Workplace reviews and discussion: 可力爾有限公司

Apart from the pressure to meet sales targets and the infighting in sales (problems found at any company), everyone gets along very well. The company’s break room provides snacks and cookies, boxed drinks, a refrigerator, and a microwave.

As other reviewers have said, the interview begins with filling out five pages of double-sided A4 questions. It’s understandable that they want to learn about each person’s traits through their writing, but some questions are highly inappropriate and make you want to say, “What the hell does that have to do with you?” For example: “List three people who can vouch for your work (references).” This involves personal information and should be used as a bonus, not as a required question—and not everyone has references. “Do you exercise regularly?” “Do you have a reading habit?” “How do you react when facing difficulties?” And many other questions.

Regardless of the position you apply for, the company insists that new hires must first understand the products. After being hired, you must first go to the warehouse to learn how to prepare orders, accompany a driver on deliveries, submit a written reflection before leaving work, and make a video. In reality, this shows that they simply don’t trust their employees—not even the owner trusts his own wife. The owner tells his wife to train the employees, but when employees encounter problems, they are not allowed to ask her, because the owner says: “She isn’t your supervisor. I’m your supervisor. You should come ask me.”

Occasionally, there are morning meetings. Their content consists of promoting the owner’s central beliefs. The owner uses interactive little games to increase communication among colleagues, but some activities are inappropriate. For example: Owner: “You need to be passionate about your work. Go find a colleague you aren’t familiar with, high-five with both hands, and bump butts with each other…” Have you never seen the way basketball players celebrate after winning? Simply promoting his central beliefs takes at least an hour. Occasionally, five minutes are spent reviewing internal problems (products, customer complaints, and so on). Everyone stands in place and listens. The owner once described Kim Jong-un’s leadership style as arbitrary, but the owner’s own style is no different from Kim Jong-un’s—they are equally bad.

The owner wants to create the impression that the company is large, so the organizational chart is extremely complicated (there is even an “accelerator” position, meaning you fill in wherever there is a staffing shortage). Regardless of your position, the only supervisor is the owner, and employees are encouraged to ask only him when they have problems. During work hours, you may handle only work matters. Even if a colleague is sitting right next to you, you can only call their extension to ask a question. Doing pointless things that go around your elbow to scratch your backside is very inefficient. Drivers are required to assemble cabinets according to a procedure. Before departure, the owner spent two hours demonstrating, explaining, and recording the process, seriously delaying the drivers’ departure time without seeing anything wrong with it. When problems arise, he only listens to half of what employees say before talking on his own. He may even bring up future plans (system optimization, website button links, and so on), talking for more than 20 minutes without solving the core problem. What the owner asks for is not actually difficult, but if he does not optimize the system first, it is difficult for the employees below to follow up. Every position has materials left behind by previous employees (the turnover rate is extremely high). Former employees were required to write SOPs for the convenience of those who came after them. Once you become familiar with the job, you must also submit a work-process document to the owner. Even though every document is produced through the employees’ own efforts, the owner can claim, without batting an eyelid, that he wrote them all.

Ninety-nine percent of employees apply for position A but end up doing position B after being hired. The owner hires you first and then evaluates what work you should do (under his Kim Jong-un-style system, he has the final say), or what work suits you. This is simply a waste of everyone’s time. If you do not meet the owner’s expectations, he first sends his wife to have a heart-to-heart talk with you. The implication is that the company thinks you cannot keep up and that it would be best for you to resign yourself. However, when directly asked whether they are trying to drive employees away, the owner and his wife say, “We absolutely will not force you to leave.” They say they are doing it for your sake and want you to shine on a stage that suits you, while using this as a way to make you leave voluntarily. It is laughable, because their actual behavior says otherwise. If asking you to leave with a smile does not work, they become angry and talk about the owner’s own experiences to emphasize how capable he is. In summary, it is all nonsense, because the owner’s experiences have nothing to do with the employees. They then force you to leave immediately. After a former employee recorded a conversation as evidence during their resignation, the owner began secretly recording every conversation with employees. On one occasion, an employee directly exposed this and demanded that the owner immediately play the secretly recorded audio on his phone to prove that the employee had not made anything up. The owner did not answer directly. Instead, in anger, he blurted out that every camera in the company could record audio. The employee said that the cameras were company property and only the owner had the right to view the recordings, then asked whether he dared to view them together right then. The owner became furious, widened his eyes, and said nothing.

A leader’s language is often mixed with meaningless drivel. When discussing problems facing the company, about 50% of what he says is about his glorious achievements in the past, 30% is irrelevant content he wants to say for the sake of filming, and only 20% is devoted to solving the problem. The company was founded by the owner himself. To expand its scale, he would need to trust employees and give them room to grow, but Keli’er’s scale is still what it is today and has stopped growing because the owner never trusts employees. He and his wife are suspicious of everyone all day long, yet they want elite employees without being willing to reflect that in their salaries. He often admonishes employees: “Everyone should be the boss of their own position.” The owner may have the autonomy to make decisions, but when employees exercise decision-making authority, they are tightly crushed under the Kim Jong-un-style management system.

In conclusion: This is a company dominated by the owner, who cannot stand anyone smarter than him. It operates under a Kim Jong-un-style management system. Except for the restrooms, surveillance cameras with audio-recording functions are installed in every corner of the company, and the owner and his wife check them from time to time. If you talk about anything unrelated to work during working hours, the seemingly smiling but two-faced wife will give you a verbal warning. If you repeat the offense, she may even take a screenshot and send you a notification on LINE. If you like doing things exactly according to SOPs, this company is very suitable for you. If you stay long enough, you can even become a puppet, because you do not need to think at work and cannot have your own consciousness or personal time. A company that is not just starting out should not have every position open for recruitment all year round. A high turnover rate means the company has major problems. For years, the owner has never reflected on himself and instead criticized employees as unsuitable. His stubborn, unchanging attitude is, in its own way, admirable. This is only a personal account; I hope everyone will not waste their time. Finally, I wish everyone success in finding a suitable job.