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

A traditional manufacturing-style system, responsibility-based working hours, salary depends on luck, and opportunities to learn various fields—such as being a cleaner or newspaper delivery person.

Coworkers are either crazy or sick, while managers just talk and paint you rosy pictures to swallow. It can train your self-cultivation and emotional management.

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

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

2. Related to the above, you have to arrange refreshments for 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. Related to the above, you have to play cat and mouse with the campus security center when organizing lectures because schools won’t lend you classrooms. (During my first week on the job, I was yelled at by a school officer and kicked off campus.)

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

3. For 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. According to senior colleagues, performance bonuses used to be better; the commission could reach double-digit percentages, but now only a pitiful single-digit percentage remains.

5. They keep saying that declining birth rates mean everyone has 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 much gossip.

7. The newcomer mentor-apprentice system can’t really be called good or bad, because it depends entirely on who your mentor is and whether they hold back useful tips.

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, it had to be written instead. (I’d rather write it than be publicly judged onstage.)

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

10. During the interview, they said most coworkers were around the same age, almost all under 30. After joining, I realized this actually meant the retention rate was extremely low.

11. You have to bring your own toilet paper. Your coworkers can hear the sounds when you poop, unless you never poop at work.

12. Your self-esteem is often put down here. Although the scolding doesn’t usually rise to the level of personal attacks, you will be subjected to PUA-style manipulation—for example, being told, “With your level of ability, you’re already doing pretty well here. You definitely wouldn’t earn this much elsewhere, and the work would be harder.” Or your manager will compare you with others: “Look at so-and-so, they did ** ten-thousand in sales this month and even came in to work overtime on holidays to serve students,” and so on.

13. Managers will lead the group in isolating newcomers they dislike. Group-work schedules are not transparent, creating information gaps that make it impossible to coordinate work.

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

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