, he loves dragging everyone into discussions anyway (e.g., pricing existing factory products, merging product lines, printing QR codes on labels…). In short, he’s a dictator who really likes pretending to be democratic.

The supervisor talks a lot of nonsense. Things that could be resolved in one or two sentences become three-minute explanations. If you say partway through that you don’t understand, he won’t ask which part you didn’t understand; instead, he’ll start explaining from an even more basic level. If he keeps asking questions, he may eventually get all the way back to the creation of heaven and earth. (For example, if you ask how to distinguish from photos between products that differ basically only in their ingredients and cannot be differentiated by appearance, he may start explaining why these products were designed in the first place and the personal journey behind them.)

Otherwise, he starts talking about people he knows and bragging about his connections, even using those acquaintances as the core of a marketing strategy to persuade everyone to proceed that way. (It’s normal not to understand this sentence, because it really is that absurd.)

He can twist and take statements completely out of context until they become what he wants to hear. When a vendor tactfully explains why market research needs to be done first instead of directly using his preferred marketing approach, he can seize on the opening they give him and launch into an attack. A perfect example of what it means to take kindness for weakness.

When communicating with him, he can keep saying, “Okay, then we’re on the same page,” “I understand what you mean,” and “I completely get it,” while the very next sentence is completely beside the point. He can repeat this behavior three times in a single conversation. It’s maddening.

I’m not sure whether he’s simply clueless or just very good at exploiting ordinary people’s politeness to play dumb (see the “take kindness for weakness” example above), but he uses emotional manipulation and PUA tactics very smoothly.

If it’s a topic he doesn’t want to discuss, he’ll dismiss it with “That’s unrelated” or “Those are two separate things.” Usually, though, he has misunderstood what the other person is asking and arbitrarily decided it’s unrelated. He never asks why the person raised the question, and if the other person presses him after he gets annoyed, he treats it as the other person’s problem.

Meetings basically consist of repeating the same tactics described above: a waste of time with no meaningful purpose, because what he wants isn’t opinions but an audience. There are only four people in a meeting, including the supervisor, but he insists that someone take minutes. He also encourages “every department” to hold meetings like this regularly, even though the matters under discussion could simply be coordinated privately.

During meetings, you have to put down whatever work you’re doing and cannot type. Even if you’re only typing notes of the key points or quickly handling something on the computer that was decided in the meeting (e.g., using LINE to ask someone for information or checking your inbox), he sees it as interfering with the meeting and disrespecting him. He uses this to question your work attitude and make a show of threatening to fire you. I’m not sure whether he’s thin-skinned or uses this excuse to threaten anyone who challenges his authority.

Otherwise, he keeps painting grand pictures until he develops a serious case of self-importance.

Basically, he’s a very self-centered person, but he has absolutely no self-awareness.

Then he’ll recommend that you read Satir’s book on self-awareness. (lol)

Things that were agreed upon beforehand (such as taking leave and whether benefits would be paid) will later be used as emotional-blackmail leverage, but if you’re too polite, he’ll take advantage of you.

A conspiracy theorist—the anti-intellectual kind.

He thinks it’s a good idea to find nontraditional medical personnel to endorse and promote health-oriented products. To put it bluntly, it’s like finding a quack to sell prescription medicine, and he does it with complete confidence.

☆Completely★No☆Planning★At☆All★

They don’t start thinking about the after-sales service process until products have been returned. Even then, it’s the employees below who panic, scramble together a process, and submit it for his approval; otherwise, he can’t be bothered.

Seven products were shipped and four were returned, yet he had absolutely no realization that this was a massive warning sign. He kept picking faults with the people who returned them, assuming they were either exceptions or just causing trouble.

Customer: “The pillow is too firm/too low.” → “They definitely didn’t fluff up the pillow by patting it before using it.”

Customer: “The pillow’s height doesn’t suit my body type.” → “Who measures pillow height these days? Don’t people just see whether a pillow feels comfortable to lie on? Only an engineer would insist on putting it in numbers. Maybe he’s an engineer from another company trying to steal our product specifications.”

Most customers want to return the product. → “Crowdfunding platforms are just full of people who like buying things, using them for a while, and then returning them.”

Anyway, no matter what goes wrong, it’s never his fault.

In short, just don’t join this company. Unless you’re a Ministry of Labor warrior sent in to punish him on behalf of the workers.