Workplace reviews and discussion: 和東興業有限公司

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The office is located in an old apartment in the Nangang Industrial Park, with fewer than eight employees. The company mainly sells and rents coffee beans and coffee machines, and its customers are all businesses and organizations. Most customers in the Greater Taipei area are personally served by the company’s sales staff, as there is no dedicated delivery specialist. Sales staff must simultaneously handle coffee-machine maintenance and repairs, coffee-bean deliveries, and customer development, without corresponding performance bonuses in these areas or even detailed professional training. The company was founded nearly ten years ago and shifted from operating a storefront to selling coffee beans, yet the average tenure of office employees is less than six months. Assistant and sales positions have been open year-round. Recruitment on 104 is handled by Cheng’s International. Employee turnover is extremely high, which suggests obvious management problems; the turnover is so high that even nearby banks and other businesses collaborating with the company know about it to some extent.

All matters at the company are handled by the boss and the founding veteran. They normally do not hold meetings or discuss matters with employees. Decisions are made unilaterally and frequently changed without notice; job responsibilities are unclear. Orders are often added at the last minute before freight is collected, shipping sequences are changed arbitrarily, or one customer’s goods are taken to make up a shortfall for another customer without replenishing them afterward, followed by attempts to shift responsibility. The boss may also call at 11 p.m. or on holidays over trivial matters. The assistant, meanwhile, works according to their mood, and the daily reports they provide often lack important information, making it unclear which customer’s goods should be shipped. Responsibility is then assigned to others afterward, and work is frequently passed on to other employees. The boss always expects employees to find out important information on their own instead of ensuring complete handovers, providing accurate information, and conducting rechecks before delivery. The founding veteran believes that, because of their long tenure, everything they do is correct, but in reality lacks communication and efficiency. They also pressure and make things difficult for employees they dislike together with the boss, leave messes they created for the assistant to clean up, and leave packaging staff to deal with hasty arrangements. They are highly retaliatory and privately engage in petty acts against employees who do not comply, creating problems that keep them overwhelmed with work.

This office of fewer than eight people is full of exclusion, selfishness, and infighting. Employees are highly calculating, work inefficiently, and have no intention of communicating or improving. The laptops use the obsolete Windows 7 operating system, and the speed at which they run software is completely incomparable to that of modern computers. Startup takes more than ten minutes, not to mention the frequent crashes. The company refuses to purchase new equipment yet expects employees to complete their work using this ridiculous, poor-quality equipment. At the same time as receiving low pay, employees must also endure mental distress.

Eating near the company is extremely inconvenient. The nearest 7-Eleven is a ten-minute walk away, while restaurants and Songshan Station are even farther. The long-term cost of ordering food delivery is considerable, so meals are generally limited to microwavable food or lunches brought from home.