Workplace reviews and discussion: 新光醫院_新光醫療財團法人新光吳火獅紀念醫院

There are no pros.

The only advantage is probably that they are thoroughly awful.

1. They say no, but their actions are very honest: workplace bullying and maliciously forcing employees to quit. It seems as if workers are about to wake up from a nightmare, unable to control themselves, while every day they accelerate the brainwashing with nonsense, indoctrinating people with bullshit theories and claiming that everything is a reasonable demand. Do they think they are still in the military? They make promises very boldly—after all, it is your liver they are working to exhaustion! When they can no longer indoctrinate you with their bizarre theories, they start maliciously forcing you out and doing everything they can to get rid of you. Their methods are vile; people in the other labs can all see it. From conversations with research assistants in other labs, I learned that they had already treated workers this way before. I am not the first person they have done this to. It seems they have become extremely skilled and adept at maliciously forcing people out and bullying them at work. They won again.

2. In the end, even when having a “warning” (“negotiation”) with you, they insist on recording it as evidence! It is truly terrifyingly twisted! That’s right: they take out a phone, start recording in front of you, and negotiate about what you are going to do. It is outright pathological. This exploitative boss has become so disgusting that they have completely crossed the line and violated workers’ mental and physical well-being. They say that you can raise any ideas, but all they do is deny and belittle everything as much as possible. In the end, all I got was my time wasted. After resigning, I really need to see a psychiatrist and seek counseling.

3. As long as the employer thinks you are not working seriously, you are considered not to be working and to be wasting their time. This completely proves that “effort will not be noticed, but lack of effort will definitely be watched.” Being deliberately monitored like this every day is extremely frustrating. They are very good at calculating your one-hour meal break; if you go even slightly over, they make a big issue of it, because they have treated other people the same way. If someone works slightly past quitting time, they regard it as the worker’s problem.

4. Same as above: if they think you are not doing anything, they will deliberately move next to you and sit very close, watching you work. Can we have some social distance? Especially in summer, the sour body odor is truly disgusting. It is not only psychological torment but also a bodily-olfactory assault.

5. There are supposedly occasional workplace dinners, but instead of simply having a meal together, the message they want to convey is: if you eat the food at their dinner, you must work harder and do more. Hearing that makes me want to vomit it right back at them for them to take home as a late-night snack. I really do not know where they get the nerve to “encourage” employees like this.

6. As for the work itself, they give you a huge amount of work at once—basically pushing you to your limit, or assigning you an excessive workload. When they see that you cannot handle it, they first talk nonsense and tell you to manage your time better, then reduce the workload only slightly to make sure you do not reach overtime and claim compensatory leave (less than half an hour does not count as overtime). If you waste even one minute of their time, they think you have been slacking all day. What kind of twisted logic is that?

7. Excessive workloads happen every single day! Before the results from the previous batch of experiments are even out, they immediately give you another identical batch, with more work for the same pay, tormenting you in an endless cycle of nightmares. When I see it, I only want to throw it in the trash. They only say, “This is easy; the results will be out soon!” Of course it is easy when you are not the one doing it. While you leisurely trade stocks, surf the internet, and drink coffee, I use my life force to produce your results for you. In short, they want to fully exploit every minute of your time and get everything out of you. They choose the easy tasks, and if you cannot produce the results they want, it is all your fault for wasting their time. It was only here that I learned that an experiment apparently counts as a result only if it matches expectations. Is research really that easy? It is hilarious. With logic like that, I believe every laboratory in Taiwan could publish in Nature.

8. When conducting experiments, it is best to handle everything yourself from beginning to end so you know where problems may arise. This laboratory works like a production line, so do not go there! They will absolutely never admit their mistakes; instead, the person who takes over and fails to produce the expected result gets blamed. Unless you catch their mistake on the spot, they might admit it—but even if you do catch it, what difference does it make? They will still waste even more experiments on using you. Moreover, the work consists of learning (copying) other people’s experiments, with no breakthrough, originality, or development, yet they still dream of submitting to Nature. Please do not drag down Nature’s standards! When I was writing the journal content, I genuinely felt there was no particularly meaningful research there; they were conducting experiments for money, rather than finding funding to conduct research. A laboratory of this caliber really should be shut down. It is basically a parasite on Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council! If the Council does not know how to review insufficiently funded projects, it could simply hire former research assistants who know which laboratories are really taking (cheating) money to conduct research (garbage).

9. Experiments should be planned properly; you cannot use measurements merely to obtain the results you want! With this kind of research logic, they might as well just study the methodology. You are treating it like promoting near-expiry products at a wholesale supermarket! All day long they waste money and then shout that they have no money, while also going around forming “collaborations” (asking for money) and owing everyone. You would do best to avoid this way of seeking funding as well. Much of it is simply spending money to attach their names to things. Is this really the standard of ethics in a good research field? Honestly, ethics courses should be mandatory for professors, not research assistants. So many scandals involve professors being the problem!

10. Many people assume that someone with a PhD has a certain level of English, but this person’s English is so terrible it is laughable. I genuinely do not know how they obtained the degree. Their English papers follow perfect Chinese-English logic. Fine, that alone might be forgivable. But while acting as a journal-writing assistant, they were very good at nitpicking my wording despite their laughably poor English. This was truly bizarre to me (everyone who knows me, including my students, recognizes my English ability, and I am known as the strongest backup; when students or friends urgently need help, many come to me for assistance). One day I finally discovered why they thought all my English sentences sounded strange: they cleverly used Google Translate on the research content I wrote. This nearly made me faint. Anyone who has used machine translation for papers, especially scientific journal articles, knows that the translated content can only provide a very rough overview. Then they used their Chinese-English logic to review (criticize) content written by a native English speaker. That finally solved the mystery in my mind.

11. I originally thought this research center was trustworthy, but it turned out to be nothing but a nightmare—the worst kind. Not paying what they owe is truly shameless. I thought we were on the same side and trusted them, but I bore all the risk while they took the most money. While working as a journal-writing assistant, I received a laughably poor fee but bore the greatest risk (based on what a friend told me about their situation). This awful boss demanded that payment would only be made after the article was finished, submitted, revised, accepted, and published. Although they paid for a few articles at first—giving me a taste of the benefits—because I could finish an article quickly, many completed articles accumulated later, while their own experiments were not yet finished and still needed to be completed before submission. By the second payment, it was obvious from their expression that they were reluctant to pay and thought I was earning money too quickly. At that point, I could really see their unhappy face as they paid the second fee. I understood then that paying me made them very unhappy! After I finished the last few articles, they had no intention of paying, and by then we had already begun arguing. The whole thing simply ended without resolution. After I resigned, they had no intention of paying me and conveniently removed my name as well! Outrageous, right? The experiments I did and the papers I wrote were simply plagiarized! Anything they did not pay for is still mine, and what I do with it afterward is my freedom. You owe me, and I will absolutely make you pay back twice over!

12. A chronically suspicious and extremely gossipy exploitative boss is someone you should definitely not get too close to! During the final period when we were arguing, I took leave to handle paperwork (it absolutely was not to interview for another job, because the interviews had ended long before; they were simply being completely oblivious and assuming they were clever for guessing what I was doing during my leave). Since they saw me taking leave, they deliberately asked how the interview for my new job had gone, when I planned to resign, whether I should give advance notice, and complained that good people were hard to find. What does that have to do with me? I will follow the Labor Standards Act. After all, they also use the Labor Standards Act to pressure you. During this period, they even asked whether I wanted to be laid off and take the severance pay. Did they really think I did not know which legal grounds they would use to dismiss a worker? A bad boss like this would of course claim that you were unsuitable for the job. They must already be very experienced at it! Honestly, I do not need that little bit of money. I had the nerve to resign myself, and I was not afraid at all! I can find another job; do not assume this is the only job I am capable of doing.

13. “Be happy for one day, and be unhappy for one day too—so why not be happy for one day?” The biggest piece of bullshit ever! They argue with you first thing every morning, make you miserable, and then tell you to be happy for the day! How could anyone be happy seeing a boss like this? I will only be able to smile happily after I resign and am finally liberated! Laughable—this shitty job and rotten place have no room for development. They should hurry up and shut it down and put the funding toward meaningful research institutions.

This experimental center has some very serious problems. There are still good teachers and doctors working hard on research to contribute to better medical care, but a rotten apple has damaged the reputation of the entire center. It is important to choose the right people to work with; choosing the wrong exploitative boss can become a lifelong stain on your life. It is utterly disgusting.

When you encounter an abusive boss, do not put up with it, because tolerating them once only makes them push further; taking one step back makes them even more enraged, and eventually you will explode. Here I personally experienced capable workers being overworked while being paid less than others. Once they knew what I was capable of, instead of thinking about giving me a raise, they gave me even more work!

You can only deeply understand the disgusting behavior of exploitative and abusive bosses after experiencing it yourself—and they do not even think they have done anything wrong. Everything is someone else’s fault! They egg each other on; they are truly birds of a feather!