A decades-old company and a large enterprise with several hundred employees

A traditional-industry system, responsibility-based working hours, salary depending on luck, and the opportunity to learn about different fields—for example, working as a cleaner or newspaper delivery person

Colleagues are either crazy or sick, and supervisors just talk and draw up pies in the sky for you to eat. It can train your self-cultivation and emotional management skills.

Suitable for natural actors who are good at flattering supervisors—you’ll do very well here.

1. You have to sneak into various universities to hand out flyers, write on blackboards, and organize lectures.

2. Following from the above, you have to order refreshments for the lectures and pay upfront yourself (NT$100 per student; 40 students means NT$4,000). You won’t get reimbursed until several weeks later.

2. Following from the above, organizing lectures means playing cat and mouse with the school security center, because the school won’t lend you a classroom. (I was yelled at by a school officer and kicked off campus during my first week on the job.)

I urge people with an overflowing sense of justice not to work in the school-channel business.

3. During the General Scholastic Ability Test, Comprehensive Assessment Program, and any civil-service exams, you may be forced to work for free handing out DMs.

4. I heard from senior colleagues that performance bonuses used to be better; the commission could reach the double digits, but now it’s a pitiful single-digit percentage.

5. They keep shouting about the declining birthrate and urging everyone to weather hard times together, but apparently revenue hasn’t fallen.

6. The company’s senior management is also similar to a family business, but it’s difficult to hear any gossip.

7. The new-hire mentorship system can’t really be called good or bad, because it depends entirely on who your mentor is and whether they keep their tricks to themselves.

8. There are tons of meaningless meetings. If you don’t meet your targets, you have to go up and give a review. I heard that in the past, you had to write it out instead. (I’d rather write it than be publicly humiliated onstage.)

9. I have absolutely no idea how the supervisors make decisions. Today they say we’re going to the North Pole, so off to the North Pole we go; tomorrow they say we’re going to the South Pole, so off to the South Pole we go. You need excellent survival and adaptability skills.

10. During the interview, they said most colleagues were around the same age (almost all under 30). Only after joining did I understand that this was because the retention rate was so low.

11. You have to bring your own toilet paper, and your coworkers will hear the sounds you make when defecating—unless you never defecate at work.

12. Your self-esteem is often belittled here. Although the verbal abuse generally doesn’t rise to the level of personal attacks, you will be subjected to psychological manipulation. They may say, “For someone with your abilities, you’re already doing pretty well here. You definitely wouldn’t earn this much at an outside job, and it would be even more difficult.” Or your supervisor may compare you with others: “Look at so-and-so—they did **ten-thousand** in sales this month and even came in specially on weekends to serve students,” and so on.

13. Supervisors may lead the group in ostracizing new hires they dislike. Group work schedules are not transparent, creating information gaps that make coordination impossible.

Eventually, you realize that you’ve been marked for dismissal and that you’re not suited to stay, so you quietly leave on your own.

But the upside is that if you don’t CARE about anything, the company is also reluctant to spend severance money to make you leave.