Workplace reviews and discussion: 樂維科技有限公司

There is an espresso machine at the bar that employees can use (the company provides the coffee beans; employees bring their own milk). The snack cabinet is always well stocked, and you can even request snacks you would like to eat. Since it is a 3C distributor, the computer peripherals provided for work are quite high-end.

Every day, employees have to take turns being the person on duty. This generally means cleaning, but at this company, the person on duty is also responsible for helping the boss and colleagues solve their lunch arrangements.

Before lunch, you first have to find out who did not bring a lunchbox that day. After that, you have to choose lunch that suits the tastes of the boss and colleagues that day.

The person on duty is also discouraged from ordering delivery, because delivery is usually more expensive and includes a delivery fee. As a result, the person on duty is expected to leave half an hour before lunch to pick up the food, so that everyone can have lunch as soon as their lunch break begins. It sounds nice to be able to go outside for some fresh air, but in reality, the workload is already so heavy that you practically have to work overtime every day to finish it. You would not want to spend that half hour getting out of the office. In addition, once you include the time spent finding out who did not bring lunch and choosing a restaurant, an hour of your work time has already been lost.

A former employee once raised the issue of rotating cleaning duties. The company’s response was that, because it is a small company rather than an office building, it is reasonable for employees to take turns cleaning. However, I have worked at even smaller companies with fewer employees, and they still hired a cleaning lady to clean the premises on a fixed weekly basis. So basically, once the boss saves money, assigning employees additional tasks can be rationalized as reasonable.

The company has not just started operating, but many of its so-called “SOPs” are a complete mess. Problems caused by inefficient processes and resulting errors still occur frequently. The manager then convenes a meeting and asks everyone to discuss what is wrong with the process, and by the time the discussion is over, one or two hours have passed (which means you have to work overtime again to finish your original work).

The manager responsible for managing shipments and the warehouse is also responsible for human resources, finance, and purchasing. So, is this manager really capable of handling all these responsibilities?

Human resources and purchasing involve professional judgment regarding the Labor Standards Act, product turnover calculations, estimates of procurement costs, and so on. But this manager is forced to research everything independently or carry it out according to what they “think” is correct. As a result, there are many employment-related problems, and products even go out of stock for a while every month, indirectly affecting the performance of the retail stores and e-commerce business. The manager also seems to work overtime every day because of holding multiple positions, reportedly staying until 9 or 10 p.m. and constantly sending messages after work hours, disturbing colleagues who have already left work and are resting.

The manager responsible for e-commerce and the retail stores also holds multiple positions. They have to take care of after-sales customer service, and whenever a customer has a dispute and needs to vent, they go to the manager. If a retail-store colleague suddenly feels unwell or is in a bad mood and does not come to work, the manager even has to travel from Taichung to Taipei to cover the store. (Incidentally, the company apparently even stipulates that business travel may only be done by intercity bus or train. I do not know whether high-speed rail has now been added.)

What is strange is that the retail stores often submit simple requests to the company, but then have to wait a week or even a month. For example, when new products have already arrived at the warehouse, someone will only create the product listing and set the price after being repeatedly urged to do so. As a result, store performance is often held back by the company’s internal inefficiency and cannot improve. Even when the stores report that POP materials are damaged or fixtures are old and need to be replaced, someone only deals with it after about half a year and repeated reminders!

Although only a fixed group of colleagues needs to travel for work, the company requires them to take an intercity bus or train, or drive a company vehicle, just to save that tiny bit of money.

(As I recall, only one colleague needs to travel for work approximately every two or three months.) Field sales staff, remote workers, and the manager of the Taipei store even have to assign an office-based colleague to drive to the station to pick them up and drop them off when they return to the company each month for meetings (they take saving transportation costs to the extreme). Colleagues who can drive are the unlucky ones: more than an hour is lost on the round trip, and then they have to work overtime again to finish their work.

At a normal company, when there is a meeting, the manager and relevant colleagues agree on a time, and when the time arrives, they automatically go to the meeting room. But this company is special. Often, when the agreed meeting time arrives, no one does anything, or the main participants are not in the office, and then nothing further happens. However, when the boss or manager is in the office, they often suddenly call you to the office for a meeting in the middle of your work (without any advance notice—you are simply called over out of nowhere). The meeting lasts two or three hours. Wonderful! More overtime!

By the way, it is not only the managers who hold multiple positions. The company often uses the excuse that “the position has already been posted, and the staffing shortage can be resolved once someone joins” to make the “capable” colleagues do “more work.” But the position remains open for six months or even a year, so the few capable colleagues have no choice but to keep working hard! (Everyone probably has some idea why they cannot recruit anyone; you can refer to the salary and benefits listed on 104.)

All I can say is that the boss, managers, and colleagues at this company all have very strong personalities. Some unreasonable things can sound perfectly logical to employees after passing through the mouths of the boss and managers. Regarding the staffing shortage, the company has its own considerations and arrangements, and the managers and boss will turn around and make employees reflect on themselves and review how to improve their professional skills in order to solve the staffing problem.