It’s an old company that has been around for decades, and a large enterprise with several hundred employees.

A traditional, system-driven industry; working hours are based on responsibility rather than fixed schedules; salary depends on luck; you can learn about different fields, such as working as a cleaner or newspaper delivery person.

Your colleagues are crazy in their own ways, and your supervisor does nothing but paint you rosy pictures to swallow. It can train your self-cultivation and emotional management.

It suits natural performers who are good at flattering supervisors—you’ll do very well here.

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

2. Related to the above: for seminars, you have to order refreshments and pay out of pocket first (NT$100 per student; 40 students means NT$4,000), and you won’t be reimbursed until several weeks later.

2. Related to the above: organizing seminars means playing cat and mouse with the campus security center, because schools won’t lend you classrooms (during my first week on the job, I was scolded by a school officer and swept out of the school).

I urge people with an overwhelming sense of justice not to work in school-channel sales.

3. For the General Scholastic Ability Test, Comprehensive Assessment Program, and any civil-service examinations, you’ll be dragged in as an unpaid temporary worker to distribute DMs.

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

5. They keep shouting that declining birth rates mean everyone has to weather the storm together, but supposedly revenue hasn’t dropped.

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

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

8. There are countless meaningless meetings. If you don’t hit your targets, you have to go up and give a self-criticism report. I heard that in the past, it had to be written (I’d rather write it than be publicly judged onstage).

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

10. During the interview, they said most colleagues were around the same age (almost none over 30). After joining, I realized they meant the retention rate was too low.

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

12. Your self-esteem is often belittled here. Although the scolding doesn’t usually rise to the level of personal attacks, you’ll be subjected to psychological manipulation, such as being told, “With abilities like yours, you’re already doing pretty well here. An outside job definitely wouldn’t pay you this much and would be even harder.” Or your supervisor will compare you unfavorably with others: “Look at so-and-so—they did ** ten-thousand [NT dollars] in sales this month and even specifically came in to work overtime on weekends to serve students,” and so on.

13. Supervisors will lead the isolation of new employees they dislike. Group-work schedules are not transparent, creating information gaps that make it impossible to coordinate work.

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

The only advantage is that if you don’t CARE about any of it, the company is reluctant to spend severance money to make you leave.