Workplace reviews and discussion: 雄獅鉛筆廠股份有限公司

1. The venue is newly built, with a pleasant and clean overall environment, and clean restrooms.

2. Free underground parking is available.

3. The expected benefits and bonuses are provided, although they are not substantial.

First, to clarify, my experience was at the Imagination Manufacturing Center in Longtan (a tourist factory), so everything mentioned in this review concerns the manufacturing center. However, I believe the situation at the Banqiao headquarters is probably similar, since the management team is the same and this is simply the corporate culture.

Before submitting your résumé, you might want to observe the job-posting activity for this company on the job bank. Positions are constantly opened and closed, then reopened after a few days, and every position is marked as urgent. Employee turnover is extremely high: more than 1x people have left since the beginning of this year, and over half of the full-time employees have already resigned or are preparing to resign. One entire group even left all at once, which gives you an idea of how astonishing the turnover rate is here.

There are truly many problems here—enough to write a thesis about. I suggest reading the reviews above carefully. The biggest source of chaos is the person in charge here, namely the chairperson’s daughter. Everyone privately calls her the “princess,” not only because she is the owner’s daughter, but also because her behavior is exactly that of a tower princess who knows nothing of the hardships of ordinary life and has no ability whatsoever.

The princess has extremely little ability to make decisions, yet every company decision must be approved by her before it can be carried out. Even worse, although she is the director, she only comes to work at the manufacturing center one or two days a week (starting close to noon). As a result, every decision, big or small, is endlessly delayed. When a response is finally received, it is usually still unclear, followed by an infinite cycle of waiting. Delaying, shirking responsibility, and framing others are everyday occurrences here. Over time, you stop wanting to accomplish anything; when something happens, you push it away if you can, because avoiding an extra task is better than creating an extra problem. After all, doing more only gives you more opportunities to make mistakes.

The princess does not like working in the Longtan office and almost never goes to the site to see the actual situation. Instead, she hides in her castle (office), so she learns about issues within the organization and even complaints from outside visitors by “listening” to others. As mentioned above, the princess is indecisive and therefore easily believes the slander spread by certain employees she favors. She uses this to judge other employees’ performance. Even if she does not know you at all or has never seen you, if you have just joined the company and accidentally crossed these people’s boundaries, they will whisper in the princess’s ear regardless of whether they are in the same department. The princess accepts everything they say without question. With arrows stuck in your back, you are powerless to fight back and can only wait to be dismissed after your probationary period. Of course, this probably is not much of a concern at the moment, since half the company has resigned and they are short-staffed.

Finally, here is an interesting anecdote. When the princess encounters an issue on which she truly cannot make a decision, she does not ask colleagues to analyze or discuss it further. Instead, she finds an employee who knows fortune-telling and has them draw Tarot cards to decide. The princess has drawn cards to decide things such as event pricing and whether an employee should stay. In addition, when supervisors interview job applicants, HR attaches a numerology chart to the end of the résumé to determine whether you are the kind of talent the company wants. So if, after reading this article, you still really want to apply, I suggest looking up your numerology numbers online first. If you do not have the numbers 1, 5, and 9, sorry—you do not need to submit your résumé.