ABBY艾比兒童眼鏡_艾比實業有限公司

The workplace atmosphere is superficially relaxed, and the colleagues are easy to get along with.

Although it’s okay to arrive a few minutes late, the boss still hopes from the bottom of their heart that you’ll arrive at work on time—but not leave on time.

Everyone is more relaxed when the boss isn’t at the company. We chat and so on, and the colleagues are pretty easy to get along with.

*The company is very small. Including the boss and their husband, the head office has fewer than ten employees, so there are no systems or processes of any kind—not even pay slips. The labor and health insurance enrollment is also not reported truthfully → high salary, low reported wages.

*The company provides no training for new employees. Since the company is so small, everyone has many responsibilities, and no one is available to guide or teach you. Many things are known and understood only by the boss personally; even if you ask other colleagues, no one can be certain. The company also rarely holds meetings, so it is very easy for new employees not to know the company’s current operating goals, direction, or situation.

*I was asked to leave without any communication or discussion, which made me feel mistreated and disrespected. The boss also does not respect professional expertise—basically, they use you as a moving laborer and then discard you.

To give my own example, one day, almost three months after I joined the company, I was told at the end of the workday that they felt I was unsuitable for the position and asked me to stay only until the end of that month. However, before this, the only time they had spoken with me was two days earlier, when they discussed what they felt I was unsuitable for. That conversation was very incomplete and was repeatedly interrupted by other matters. They originally said we would continue the next day, but the discussion did not continue the next day either. The day after that, I was told, “You’re unsuitable for the position, so stay until the end of the month!” Throughout this entire process, there was no communication between both parties; the employee simply received information from the employer unilaterally.

The reasons I was told I was unsuitable were that my initiative was mediocre and that I couldn’t capture the style = =. But I was also completely confused about these two points. To me, design takes time, while my work was fragmented and scattered. Every colleague in the company could assign me work and ask me to help, and the boss often suddenly assigned urgent tasks. The work on my desk never stopped, so I don’t know what I neglected to be treated this way. The boss’s example of my lack of initiative was that I needed to be told to make new business cards for the company’s move before I would do it. But from my perspective, the company only confirmed the moving date three days before the move. Without a confirmed moving date, it was difficult for me to arrange the priorities of the work on hand. At the time, I still had a pile of designs for the new location’s signboard, interior, and even storefront window. In addition, the phone number and address of the new location were not confirmed and given to me until ten days before the move. After they were confirmed, I proposed two or three business-card designs for approval within three days. I personally felt that I had not delayed the company. Also, five working days before the move, I was suddenly told that a 16-page booklet would need to be given away as a gift at the opening after the move. After deducting the time needed for outsourcing, I had only two or three working days left. I was utterly stunned at the time, but I still forced myself to finish it. The result was that I was told the boss had already informed me when I joined the company that I would have to make this item. It’s true that, when I joined, you did say this—but what you said at the time was that you wanted me to collect information first because you planned to work on this later. At one point, I even confirmed the priorities of my work with you, and you said it wasn’t urgent and that we could work on it gradually later. So I first handled other matters that you considered more urgent. Then, suddenly, the company was moving, and you suddenly wanted to use this as a giveaway. I was still told about it that afternoon; calculating it carefully, I had less than two and a half working days left.

As for not being able to capture the style: during my interview, the boss looked at my portfolio and told me they liked the style of my work, which was why they wanted me to join the company. But after I joined, I never received the boss’s praise. The company has a marketing group, but messages there are often read without a reply. After each proposal, it felt like it sank into the sea, with little response. I accept that everyone has different aesthetic preferences or wants to convey different feelings, but I really cannot accept someone deciding that you should be able to capture their preferences—or even know what they want you to do—without communicating with you, especially when the division of work has never been clearly explained.

As for the boss not respecting professional expertise, everyone can judge that for themselves. Personally, I feel that when you want something to be executed, you only need to provide the direction, purpose, and budget. Once you confirm the design, the designer should coordinate with the vendor and arrange for the item to be produced. But here, the boss often handled the outsourcing personally. Even when I asked for the vendor’s information, the boss still contacted the other party directly, and the final product would end up being quite different from the original design.

Regarding the move, I heard two months beforehand that the company was going to relocate, but it remained only hearsay. I didn’t know where we were moving or what kind of space it would be until twenty days before the move, and I still didn’t know the exact moving date. Then, at an impromptu meeting, they said we would move in three days—and that was when you found out, “Oh! We’re moving in three days.” Many designs for the new location were still unfinished, and I also had to help pack and move. On the moving day, the company hired movers for only one trip; everything else—sorting, packing, carrying, and putting things away—was done by company employees. The move took three days. During those three days, there was no lunch break; we ate at two or three in the afternoon every day and continued working afterward. We even worked one or two hours of overtime, but there was no additional allowance or overtime pay, and the boss did not provide lunch. The employees were literally turned into moving laborers.

In summary: During the interview, the boss said the previous designer had never been able to meet their requirements. After I joined, my colleagues said the company had gone through many designers. Now I finally understand why someone in this position could keep coming and going like this.