Working at headquarters offers flexible hours: you can choose 08:00–17:00 or 09:00–18:00 (but if you clock in at 08:01, you still have to clock out at 18:00; it is not calculated as nine hours by the minute). After working for a period of time, you can work from home on Thursdays and Fridays (if your job can be done remotely), so it is fairly flexible!

At the company, you can schedule the weekly calendar you want to follow in advance and work according to it; the work is fairly routine.

The company environment is clean and minimalist (everyone’s desks are extremely uncluttered), but there are no cleaners, so employees have to clean the common areas themselves.

Here comes the scary part!

1. HR gives off a strong and intimidating sense of authority. They make you feel as though they are pretending to ask questions while actually probing for information, which is not very comfortable!

2. The lights are forcibly turned off at 7 p.m., so take your laptop home and continue working remotely! If you clock in late and do not report overtime, you have to select “handling personal matters”; there is no other flexibility whatsoever.

3. I was the only person responsible for the business. All I can say is that everything depended on me working hard by myself (because my temporary replacement did not know how to help and knew nothing about it). During that period, I had to draw elevation plans, design, communicate, coordinate with vendors, and place orders for incoming goods myself. This part was quite terrifying! It made you a jack of all trades and master of none!

4. The stores have a great deal of power and can independently confirm which discounts to offer without informing you, resulting in the category manager only finding out about the promotion at the very end!

5. Because staffing between departments is overly streamlined, you often have to wait forever to receive a response about many matters. Be mentally prepared!

6. Working excessive overtime for the company is illegal. You may be sent to the company’s disciplinary committee, which is emotionally distressing, and the HR manager is especially harsh and scolding. It is terrifying!