Can learn technical skills
Short working hours on weekdays; there is a lot of downtime
The coworkers (part-time employees) are easy to get along with, and scheduling time off is very flexible
The base salary during the probationary period is 24,000. For the first three months, recruitment bonuses are paid in cash by the manager of each location to full-time employees.
However, you cannot receive recruitment bonuses during the probationary period, so the first three months feel like working for nothing.
Overtime is not paid; they only tell you to take an extra 30-minute break the next time you work.
The full-time employees are difficult to get along with. In places with many female employees, there will always be people who take advantage of one another; otherwise, they form small cliques.
If you do not particularly like children but do enjoy playing with modeling clay, do not apply. You really will not learn anything, the pay is low, and you only discover after joining that you were misled.
The coworkers are extremely straightforward. Most employees who have worked there for more than five years started as part-time workers while they were students and transferred directly to full-time positions after graduating. Basically, very few have other work experience, so relationships are simple and easygoing.
If you like clay or drawing, you can create samples in styles you enjoy by making models based on popular cartoons.
Improve your clay and drawing skills.
Spend time with healthy, happy children and experience their innocence.
The good point is that the salary is around NT$30,000 at the beginning; during the anniversary sales period, it can reach around NT$80,000 in certain months. The bad point is that, without additional bonuses, the base salary makes it difficult to exceed NT$30,000.
The pay system is very strange. The NT$24,000 base salary is paid by bank transfer, while the monthly enrollment bonuses are paid in “cash” and then distributed to full-time employees by the managers of each store counter.
The payslip only lists the “base salary” and labor and health insurance deductions; bonuses are not included, allowing the company to insure employees at the lowest salary bracket.
The company has a serious generational gap. Most employees have five to ten or more years of seniority, while very few have two or three years.
From April to June 2019, the company deemed four employees at the Taipei counters unsuitable and held an unofficial competition based on sales performance. The person who came last was transferred from Taipei to work in Taichung, and vice versa. This caused several employees to resign voluntarily; the braver employees managed to obtain severance pay.
A senior employee who had worked in Taipei for 15 years was forced to transfer to Taichung and has since resigned.
Part-time workers are paid the same as elsewhere—NT$150 per hour. Every Saturday, Sunday, and national holiday (and during the busy summer vacation period, they also have to work), they can take only one day off per month and cannot request leave or find a replacement.
At busy locations, one part-time worker has to teach two or three children at once, including both drawing and clay. The children span a very wide age range.
Teaching is calculated using a point system; you must exceed the target before receiving a raise. On the surface, it looks like wages can increase, but exceeding the target is very difficult.
For example, the total number of teaching points in one day must exceed 80 before the hourly wage increases by NT$30 (to NT$180 per hour), but in practice, 50 teaching points in a day is already the maximum.
At work, you have to deal with demanding parents and all kinds of requests. Working in a department store is service-oriented: customers are treated as highly important, and you have to win over both the children and their parents’ money.
◎If you work at a counter with good sales, the commission bonuses are easy to earn, and department store anniversary sales events are the most profitable times.
(But conversely, during the off-season or if you are assigned to a location with poor sales, you will essentially receive only the base salary...)
◎If the store manager and veteran colleagues you encounter are easy to communicate with, scheduling days off is very flexible.
(If you encounter people who are less considerate, you can only read the room and pick from the remaining dates when scheduling days off.)
◎There is an annual dinner and employee travel; both are fairly well organized. Among companies in the department store industry, this one is considered quite generous.
◎You can play with clay for free, learn sculpting techniques, and make small items.
◎Short working hours on weekdays (6 hours); there are few customers and plenty of downtime when children are in class.
◎You inevitably encounter all kinds of difficult children or dinosaur parents (the typical unreasonable customers found in department stores), so you must be extremely patient!
◎You must work during all kinds of national-holiday long weekends, Saturdays, and Sundays, and it gets extremely busy. (You can still schedule annual leave, but only when staffing is sufficient.)
◎The company prohibits taking leave on certain specific days, such as the first four days of the anniversary sale and make-up workdays.
◎Part-time workers at large counters in Taipei City have it especially hard. Teaching is almost entirely left to the part-timers, who also get little rest: they teach one child after another. Some locations have particularly serious cliques.
◎There are breaks, but occasionally you get so busy that you cannot eat on time.
◎You have to cooperate with transfers to other locations (because another counter is genuinely short-staffed, or because someone dislikes you and deliberately transfers you away...).