Workplace reviews and discussion: 快樂瑪麗安台南分校_臺南市私立達特兒文理短期補習班

- The lesson content is very flexible, with no SOP.

- The employer is often absent from the company and usually only shows up when it is almost time to leave.

- Circumventing certain loopholes: salary is paid twice, on the 5th and 10th of each month, respectively.

> The payment due on the 10th is always late; the payment due on the 5th is paid in cash.

- Labor and health insurance are reported at a lower salary level.

> After asking about it, the employer said that bonuses based on the number of students are not part of regular wages, so they do not need to be included for insurance purposes.

- Official working hours are 13:00 to 21:00.

> On Mondays, the employer holds a cleaning competition. All employees have to participate and contribute a certain amount of money as prize money, then use their time to clean. *In plain English: if you do not win, you get fined.

> Employees are required to end classes 5–10 minutes late. In other words, classes that officially end at 21:00 cannot leave until 21:05–21:10.

> If the employer needs to speak with someone, it is also always after 21:00.

- Salaries are sometimes calculated incorrectly.

- The employer has poor emotional control and yells at employees. They verbally abuse people in front of everyone (sometimes with students nearby). Always record private conversations to protect your rights.

- The salary structure is very opaque. Make sure to ask exactly how your pay will be calculated when taking leave or annual leave. Even when using paid annual leave, be aware that deductions may be made under meal expenses and other bonus categories.

- Taking leave or annual leave will be made difficult. Otherwise, they resort to emotional blackmail. Foreign teachers have paid leave; local teachers do not. There is also no short summer break.

- Coordination between departments is very poor, and they even fight among themselves. New employees are treated terribly and exploited to the extreme. As long as you are new, if someone takes leave and you cover their class, there is no substitute-teaching fee, and you may also be required to provide unpaid extra instruction to students who are not yours.

- Policies change from morning to night.

> From small matters such as class-opening information to major class adjustments involving splitting or merging classes, the answer is different every time you ask. Things decided in meetings are not followed even after the meeting minutes have been signed. Meetings are a waste of time; they are merely instructions and assigned tasks, with no opportunity for discussion at all. If something goes wrong and you report it to management, you will only get scolded, so you might as well wait until it becomes a bigger problem—it makes no difference, because you will get scolded anyway. The scolding lasts more than an hour at a time. You can only look on the bright side: at least you get paid while being scolded, haha.

- The foreign teachers assigned to your classes are either very problematic or very unstable.

> Experienced teachers use their seniority as an excuse and do nothing, and there is nothing you can do about it. You can only deal with pressure from the boss above and students’ parents below. New foreign teachers usually do not stay long because they have difficulty adapting. The employer assigns the foreign teacher; the foreign teacher teaches the class, but the local teacher is the one facing the parents on the front line. When something goes wrong, you are blamed from both sides. Then the employer says that you also receive the bonus for that course, so the local teacher is also responsible. In my case, a course advertised as being taught entirely by foreign teachers had to be taught by me as the local teacher because there was no foreign teacher available. Then the parents complained.

- Lower-level classes have to prepare presentations and growth portfolios even though the students cannot do anything yet. These cannot be completed during the official working hours, yet employees are questioned for staying too late. Higher-level classes come with the pressure of certification exams. The employer tells people externally that the students are capable of passing the exams, but if they do not pass, the teacher faces pressure from both the parents and the employer.

- Overtime pay

> It exists, but it only counts if the employer signs off on it.

- Some practices operate in a legal gray area. Sometimes desks, chairs, classrooms, and offices have to be moved around to deal with inspections.

- Colleagues do not help one another, despite the employer’s slogan, “We are one team.” When the employer asks for help, it means unpaid work: doing more while receiving the same salary.

- There is no time to eat, drink water, or use the restroom.

> There are only 40 minutes of breathing room between the afternoon and evening shifts. However, the “employer’s rule” is that classes cannot end on time, and employees must arrive in the classroom 10 minutes early. Urinary tract infections and stomach problems are quite common.

- The air conditioning is not cold. You have to conduct activities in a classroom with nearly 20 students, while the air conditioning frequently breaks down or simply does not cool the room. During the hot summer, it is turned off at exactly 9:00, regardless of whether people are still working in the office.