Getting to take photos with the bosses, I guess? :)

First of all, during the interview, because I had no relevant experience for the position, we negotiated based on the minimum salary shown on the job bank. However, just as other netizens have said, during the second interview, a senior executive cut the salary. At the time, I felt interested in this field and hoped to accumulate relevant experience. I also thought it should be a large company (sorry, I was wrong), so I was willing to accept it. But please note that the company plays word games with terms such as perfect-attendance bonuses and allowances. I also failed to pay particular attention to this at the time (hitting my head).

Because it is a Japanese-style retail channel, you might assume it is a Japanese company or a Taiwan-Japan joint venture… But it is actually an out-and-out family business. There is a royal family. The company is indeed very large, but its outlook is extremely narrow.

As for the company culture, I would call it a monarchy. What to sell, what to bring in, and which vendors to sign contracts with—all are decided by the royal family. Products that have been developed with great effort, even after contract negotiations with vendors are more than halfway complete, can be immediately rejected if the royal family does not like them. Of course, there are also some “royal relatives”: as long as you have a good relationship with the royal family, anything is negotiable. It is a company that operates almost entirely on feelings. Another absurd thing is that even when the king wants to give gifts, employees have to help come up with ideas. They might ask a vendor for a quotation for a single gift box (sorry, it was not going to be introduced later anyway). A supervisor even worked overtime for the king’s gift without thinking it was inappropriate. Since this was my first time working at a family business (and I hope there will not be a second), I was extremely shocked.

Since we are talking about operating on feelings, I have to mention this company’s KPIs. Under normal understanding, an employee’s KPI should be evaluated using criteria such as overall performance and actual work completion. But this company has none of that; everything is based entirely on feelings. For example, if someone is thought to have appeared on television to promote a product, or someone else is considered a confidant of the royal family, their KPI rating will be “B+.”

After discussing KPIs, let’s talk about the company’s most important commendation ceremony. Companies that love making a show of their achievements usually like formalism, and this company is no exception. The company specifically rents a banquet hall at a grand hotel (they do not invite you to eat; they only have you sit below, listen to the king speak, applaud, and participate in taking photos for grand external publicity—and you have to arrive before working hours). Employees who meet their KPI targets can go onstage to take photos with the royal family.

Then you must think there will be a salary increase, right? There is no salary adjustment if you have been employed for less than a year. Even after completing one year, adjustments are made only once a year, and the maximum is 1.5%. In other words, if your monthly salary is NT$30,000, the maximum increase is NT$450.

And if you originally wanted to know your KPI score so you could improve on your shortcomings, the company cannot provide that either. HR’s explanation is that the company does not provide KPI scores. Even when asked about score ranges, they have no idea what to say (all right, it is simply based on feelings).

Now, speaking of HR, they are also a disaster. Everything people say online is true—there is no need to doubt it! Before joining, there was the late arrival for interviews, looking down on people, and carelessly leaving out parts of the onboarding process, among other things. After joining, there were problems everywhere as well… The tradition at this company is dual-role assignments. Simply put, one person does the work of two or three people, so HR also doubles as general affairs. But they do not need to do the tasks general affairs is supposed to handle, such as going to the post office to mail letters or printing documents. Even something as simple as buying stationery can be done incorrectly (the key point is the careless attitude). They probably only order drinks, and even those are not very tasty (this part is just my subjective impression). Let me also briefly mention the office environment. Of course, a traditional company will not have impressive interior design or anything like that. There are three restrooms, one of which has been broken for years. The pantry often has cockroaches throwing parties (well, it is not surprising that this happens here). The company turns off the air conditioning after five o’clock, so if you finish work at six, you will genuinely feel so stifled during that hour that you will want to get angry.

There is also store support every year. The company holds an anniversary sale every year, and employees at headquarters have to support stores in northern Taiwan, three days per person. Weekend support can be exchanged for compensatory leave, which must be taken within two weeks. But if you provide support on weekdays, your original work can only be put off; once you return to the office, you have to work overtime and finish it no matter what. Also, annual leave must be requested two days in advance. If you take three or more days of annual leave, you must request it one month in advance and write a corresponding review report (what exactly is being reviewed?).

Finally, returning to the department itself, it could be considered the department with the most sweat and the most pitfalls. There are two department managers, and both have very good attitudes. Manager A is very kind and gentle, but sometimes is too nice: even when the department is severely understaffed, they still handle matters from other departments (strange). Although both managers have good attitudes, it is very obvious that they do not think from the perspective of their department subordinates. They always stand opposite their subordinates and think about the employees of other departments instead. As for the work itself, the company’s system is very clumsy. Many tasks require manual data entry and purely visual inspection. In addition, we have to handle most of the miscellaneous matters for stores, such as when a customer comes to a store and wants to buy a small accessory for a product, when a customer sees a product in another sales channel but our store does not sell it, or when a customer wants to discuss returning a defective product that they have used (yes, used—you have never seen anything like it) (BTW, stores also frequently process returns incorrectly, such as returning goods from Vendor A to Vendor B).

The result of selling everything is unclear market positioning. Vendor responsibilities are also very disorganized. Officially, work is divided according to product categories, but in reality it is disorder within disorder… For example, if you are responsible for Vendor A and that vendor also does side business in Product X, this position has to handle Product X as a side responsibility instead of passing it to the relevant person (I am not sure whether this is a company or manager problem… Also, positions here are assigned however they feel like assigning them; performance is not considered. It is extremely freestyle). I had always thought that observing and analyzing the market was necessary, and that product allocation also required analysis, but none of that exists here. As mentioned above, what to sell and how much to sell are decided by the royal family (the royal family’s radar often malfunctions: whatever they bring in becomes slow-moving inventory. Having this ability is quite impressive), and no one really knows what the evaluation and approval criteria are. As for contracts, I am not sure whether it is because the royal family is out of touch with ordinary life or thinks too highly of itself, but the contracts truly inherit the company’s consistent culture. Since this involves professional ethics, I will not elaborate.

This is an extremely traditional family business. The average age is around 40 or above, and the royal family is self-centered, constantly changes orders, and loves making a show of its achievements. Even though the second generation manages the company, the characteristics of the previous generation have been passed down intact. Their thinking is antiquated; they talk about innovation and challenges, but in practice they have old-fashioned, entrenched attitudes. Young people cannot make use of their strengths here. The company is extremely overbearing both internally and externally. When it holds its own events, it requires vendors to provide complimentary gifts. The monthly afternoon tea budget is only NT$50 per person, and employees have to pay the difference themselves. Computers are repaired when they break, then break again after being repaired (to the point that supervisors have to bring their own computers to meetings with vendors, while the supervisors are so submissive that they accept this readily). Bonuses—the kind worth a hundred dollars—are never transferred; they are put in red envelopes instead, as if the company were bestowing an enormous favor on you. Even when handing out a few hundred dollars in bonuses, the company calls itself a “happy enterprise” (oh, right! The “happy enterprise” designation is the result of the company requiring employees to vote for it every day, so please do not believe it). Overall, the company does not value talent or treat employees as assets, while externally it is self-important and constantly promotes how amazing it is.

Finally, some people may wonder why I stayed as long as I did (I have since resigned). I had worked at other large companies with well-established systems that treated employees considerately, so I was genuinely shocked when I first arrived. To be honest, the work itself was not particularly difficult, but the chaotic division of labor, the company’s love of putting on a show, and its various systems were speechless-making. If this were simply a company that exploited its employees, I think I could have accepted it—after all, companies everywhere are much the same… But what is interesting about this company is that, despite exploiting employees in all kinds of ways, it constantly claims to be a happy enterprise and is extremely skilled at external publicity. There is no so-called Japanese-style service, only a monarchy. At first, I thought I would endure hardship as a form of training and hoped to learn relevant experience (but in reality, I only learned an extremely superficial amount). Later, there was also some human attachment, since my colleagues and supervisors were nice people, so I ended up staying for a while.