Workplace reviews and discussion: 晉欣食品股份有限公司

My colleagues and supervisor were pretty nice, the restroom was clean, and there were lots of free FamilyMart microwaveable foods to eat—but that’s it. Just these three points, nothing more.

I worked the night shift in quality assurance. During the interview, I told HR that I had undergone back surgery and could not bend over or lift heavy objects, but the supervisor of the unit apparently did not know about it. Whether HR really failed to pass on the information or the supervisor was pretending not to know, either way it was awful. To cope with the new duties and environment, I wore a back brace to work every day from my first day, 2024/4/1, through my last day, 2024/4/28. In the past, I could work an entire day without my back feeling uncomfortable—even without wearing a back brace. After starting work here, my condition immediately worsened: after working for a while, my lower back would start aching.

Then there was an impossible amount of work. Since I was new, although my actual working hours were 00:00–08:45, I initially worked alongside the day-shift colleagues to learn the job, from 08:00–16:45. I could understand that, but as someone doing inspections, I only left on time on my first day. At other times, I could only get off work at around 6 or 7 p.m. on average. The funniest part was that despite working shifts, they still treated the job as if it were under a deemed-duty system with no overtime limit. There were so many finished and semi-finished products to inspect that, ideally, there should have been at least one inspector per shift. Unfortunately, there was currently only one, so all the work had to be handled by the day shift. As a result, I worked until the end of time, with no idea when I could leave. Getting off work on time was a luxury. If the hours were really that long, why didn’t they explain it clearly during the interview? Instead, they kept saying that everyone works at different efficiency levels and that overtime might be necessary.

Also, if you care so much about the products’ bacterial counts, why didn’t you specifically hire a few people dedicated to inspections to fill these vacancies first? Do you think that as long as someone doesn’t collapse, you can work them to death? You had already encountered situations where there were no inspectors and the supervisor had to come down and do the work too. Do you think it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t have to do it yourself, or did the supervisor think they didn’t have enough to do and want to relive the old days? The funny thing is that after the supervisor came down to do the work themselves, they also complained that the workload was too heavy and reduced the number of inspections.

Then, after receiving my paycheck, I really felt relieved that I had left; otherwise, I don’t know how long I would have been mistreated. I didn’t work a full month, so naturally my pay was incomplete, but I don’t think things would have been much better even if I had perfect attendance and worked a full month. I worked an average of 10–11 hours a day, to the point where my back felt like it was about to break, and I had almost no break time. Even with the related-major allowance, I only received 30K. The job listing on the employment website said the average day-shift salary was 28K. Honestly, the cost-performance ratio was extremely low. Even my previous company was better than this place. Although the pay there wasn’t high—my average take-home pay was 29K—at least I got off work on time every day, the workload wasn’t always heavy, and I didn’t feel like dying every day when going to work.

Ever since I came here, I really didn’t want to get out of bed before work. Just thinking about not knowing when I could leave that day made me not want to face it. It’s not as though I’ve never done difficult work, but this job is really unsuitable for people with poor physical health. If you’re still young and in good health, you can give it a try.

Finally, I want to add one more thing: basically, every position at this company is understaffed. Given this long-term staff shortage and high turnover, they actually still want to expand the plant in Hsinchu. Do they think they can handle their current workload? Or do they think using the same management model in Hsinchu will work better than in Kaohsiung? I can only say, no wonder I’m poor and only qualified to earn a low salary; it’s no wonder I can’t accomplish anything when my thinking can’t keep up with the senior management’s ideas 👍