Workplace reviews and discussion: 老協珍股份有限公司

Very famous

I went in as a summer part-time worker in the packaging area, but quit after a little over a month. If you’re looking for a summer job, take a look.

On job websites, you’ll see a bunch of part-time job listings that absolutely refuse to clearly state the company name but mention keywords for popular products. Those are all posted by the staffing agencies they hire. There seem to be about two or three agencies; the only difference between them appears to be that one pays on the 10th and another on the 15th. Other than that, I have no idea—it’s all very mysterious.

After applying, you’ll be asked to get a health examination report, a PCR test, and so on. Once you have everything ready, you can start work.

At the beginning, they’ll tell you whether your work location is in the outsourced or in-house section. When I went, the in-house section happened to have enough staff (?), so I was assigned to the outsourced section, though I was told I might be temporarily transferred to the in-house section as needed.

Both sides have the same break schedule: start work at 8:00, a 10-minute break at 10:00, lunch from 12:00 to 1:00, and another 10-minute break sometime in the afternoon—I forget when.

The in-house section involves putting products into packaging bags and handling raw food-related tasks. I didn’t have much experience with that part, so I’ll skip it for now.

The outsourced work mainly involves packaging products into retail-sized portions. The task you’ll do most often is scooping the best-selling products out of a fairly deep ice bin. You’ll need to practice grabbing three products with one hand and six with both hands at once, then stuffing them into packaging boxes. You’ll usually repeat this task throughout the morning, frequently bending down to retrieve products at the bottom of the ice bin and manually pushing the bin. As you can imagine, doing this for a long time will leave your lower back and body aching, so I recommend taking on this job only if you’re very confident in your physical fitness. Other tasks mainly involve putting frozen foods into boxes. Your hands get really cold; I brought two layers of gloves myself, and it still wasn’t quite enough.

Oh, right—the work is all done standing in air conditioning.

A lot of people quit after just one day, so the turnover rate is seriously high. But I always felt that they treated labor like disposable chopsticks—there would always be countless fresh recruits showing up later, so they really didn’t lack your labor. I don’t know whether they’ve improved things since then, since it was quite a while ago.

All in all, if you’re asking whether I recommend it, all I can say is: run for the hills.