Basically, only department colleagues get to choose SSR and receive masks regularly. Nothing else.
There’s so much that I could write an essay about it; to put it briefly, it all comes down to upper management at headquarters.
With three years of experience, I advise you not to interview. And when everyone received this year’s year-end bonus, the whole department was probably completely disheartened.
HR person Su, the chairman’s assistant Liu, and the new Central Region Manager Li are the people I’ve encountered most often.
They’re usually masters of empty talk, especially the latter two, whose ideas are particularly avant-garde.
Their self-centeredness is off the charts, and they’re also prone to mocking and offending others. People from other companies have been offended too.
The company knows that senior executives have been complained about, yet it’s still this incompetent.
And if you’re thinking of applying to headquarters:
The chairwoman’s wife has an all-seeing eye monitoring everything. If you happen to upset online commenters or become unpopular, every move you make is genuinely being watched. Be careful.
None. All style and no substance.
The boss loves monitoring employees, makes sarcastic remarks, and runs a one-person show.
There is no corporate culture or refinement.
Managers are merely yes-men, with neither ability nor professional competence.
A fake happy company. Proceed with caution.
There are no advantages to speak of.
A. If you were hired externally or parachuted in, I suggest thinking it through carefully. Don’t be fooled by information about salaries higher than the industry average (coming here is basically a scam).
Besides factional divisions, there are no principles here whatsoever.
There are also all kinds of incidents involving bullying newcomers from outside. People talk extensively behind your back, set traps for you to fall into, wait to watch the drama unfold, and constantly shift the blame onto you, expecting you to deal with it.
On the surface, everything may look fine, but beneath it, undercurrents are raging as people scheme against you!
B. Because the company is so fixated on hiring externally for management positions, the colleagues who were originally at NIKKO have become resentful, leading them to reject outsiders!
They neither will nor want to train new employees, simply throwing out, “Wait until something happens, then we’ll talk”??
My advice to everyone is: fend for yourselves.
C. During interviews, they are very good at packaging themselves and portraying the company as excellent, promising the moon—listing plans to go public, pharmaceutical bonuses, and so on.
D. The atmosphere at work is quite poor. Everyone does their own thing; people neither communicate nor pay attention to what others are doing, and they do not coordinate or help one another. They won’t even go eat when it is mealtime, instead pretending to be busy and hardworking. If they dislike or are unhappy with a colleague, they look for opportunities to gossip about that person with others in the office. There is all kinds of PUA, and they will also spend an extremely long time doing it during working hours. By the way, even people in higher-ranking positions will lead the gossip!
E. Although various rules have been established in writing, in practice, having SOPs in the store is equivalent to having none. Changes are made so frequently that many colleagues do not even know whose instructions to follow or how to proceed. Everyone is confused and, when asked, knows nothing. Even more outrageously, full-time employees can arbitrarily make up their own rules without discussing them or reporting to their supervisors—they simply do whatever they want, with absolutely no workplace ethics (Do they have someone backing them behind the scenes?). If you’re so capable, why not have this full-time employee become the store manager? The company can train you. If you have the ability, you should know how to lead people, run a store, and drive sales! Don’t come to work acting selfishly and only picking on the easy targets!
F. Whenever you ask colleagues a question, they always reply, “Go look at the training materials!”
What the hell!! Then I suggest the company have new hires watch a week of training materials at home before sending them to the stores for training!
G. Colleagues who want to work seriously, develop talent, and create value will all be treated as outsiders here. (You’ll simply be privately insulted and slandered by groups of people who band together for mutual comfort, with all kinds of efforts made to undermine you.)
None
The job was different from the position discussed in the interview.
If you arrived early, you were expected to start work ahead of time. If you left on time, you would be asked whether you had too little to do. Meanwhile, colleagues could sit at their desks scrolling on their phones and killing time without any issue.
If you took sick leave, you would receive a phone call reminding you not to take leave unless there was a serious reason. Yet the supervisor themselves took several days off to go to Singapore not long afterward.
Because the last day of the month fell on a Sunday, when I resigned, the supervisor demanded that I leave that Friday, saying that the resignation date was for the company to decide. Isn’t that termination? They acted like an emperor. Ah, in the end, they still let me put Sunday as the resignation date, then acted as if they were magnanimously letting bygones be bygones. Ridiculous.
Only one month before I left did they suddenly transfer me to the position I had originally interviewed for (they told me and transferred me on the same day), because the colleague in that position could no longer take it and fled. The manager even said there would be a bonus, but because I resigned, I got nothing.
I suggest giving each of the supervisors at my former company a copy of the Labor Standards Act.
Oh, and senior managers and members of the inner circle would smoke at the employee entrance and exit without caring even when they saw pregnant women. They promote concern for the health of the people, yet do not care whether their employees develop lung cancer.
Learn about health and wellness
Supervisors often use surveillance cameras to watch what you’re doing.
They frequently transfer you between stores—constantly moving you around. As a store employee, you’re made to work almost like a salesperson. The HR department also doesn’t care about workers’ rights and is constantly operating on the edge of legality.
Going to work feels like life in a palace. If a supervisor dislikes you, they may maliciously transfer you to a branch far away from where you live, forcing you to resign on your own.
An absolutely terrible company
A company very good at packaging itself and putting on a show (the Oscars are definitely yours).
Everyone, please do not come here!!! Don’t be fooled by the salary or the grand promises made by the interviewer!!
There is absolutely no system or order
A bunch of employees love picking on easy targets
They like staying in their echo chamber and criticizing others together
The workplace environment is extremely unfriendly
1. Most colleagues are generally easy to get along with.
2. You can learn about many currently popular health supplements (broadening your knowledge).
3. Employee discount prices (probably the best benefit).
1. A mysteriously named welfare fee is deducted from your salary every month.
2. There are unwritten rules regarding overtime: apparently, you can only claim compensatory leave; I’ve heard that requesting overtime pay will result in being called in for a discussion.
3. Whenever a problem occurs, every department seeks to protect itself, and no one actually resolves the issue.
1. Follow a good store manager and you’ll go to heaven; otherwise, you’ll go to hell.
2. As long as you don’t get promoted to management, you can get by pretty easily (though the pay is also on the lower side).
3. If you have good coworkers, every day is enjoyable. That’s basically the only advantage: having good coworkers.
There are so many disadvantages that it would probably be hard to finish listing them all.
1. As mentioned above, people are very important, and so is the size of the store. Don’t choose one where you can only carry goods up and down the stairs, or you’ll be exhausted to death. But taking it easy comes with a corresponding price. If you think 30,000 is about enough and just want to slack off, you can come here—as long as you have thick enough skin.
2. It depends on whether your store is able to sell medicines. The proportion of bonuses is actually more or less fixed, and it’s difficult to significantly increase sales just because one person is good at recommending products. If you encounter a lousy store manager who distributes work unfairly, while veteran employees are very good at selling medicines and everyone is constantly scheming against each other, that’s also extremely painful.
3. Head office is always passing the buck. When customers ask questions, they keep dragging things out, and you can only get yelled at and misunderstood on the front line. If there’s a customer complaint, it’s all your fault. You call A, but A isn’t there; B answers the phone, and when you ask B to relay the message, B says it can’t be done ^^. Another thing I remember clearly was when we previously sold X test kits and a customer said some parts were missing. They replied that the product couldn’t be returned because it hadn’t been opened and checked on the spot. Damn, the customer bought five of them—are they supposed to open and inspect all five? Hygiene???? If we respond like that, won’t the customer completely tear us apart?
4. The supervisors are two-faced, especially a certain Mr. Jia. He acts like your sworn brother to your face, but you never know how much he says about you behind your back. Fortunately, I was familiar with people from other stores ==, so from then on I didn’t dare tell him much. The other higher-ups are even worse. When they need you, they show concern and ask how you’re doing; as soon as you have no value to them, their attitude changes immediately.
5. No one wants to become a manager. It’s hard work with no appreciation. Even when customer traffic and sales are generally poor, they keep expanding stores, so they can only keep finding people who don’t understand the work to become supervisors or emotionally blackmailing people into taking over stores @@. If the grand promises they make were realistic, someone would take the jobs—but those promises exist only in their imagination.
6. If you’re responsible, have aspirations for your work, and want to make something of yourself, this place isn’t suitable for you. You’ll only be exploited here.
If you’re like those supervisor-level people who are good at talking nonsense, flattering others, and have excellent speaking skills, this place is very suitable for you. Regardless of your actual work ability, you can climb the ladder very easily.
More relaxed and more freedom (compared with other companies in the same industry)
There’s already no one left, yet they keep opening new stores all the time. I don’t understand the logic behind it.
The existing employees are working miserably. Not only can they not take annual leave, they can’t even use compensatory leave.
They can’t retain good veteran employees.
They keep recruiting new people, but because the existing work environment is unbearably awful, newcomers simply have no way to survive.
The boss and managers are very good at making empty promises.
When something goes wrong, they refuse to take any responsibility. They’re already full just from eating those empty promises.
You can become a manager without knowing how to do anything.
Whenever something goes wrong, they say they didn’t know and there was nothing they could do.
Whether you can get promoted has nothing to do with your abilities.
It depends on whether your manager likes you and whether you cooperate with their endless, excessive store reassignments.
They’re constantly bragging about bonuses and claiming they pay out a lot, but in reality they don’t want to pay them at all. The performance targets are set impossibly high, so you can just give up struggling.
The year-end bonus is unbearably terrible. If you’re lucky enough to be assigned to a good store, at least the year-end bonus will let you get through the New Year (barely).
If you’re assigned to a worse store—one that you don’t even know why it was opened—you’ll cry when you see your year-end bonus.
If you want to put your temper and the hardships of life through training, come here.
None
I somewhat felt that the HR representative was very unprofessional. They had clearly already reviewed my résumé, yet still sent me an interview invitation, only to say after I arrived that they couldn't afford to pay that salary. I asked bluntly, “Then why did you invite me here?” I also expressed during the interview that I like B2C, but the other party kept emphasizing that the salary was probably very different from what I had in mind. Please—I didn't even write down my expected salary, so how would you know? Then they started going in circles, giving me a bunch of suggestions that I could contact headhunters, apply to Watsons, or apply to Sushi Express. Overall, I don't know what the point of requiring an interview was! It left a very unpleasant impression.
You can learn about health-care product lines, which is fairly good.
1. Having the right colleagues is like getting an SSR character.
If you run into people who are completely self-centered, the longer they have been there, the more they focus on protecting themselves.
You never know when you might be completely sabotaged.
2. You really can receive performance bonuses,
but uneven distribution is a common occurrence.
There are also bonuses that come out of nowhere and end up in someone else’s pocket.
3. Even special circumstances (such as artistic activities or an injury requiring an emergency-room visit) may still be treated as excuses for taking leave.
4. They neither teach nor want to teach new employees.
New employees can only fend for themselves, protect themselves, and mostly learn on their own.
5. Poor.
1. Learned some basic knowledge about medicines (if you don't learn it, you'll get chewed out)
2. Customer service
3. Bonuses (they're being cut badly now), so there are no advantages
1. The main products are Japanese medicines (70% are in-house products; most of the other products do not participate in discount promotions)
2. The threshold for receiving bonuses is high (often, one person in each store doesn't even receive NT$500)
3. Supervisors and colleagues jointly target externally hired employees (everything you say gets exaggerated and relayed to supervisors, then used as content in face-to-face meetings)
4. Every policy made by senior managers is intended to please even higher-level management (even when it affects the workflow of frontline staff)
5. They keep opening new stores despite not making money (there aren't even enough people to provide support)
If you like Japanese and Japanese products, this is indeed a place where you can come into contact with them often.
The company is located in Zhongshan District, very close to the MRT station and convenient for transportation.
You can only take the stairs; you cannot use the elevator.
There is an annoying work log to fill out, like writing in a communication notebook.
There is overtime every day—a culture of working overtime.
Is having your own seat at work considered an advantage?
1. The company does not provide toilet paper, so you have to bring your own.
2. An overly self-satisfied company that thinks the whole world should sponsor Nichiyaku.
3. A company with absolutely no positioning; it could be renamed Deyou Shop.
4. A company that loves managing employees’ clothing, appearance, and every move.
5. All kinds of buck-passing among departments; no matter what happens, it is always someone else’s fault.
6. A company with a worrying outlook for future development.
7. They come up with all kinds of absurd reasons to deduct pay and use moral coercion.
8. Overtime cannot be reported until 19:30; the half hour from 18:00 to 18:30 must be donated to the company.
9. The air conditioning is always running in fan-only mode.
10. The cleaning staff have the easiest pay: they do not need to clean seriously, and everyone is expected to take recyclables to the first floor themselves.
11. Only the boss is allowed to take the elevator; everyone else has to use the stairs.
With customer traffic greatly reduced, you can only spend each joyful day pretending to be busy by checking expiration dates and doing odd jobs while waiting for payday~~
The Japanese beauty products, medicines, and health supplements that the store specializes in are available at almost every competitor, except for our own slow-moving products (while others often have high-discount promotions). They also have more than ten times as many stores nationwide as we do... Others are making money and expanding their stores; here, they are closing stores, securing financing, and then expanding again~ When the products are available everywhere... I don't know where this company's competitiveness lies.
None
Thanks to the sales department supervisor’s incompetence and abuse of power, as well as the Lin-named male district manager’s borrowed authority and bullying, even the Japanese pharmaceutical company would be left half-dead if it didn’t die outright.
A company that cannot retain good talent must have its reasons. Those considering joining should think carefully.
None
This company is truly terrible.
Not only is the management extremely chaotic, but the division of responsibilities and processes among departments are also unclear.
Products are often launched suddenly, and employees are notified without warning.
The product information is also incomplete, so everything has to be handled by employees themselves.
Worst of all, the work atmosphere and environment are poor.
The chairwoman monitors everyone’s work through surveillance cameras under the guise of concern.
If someone is caught leaving the lights or doors on, it is announced publicly and they are fined without exception.
Moreover, because deducting the money from wages would violate labor laws, employees are asked to sign a consent form agreeing to have the money deducted voluntarily and then pay in cash.
The vice president currently in power is very domineering, so don’t expect much room to make an impact in this job.
There is no such thing as delegation of authority; following what she wants is the only option.
The colleagues are also difficult to deal with. Sometimes they speak very harshly and hurt people.
They judge colleagues and vendors by appearance, favoring and selecting handsome people regardless of their abilities.
No one is willing to take responsibility, so even when she makes the decision, subordinates are always held accountable if something goes wrong.
They also shift the blame to subordinates when dealing with the chairman.
Their character is not particularly good either; they speak badly about colleagues behind their backs.
This is not a supervisor worth learning from or following.
Furthermore, the company has been established for seven years and has lost money for all seven years; its management is in poor condition.
Due to insufficient cash flow, it also frequently delays payments to vendors.
Overall, the work experience is truly awful. I strongly do not recommend joining this company.
More shortcomings than other companies
There are so many shortcomings that they’re impossible to list them all.
There are many internal company problems, and HR and marketing are major issues; they’re very good at passing the buck.
Store employees work very hard but are treated poorly, and some stores don’t even have restrooms.
Remember, don’t be fooled by the grand promises this company makes.
1. Get to be exposed to a wide variety of Japanese products
1. At first, newcomers are given the impression that the environment is relaxed and that the work is very simple, but the demands gradually increase.
2. Treat part-time workers like full-time employees, and full-time employees like managers.
They give you no authority but still make you bear the responsibility. They rationalize everything, and even when they are in the wrong, they will twist it into being the employee’s problem.
3. Senior management or regional store supervisors love to conduct inspections, and employees often have to run around because of certain preferences of senior management.
4. Training is insufficient. They ask us to promote products without properly explaining the product information (only briefly mentioning product features verbally), and there is no material we can take back for reference. Many times, we have to look up the product information ourselves afterward.
5. The bonuses are quite low… which makes people lose motivation to promote products.
For example, if a product ranks among the top three in sales across the stores in the region, the store’s bonus is only NT$1,000.
Moreover, the company comes up with strange promotional packages and requires you to promote them.
6. Senior management at the company really likes using surveillance cameras to monitor everyone, which makes people feel very uncomfortable.
At the store where I worked, the store manager would check the surveillance cameras every day at work. The manager even installed the surveillance program on their phone to monitor everyone all day, spending work hours looking at their phone or watching the cameras in the office instead of doing their actual job.
7. The company culture seems to favor supervisors (senior management). Even when they are at fault, it is always considered our problem, and we are the ones expected to reflect on ourselves. The overall environment is extremely stressful.
8. Average starting pay, average bonuses, lots of miscellaneous tasks, and a heavy workload.
9. The company’s products cannot be connected in real time with Japan.
Many of the products can be found at drugstores elsewhere.
10. There are often double standards when doing things, making it difficult to understand what we are actually supposed to do.
Even when you have tried your best to cover all the bases, if something goes wrong, they will still desperately look for reasons to push the blame onto you.
These are my observations from working at one store of a Japanese drugstore company.
Whether the other branches have all of these issues is for each person to assess for themselves.
The company deliberately creates a relaxed atmosphere when new employees join.
1. Required to clean the office and restrooms
2. Almost daily overtime, but no overtime pay—only compensatory leave that cannot actually be taken
3. When staffing is insufficient at a newly opened store, employees may be asked to provide support, usually on weekends, but transportation expenses are not provided
4. A family-owned business; the former owner’s wife (though not an executive of the company) monitors employees via CCTV
The administrative department supervisor lacks professional knowledge
and becomes angry and defensive when corrected.
Full-time store clerk: NT$22,000/month, NT$1,000 perfect-attendance bonus, duty-based system, employee discount.