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

Free parking, employee meals, a large and clean venue, bonuses when business is good, and in winter—which is the off-season—it can be somewhat quiet, allowing you to leave work on time.

I also work at Longtan Imagination Factory. It is a somewhat desolate tourist factory located partway up a mountain. My experience and comments are about Longtan; I know a little about the Banqiao location, and coworkers pass information back and forth. The key point is that the core management team is sent from Banqiao, so in terms of company culture, both locations are managed under the same system. However, after working there for a while, managers from Banqiao deliberately emphasize their own status and hierarchy. They treat you merely as an employee who carries out assigned tasks—someone who follows orders and waits for assignments.

At first, I applied because I was attracted by the four characters “雄X文具” in the company name. During the interview, the manager repeatedly emphasized how large and impressive this long-established company was, how excellent its systems were, and how good the salary and benefits were, saying that if you stayed loyal, it would be a stable job. Only after joining did I realize that I had truly been daydreaming... My sincere advice is to think very carefully and exercise caution before submitting a résumé to this company. Basically, employees who leave this tourist factory are not very happy, regardless of which team they were in. Alas! If you follow this company, you will notice that positions at Longtan are almost always being advertised. That is because people do not stay long—not because business is good and the company is expanding. As for the corporate culture, the department heads are basically all old-timers—truly very old ones. Except for relatives of the owners, second-generation executives, and the so-called princess, you always have to speak to them in a deferential, asking-for-permission tone when working with them. Their views are deeply entrenched, and they love bringing up past events to flaunt their seniority. Simply put, they do not really listen to employees’ ideas; even when they appear to, it is only for show. Over time, you may become assimilated and lose your ability to make independent judgments. For this old company to innovate, it may genuinely have to wait until this group of veteran officials retires before anything changes. If you are willing to obey, accept your place, and have extreme patience when dealing with elders, you might consider it.

People in the Planning Department are constantly resigning. Some have their probation periods extended, some are considered insufficiently capable, and some are disliked by their supervisors and eventually forced out. In short, this department is quite peculiar. They never proactively seek out work or develop activities to improve the tourist factory’s performance; they always wait to be assigned tasks. After staying for a while, you finally understand how they feel: every matter requires endless waiting, requests for approval, and long-winded, circular analyses, only for the supervisor to make the final decision. The process completely wears down people’s patience. Repeated rejection damages your confidence, making you passive and eventually unable to act. Senior managers will not proactively help you either; they only tell you to discuss it with the relevant people and then present a concrete argument. It is not as though you are writing a master’s thesis or submitting a government forward-looking development proposal—yet everything has to be made extremely complicated before they tell you, “I! Don’t! Want! It!” Middle managers will only keep brainwashing you, saying that the princess likes proactive people and that you need to come up with activities quickly and find ways to improve performance so that your evaluation will be good... They only ever talk, talk, and talk; they never help.

In on-site operations, you often do not know whose instructions to follow, because everyone wants to be in charge and wants to probe the boss’s intentions. Even scheduling sometimes depends on reading other people’s moods. During peak season, you had better be mentally prepared for the work allocation, because it will keep you busy to the point of exhaustion. Although you can ultimately receive a bonus, you need to have the all-around odd-job skills of someone who can do everything, because staff are rotated and expected to handle anything. Management here relies on surveillance cameras. If you occasionally slack off and are not good at pretending to be busy, you may get labeled. Some people love filing petty reports; to curry favor with supervisors and seek promotion, they criticize you harshly to highlight their own importance. So, if you want a promotion, do everything possible to accommodate the supervisor’s needs. When they come to Longtan at unpredictable times, write your little notebook as fully and meticulously as possible so you can claim credit.

One additional thing worth sharing is that coordinating with the factory can be hell. It is a group of elders—called “workplace old-timers”—who completely fail to understand what is being requested. They blindly flatter the director, while paying no attention whatsoever to the matters you ask them to handle. Sometimes their attitude is even arrogant and uncomfortable. They really resemble the kind of company on the verge of collapse that you see in mainland Chinese dramas: resistant to change, trapped in their own world, and focused only on pleasing the director. If you truly need their assistance, you may have to bow very low and learn to flatter and accommodate them.

The DIY instructors are generally considered stable. Compared with other teams, their turnover rate is relatively low. Oddly, however, activities here are led not by Planning but by them, because their supervisor is a veteran from Lion Travel’s Banqiao office with more than twenty years of seniority. Basically, everyone has to listen to him. Put simply, his team must take priority because the supervisor is accustomed to being in charge, and everyone has to defer to this senior veteran. He often directs everything. Even if you propose any idea, he will shoot it down and keep bringing up past events until you give up. Previously, the company organized a “野X” activity, with coworkers from Banqiao providing support. Everyone told this supervisor that the vendor was genuinely poor, with an inflated quotation and excessive profit margins, but he insisted on holding the event anyway. The result was that everyone was unhappy. The work was exhausting, the company did not make money, and instead spent a large sum paying the vendor. I really do not understand why they insist on doing things that are burdensome and unrewarding. Throughout the process, on-site operations could only cooperate and endure endlessly, allowing this vendor to take advantage of everything.

Coworkers who have stayed here longer also say that planners who have worked with this supervisor always resign after completing a project; some could not take it and left during preparation. He cultivates a sense of superiority and deliberately divides Banqiao and Longtan into two separate companies. Because he has been there long enough, he has also implanted the culture of the old company into the tourist factory, placing great importance on hierarchy and job titles. He knows nothing about numbers and has no concept of revenue. In this respect, the Planning Department is stronger. Besides the instructors, he is also responsible for the Design Department in Banqiao, whose staff are generally easy to communicate with. Whenever the boss suggests optimizing the tourist factory’s displays and merchandise, they merely listen without acting. Execution is very weak, and new company products are perpetually nowhere to be found.

I am less familiar with the Food and Beverage Department. As far as I understand, they also simply wait to be assigned tasks and imagine improvements without taking action.

In conclusion, you should really think carefully before applying. This place is seriously short-staffed, and the turnover rate is ridiculously high. If you are looking for a stable job with good compensation and benefits, you can PASS on this one.