Workplace reviews and discussion: 艾佳清潔有限公司

1. During the interview, HR provided a glass of negative-ion mineral water.

1. I never got to drink it again afterward, so I couldn't have it with the pie that management served.

2. At the beginning of the interview, the senior manager said there would be two weeks of pre-employment training, after which we could develop through our own strengths as salespeople once we had built a solid foundation. However, during those first two weeks, I found that it was all just sales scripts. We had to stay for eight full hours a day, but less than one hour was actually spent teaching us; the rest of the time, we were left to kill time on our own. It was a huge waste of time.

3. The training at the beginning was fundamentally hollow. The results of rushing new hires into the job were fully reflected in the performance figures. The company would tell you to practice independently while discouraging you from asking experienced colleagues for advice. Then, if you failed to meet your targets, management would assess whether you were qualified to continue, making new hires feel that being allowed to stay was an opportunity granted by the company and that they needed to work harder.

4. Once you actually start working, you realize that the pay is extremely meager. Basically, this is a highly profitable industry, but sales staff receive only a small commission. On top of that, being late or forgetting to report something would result in NT$5,000 being deducted from that week's marketing bonus. Supervisors would also encourage you to work on weekday evenings and holidays to generate sales, without overtime pay. Even on ordinary days when no client appointments were scheduled, you still had to go to the office and practice with yourself. This was quite a waste of time and completely restricted the sales staff's freedom. Calculated monthly, you only get two or three days off.

5. The company's senior managers like sycophants. Even if your sales figures are zero, as long as you spend all day in the office putting on a show of practicing by yourself for them to see, they will protect you, because the company needs people who are constantly improving. On the other hand, even high-performing salespeople will become targets in management's eyes if they raise concerns about company rules.

Overall company atmosphere:

At first, they tell you that you will have complete freedom and that if you work hard at the beginning of the month, you can rest later. All of that is false, because management will try to take a cut of your sales. As a result, you can only work harder. If you slack off even a little or want to take a break, you instead become an outsider. That is why many senior colleagues gradually just do the minimum and meet the basic standard. It is not nearly as positive as it was made out to be during the interview.

Personal thoughts: If you do this as a short-term job, I personally recommend not staying for more than six months, because you do not learn much from the work itself. Most of your time is tied up in the office, exhausting yourself. For the long term, it is not worth considering at all: there is no year-end bonus, no promotion system, and it is simply physical labor. You work overtime on holidays and evenings to earn sales, but there is no overtime pay. Each month, employees with good sales performance may get to attend a group meal, but based on what they share, it sounds like a direct-selling convention. The boss makes grand promises to entice you; I heard that one of the group meals was at Costco, which sounds rather pitiful as well (fortunately, I did not push myself to hit sales targets at the time). It is clearly an industry with room for development, but the company has developed it into a complete mess ^_^