Workplace reviews and discussion: 立紳有限公司

None at all.

There are countless drawbacks—do not go there under any circumstances.

The company is divided into two areas: one is considered an office, and the other is considered a factory. If you work in the office, the boss and the boss’s son watch you every day. You are not even allowed to talk or chat at work, so whenever the boss or his son is there, it is almost completely silent. There are also surveillance cameras installed in the corner at the back of the office to monitor everyone’s every move. They also watch what you are doing on your computer, and even LINE chats can be seen. Sometimes one person has to do the work of two or three people, while the pay is extremely low. Some long-serving employees, despite not being particularly old, like to act senior and dump their responsibilities on new employees. The most outrageous example was a sales assistant who entered the warehouse and left the key inside. After leaving, the warehouse door automatically locked, but when they were locked out, they refused to admit it and tried to blame the new employee.

If you work in the factory, it is divided into the maintenance, mechanical, and electronics departments. They make it sound prestigious by calling the positions engineers, but in reality you are just an operator working in a small room. Although the boss’s family does not often come to the factory, they have surveillance cameras installed to monitor your every move. The cameras are not there to watch the entrance or prevent theft; they are used to monitor employees. Even when you are taking a nap at noon, you are watched, which feels terrible. As long as your head is lowered, regardless of whether you are working or whether you are even visible on the camera, the boss’s entire family assumes you are playing with your phone. Then they spend all day complaining that productivity is too low and tasks are being completed too slowly. The workload is already impossible to finish, yet the company refuses to hire more people and expects you to learn this and that. There are countless pointless tasks, and the actual salary you receive is completely different from what was discussed during the interview. If you interview for electronics, they require you to learn mechanical work; if you interview for mechanical work, they require you to learn tasks from the maintenance department. Otherwise, you have no chance of getting a raise—and even if you learn them, there is still no raise. You do not even know what position you originally applied for.

During interviews, they tell you that the company offers benefits, bonuses for the three major traditional holidays, an annual bonus, a year-end banquet, employee trips, and perfect-attendance bonuses. In reality, the annual bonus you receive may not even equal one month’s salary. The boss’s son even makes up stories about how much annual bonus was paid, claiming that some people received more than two months’ worth, when in reality nobody has ever received that much. The people who probably received the most were his parents, his wife, and himself. It is nothing but lies. Oh, and I heard that after his wife had a child, she stopped coming to the company—this has apparently continued for two or three years. She comes to the company fewer than three days a year and only appears at the year-end banquet holding the child. She stays home to look after the child without having to work, while still receiving her salary. The legally mandated childcare leave is three months, but she took three years, dumping all her work on an incompetent sales assistant. That sales assistant had also been there for several years and still could not do anything; at work, all they did was play Solitaire on the computer.

The three-holiday bonuses have never been paid. They just give you a cheap gift box worth less than NT$500 to dismiss you. One Lunar New Year, they even gave each employee a packet of pickled vegetables to take home and make soup with. It was unbelievably bad. They said they would organize employee trips, but one was canceled because of the pandemic. Even after restrictions were lifted, they never organized another employee trip. The boss’s wife also said that because there were no employee trips, the company would pay employees a travel allowance every October. It was never paid.

As for the year-end banquet, despite the company making so much money, they are extremely stingy. They took everyone to a hot pot restaurant in Xizhi—I cannot remember which road it was—run by one of his friends. They said it was all-you-can-eat and told everyone to eat as much as they wanted, but it was not actually an all-you-can-eat hot pot restaurant. Even when ordering scallops, you only got two tiny ones. I heard some people went to Tokiya instead. It was truly awful.

No matter what salary you negotiate during the interview, they calculate it as including perfect attendance. The monthly perfect-attendance bonus is NT$2,000. For example, if you negotiate NT$28,000, that means NT$28,000 including the NT$2,000 attendance bonus, so the actual salary is only NT$26,000. If you negotiate NT$29,000, the actual salary is only NT$27,000—just barely above the current statutory minimum wage. The perfect-attendance bonus is nominally a bonus, but in reality it gives the company an excuse to deduct your pay. Being one minute late results in a half-hour deduction, plus a NT$1,000 deduction from the attendance bonus. Taking two days off or being late twice means two deductions. For sick leave, you have to obtain a doctor’s certificate from a hospital; otherwise it is treated as personal leave, which effectively means no pay at all. The half-day’s pay deducted for sick leave is almost exactly what it costs to obtain the doctor’s certificate. Daily pay is only around NT$800, so spending NT$400 on seeing a doctor and getting the certificate is not enough—you have to pay extra. The company is extremely stingy with its employees, while the boss’s family never reflects on themselves.

The company has also never provided health examinations, and there are countless violations of labor laws. If the boss takes a dislike to you, he will do everything possible to force you out. The company offers no benefits at all. Working there is simply a waste of time with no future. The company does not care about losing one employee; it would rather spend NT$28,000 to lure in a recent college graduate than give a raise to retain someone who has already worked there for a while—even for several years. It is just as well that they do not retain people, otherwise they might continue being underpaid and deceived. You do not realize how broad the sky is until you work for another company. Staying at this deceptive company in Xizhi is truly a waste of time and youth.

You should only work there if you do not plan to marry, have children, buy a home, or buy a car; your family owns mountains of gold and silver; and you are merely looking for a way to pass the time. Then you can work there. This place is only suitable for retirement, not for young people. Do not be tricked into coming here. I almost forgot: the boss and his wife rarely come to the company, but they stay at home all day watching the surveillance cameras to see what you are doing. Then they look for opportunities to accuse you of not working seriously, playing with your phone, or doing something else. They even control when you go to the bathroom. So there is basically no chance of a raise. The employees who stay are probably people who do not need money or are already older—perhaps those for whom having enough for themselves means enough for the whole family.

Oh, and the factory’s maintenance department also has a person in their forties who is intellectually disabled. They cannot speak clearly and only stutter. They do not do anything yet claim to be busy, and they do not perform their duty shifts. Despite being in their forties, they spend all day reporting to the boss’s family. The boss’s family protects them because they seem intellectually limited and easy to deceive, while only scolding everyone else. Oh, and that person’s small room is the only one without a surveillance camera, probably because they are a relative or friend of the boss’s family. Their genes must be strange too.

Anyway, working for this company only means making money for the boss’s family. You receive less than NT$30,000 a month, and after labor and health insurance deductions, almost nothing is left. They even deduct a welfare fund. This company has no benefits at all, yet it deducts 1% every month as a welfare fund. There are countless ways to deduct money and not a single way to get a raise. It is impossible to live on a little over NT$20,000 a month. With prices as they are now, the salary is still stuck at the level of 20 years ago. Simply put, the boss is stingy—stingier than anyone could imagine. There is no future there.

Every meeting is held because that forty-something intellectually disabled person reported something. I forgot to mention that they are also bald. At an age with no hair left, they still act like a five-year-old. I really do not know what to say—speechless. During meetings, besides discussing their complaints, the boss’s son also tells everyone, “If you want to resign, hurry up and do it. It’s not Lishen who harmed you; you harmed yourselves,” and similar nonsense. Basically, he puts on airs and tells you to leave quickly. To them, they can spend the equivalent of two bananas to hire a college graduate, then treat you like a monkey. The boss’s family never respects or appreciates employees. In their eyes, you are always useless material that can be replaced at any time. That is the mindset of this company and its boss—it is unbelievably terrible.

It is a small family-owned business with no ambition and no future. All they want is for members of the Zhang family to have enough to eat and live comfortably. They even employ a domestic helper, live lavishly, eat good food, and buy a new car every year. The company’s profits of several million each month all go into their own pockets; they do not care whether their employees live or die. They dismiss you with a salary of less than NT$30,000 a month. With annual income, including the annual bonus, below NT$408,000, you do not even have to pay income tax. They even tell you that not having to pay tax is great. They pay so little and are not even aware of it, yet they congratulate themselves. They are in their thirties and still so immature. If the boss’s son—whatever his name is, something like XX-lun—had not been born into privilege, he would be incapable of doing anything. He is even more of an idiot than that forty-something intellectually disabled person, which is why they make such a fitting family. People like this are a waste of space and resources, and they even dare to have children and poison the next generation. It is truly sinful.