安益國際展覽股份有限公司

None

Although this was only a part-time job application,

the company contact’s terrible and dishonest responses were infuriating.

On December 2, I saw on PTT that this company was hiring exhibition attendants for the National Palace Museum Southern Branch in Chiayi.

The position required part-time work on weekends.

After seeing the job post, I sent my application email on Wednesday, December 4.

The employer replied on Monday, December 9, asking me to add them on LINE for an interview.

I added them immediately that day and asked when the interview would be, but then received no further response.

On Tuesday, December 10, I proactively asked whether the position had already been filled. They replied that the interview would take place at 17:00, and I agreed without any issue.

When the interview time arrived at 17:00 that day, they said they were in a meeting and could not conduct the interview.

They asked whether we could reschedule it to 11:00 on Wednesday, December 11, and I again agreed without any issue.

At 11:00 on Wednesday, December 11, they once again gave no response at all.

At 14:30, I proactively contacted them on LINE again. I explained that since I was worried they might be in a meeting at 11:00, I had not wanted to disturb them.

They replied that they had forgotten because they were busy. I also explained that if the position had already been filled, they should just say so directly.

It was not until 22:16 that they replied, saying that the weekend part-time positions had been filled and that only weekday positions remained (the original job posting only mentioned weekend work).

From the time they replied asking me to add them on LINE for an interview, I made every effort to follow up, yet they repeatedly delayed and forgot about it.

A friend who applied at the same time also received an interview response, but after adding them on LINE, they were simply ignored as well.

It was just a simple part-time job application, yet it left me extremely frustrated.

1. The office is very bright

2. Convenient transportation

1. It felt like none of the three interviewers had reviewed my portfolio beforehand. It seemed that I was invited to interview simply because I had previously worked in the same industry. During the interview, most of the conversation was dominated by the highest-ranking interviewer, while the other two hardly dared to speak. It inevitably gave me the impression that the company has a fairly heavy bureaucratic system.

2. You could tell that it is a business-oriented company that does not respect design and treats designers as tools for producing images.

3. The job openings included Senior Visual Creative, Visual Designer, and part-time Visual Designer. When I asked how many Senior Visual Creatives there were in the company, they seemed embarrassed to say there were none. They then told another subordinate manager that someone might be ready for promotion to senior level, which inevitably made me suspect that this was a position that looked attainable but was actually out of reach.

4. The company advertised a salary of over NT$50,000 to attract talent. I expected a salary slightly above NT$50,000, but was questioned about why I thought I could ask for that amount. Given the substantial amount of work in my portfolio and my ten years of exhibition experience, I did not think it was excessive. It was clearly a salary-negotiation tactic, and I did not say much more. I strongly felt that the company does not assess your value based on your work, but determines your price solely by personal impression.

5. Recent graduates who want to build up their resumes and portfolios can try applying for the position at a low salary; when you are young, you can afford to work a little harder.

Salary is paid on time

The office is bright and clean

Very close to an MRT station

Extremely high employee turnover

Except for managers, everyone has less than two years of tenure

The exhibition industry is not the design industry; it is a service industry that serves clients' various revision requests

After the manager revises it, the business team revises it; after the business team revises it, the manager revises it; after the manager revises it, the business team revises it; after the business team revises it, the client revises it

After the client revises it, the manager revises it; after the manager revises it, the business team revises it—an endless cycle of revisions until the deadline arrives;

It even makes you wonder whether the client has ever seen it before the revisions begin. Everyone inside the company happily revises it internally, only for the client to not want it at all;

They also have to put on an act and discuss design concepts, which is simply a waste of time,

One layout is not enough to give the client; you have to provide ten layouts for the client to choose from, and then revise them again after the client chooses one;

In fact, when clients are not professionals, they just feel that something is off and do not even know what they want themselves,

Yet you still have to bluff them with design concepts to persuade them

Suitable for people with no work experience who want to enter the exhibition industry, as well as those who like receiving guidance from managers

People who value efficiency or have produced genuinely high-quality content will find the workflow here very strange

- Unlimited coffee

- There is a refrigerator for storing packed lunches

- There is supposedly no overtime system, but the company created a system that forces employees to clock in at 7 p.m. It appears to comply with labor laws and avoids being sued. However, everyone works overtime until dawn, and if you leave early for no reason, unrelated business staff will deflect responsibility by saying it is not their department’s work.

- They only use free templates to replace speed, and you have to illegally download the templates yourself.

- If the computer breaks, you have to fix it yourself because MIS only tells you to restart the computer.

- You have to purchase all office supplies and documents yourself; the company does not provide them.

The position interviewed for was an editor at an exhibition and convention magazine. In addition to conducting interviews and writing articles, the role also involves handling some administrative duties.

The editor-in-chief was quite nice. They had read my résumé and were willing to get to know the interviewee better. We talked a lot, and they provided many explanations as well.

Apparently, there is overtime pay, and employees do not often work overtime. I’m not sure whether this is because the departments differ.

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1. The office is beautiful, located inside the World Trade Center.

2. Most of the entry-level employees are decent people.

I hesitated for a long time about whether to write this article. After all, it does not benefit me in any way, and it also takes time to think about and write. However, based on the following two reasons, I ultimately decided to do it:

1. To provide job seekers with more information to help them determine whether the work environment and job duties of this position meet their needs, or even whether they can accept this way of life.

2. We all envy labor conditions overseas, but they did not fall from the sky; they were achieved through the gradual efforts and advocacy of every individual. Perhaps I cannot immediately change anything, but at the very least, I want to tell everyone, guided by my conscience, what I have seen, heard, and experienced. I firmly believe that disseminating information is itself a form of power, and I hope to make a small contribution to Taiwan’s labor environment.

Based on the following reasons, I personally believe that the owners or management are habitual exploitative bosses or managers:

1. They force employees to work overtime illegally. Employees are still forced to work beyond the statutory working hours (including being called in on weekends), with no overtime pay and no compensatory leave.

2. Their management mentality is appalling. First, they believe that employees should work overtime, and they feel no guilt assigning work after hours. Second, they knowingly violate the law. The company has a clock-in system, and employees are required to clock in and out themselves; if it is too late, they cannot clock out, exploiting loopholes in the law.

3. This is a company that will stop at nothing to make money. This is the main reason employees work unpaid overtime to the fullest extent. Personally, I believe that a gentleman should acquire wealth through honorable means. Who does not like achievement or wealth? But if they are obtained by violating the law or bullying employees, the more money they make, the more bad karma they are probably creating. Furthermore, although it appears to be a large company (around 150 employees), it has neither the structure nor the benefits of a large company. For a company of this size, I have heard that employee salaries are quite low. It does not cooperate with typhoon-day closures, and employees who do not come to work have money or leave deducted. (Apparently this is legal, but I had never heard of it before; I have never encountered a company this stingy.)

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The following describes the actual situation; it is a long post.

Under the Labor Standards Act, outside of the agreed-upon working hours, employees have no obligation to work. “Working regular hours is a basic labor right; overtime must be paid”; furthermore, under the Labor Standards Act, this job does not meet the conditions for an “all-inclusive salary” or “managerial responsibility” arrangement. So it is illegal, plain and simple.

Here, leaving work at 8 or 9 p.m. counts as early, and you still feel somewhat guilty when leaving because your colleagues are still working overtime. Leaving at 11 p.m. or midnight is common. It is not occasional; it is the norm. (At the design companies where I worked previously, one required overtime when rushing projects and sometimes offered compensatory leave depending on the circumstances, but it was not the norm, and employees could usually leave on time. At the other, employees almost always left on time, and the boss would even tell people to go home if they stayed too late.)

The management’s attitude is that overtime is simply expected. (At my previous job, the boss would ask designers to work overtime. There was no overtime pay, but at least the boss appeared somewhat apologetic.) Asking designers to come in and work overtime on weekends is common. Even after working hours have passed—8, 9, or 10 p.m.—they continue stuffing work onto designers without the slightest embarrassment. If you remind them that it is already after work and that you have something to do in the evening, they may say, “Do you expect the account managers to design it themselves?” They feel no embarrassment at all. If you say you have to leave, they will lie and tell you that it has to be given to the client at 10 the next morning, implying that if you do not finish it, you have not done your job properly. But it is simply a lie: they bully the weak and fear the strong, and are just taking advantage of the designers. Even when you have worked until 10 p.m., the account managers will pressure you by saying, “Give it to me before you get off work.” (Wasn’t work already over? Huh?) However, it must be said that the entry-level account managers are also victims; they work themselves to death as well.

The reason everyone works such excessive overtime is that the company does not merely want to make money; it wants to make “a lot” of money. At other companies, if a workload would reasonably take five days, here they schedule it for three days or less. Completing that workload still takes the same amount of time, so everyone has no choice but to work overtime. Since the overtime is free, the company’s profits can be very high because the hidden costs are paid by employees working as volunteers. Personally, I believe that wealth should be acquired through honorable means, and that one should not create bad karma. I hope management will examine their consciences: Is it really acceptable to build achievement and wealth on unfair methods that crush other people? This work environment also results in an extremely high turnover rate, which leads to even greater understaffing and creates a vicious cycle. (However, if they hire replacements, they will only assign even more projects; they will not let you off the hook.)

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Personally, I feel that this work environment has distorted people’s humanity to some extent, creating friction and awkwardness between people. After all, spending eight hours a day at work while constantly feeling uncomfortable is extremely unhealthy.

This environment makes people become somewhat twisted. If you are too nice, you will be exploited endlessly and work overtime until the end of time. But if you do not want this and try to stand up for yourself by refusing to work such excessive overtime, the work does not disappear automatically—it is simply shifted onto the colleague next to you, who then has to work even later. Wouldn’t that make things awkward between colleagues? And if you leave on time, everyone will notice.

I also cannot stand some of the distorted and misguided ideas that this environment has instilled in management and senior colleagues. More senior colleagues and supervisors have probably convinced themselves to accept this abnormal work environment and have consequently become accomplices. When they want to pile work on you that is fundamentally impossible to finish, they will “be nice” and ask you to “help,” telling you that you have “worked hard.” Then you can only “be nice” and swallow it, after which you work overtime until dawn. But if you are a good person, how can you not “help”? If you do not “help” your colleagues, how are you supposed to get along with everyone? In the end, you can only work overtime together with your colleagues and develop a kind of shared revolutionary bond. (It is extremely bizarre.) If you do not “help,” you even feel guilty, but in reality this is emotional blackmail. The fundamental issue is not whether you help or not; the company itself has a problem. If employees are required to work overtime, they should be paid overtime. If overtime is necessary because there is too much work, the company should hire more people or reduce the workload. Supervisors and senior colleagues often use soft pressure to force subordinates to comply. Although they also work overtime until dawn, I still believe they are merely accomplices of habitual exploitative bosses. This is like what James Dawes says in *Evil: Why Ordinary People Become Demons*: the characteristics of evil are not necessarily monstrous wickedness, but rather a frighteningly ordinary form of banality. During annual evaluations, the supervisor may pat you on the head and tell you that you are great, obedient, highly cooperative, and very responsible for working overtime. (As an aside, the soldiers who helped Hitler send Jews into gas chambers were later court-martialed. Everyone should carefully examine what they are doing!) To supervisors who ask their subordinates to “help”: “I have rent to pay next month—could you help me out?” “I want to travel abroad—could you help me out?”

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Regarding the work itself:

1. The company mainly handles exhibitions, trade shows, forums, and similar projects. The work may be more commercial, with less artistic or creative content.

2. It is a business-oriented company. Design is not decided by the designers; it only counts once the account managers approve it, and then the clients revise it again and again.

3. Because deadlines are often extremely tight, the account managers have usually already decided on the topic or concept, leaving the designers simply to draw. There is relatively little room for creativity.

1. The office is clean, spacious, and has a strong sense of design.

2. Aside from the managers and the old-timers, most colleagues are fairly easy to get along with.

1. All show and no substance. It used to have the appearance of a foreign company but the substance of a Taiwanese company; now it is purely a Taiwanese company.

2. It is a family business, and the owner's relatives and children all work at the company.

3. The owner is extremely stingy. Salaries are on the lower end of the industry average, yet the owner still claims the company is an industry leader.

4. Sales and design positions either have no bonuses or very small bonuses, so they are only suitable for newcomers to gain experience.

5. The owner and managers are both extremely sarcastic and occasionally even berate people.