Colleagues are generally easy to get along with in casual conversation.
The boss’s wife occasionally buys snacks for everyone (fried chicken cutlets, pan-fried buns, chicken cakes, etc.).
For overtime, you can choose compensatory leave or overtime pay.
The boss and his family never gossip with employees or force awkward small talk.
Preliminary context: During the interview, I confirmed that the company fully complies with the Labor Standards Act. They only said that their difference was that employees are insured through a guild.
There are many drawbacks to being insured through a guild; please look it up (I didn’t check at the time...).
There is no 6% labor pension contribution through the guild. The boss said he would calculate the amount accrued during employment and pay it when an employee leaves.
Employees’ seats are arranged in a row facing the wall, with the boss and his family sitting directly behind them (those who dislike being watched should consider this carefully).
Some senior colleagues only know CorelDRAW and cannot handle files created in Illustrator, so Illustrator files are assigned to other colleagues.
The purpose of the meetings is questionable: There is one meeting a week where everyone reports on their current work. It is often apparent that some people have very little work (but especially like to complain about being busy), yet after the meeting, the boss continues assigning work to those who already have heavier workloads.
Cleaning the restroom is always assigned to new employees: When I joined, the boss said the duty would rotate. After doing it for more than a quarter, I asked senior colleagues and learned that it would never actually change.
There is no NAS, only a shared local-area network. Because work assignments are very disorganized, it is often necessary to look for other people’s files, which means searching one computer at a time.
The company consists of the boss, the boss’s wife, and the junior boss; everyone else is a “designer.” There is no dedicated accounting or administrative staff (I only found this out after joining; the boss’s family does not handle administrative affairs).
Accounting is handled as an additional duty by one senior colleague, who has no accounting background or experience and is not familiar with personnel regulations or the Labor Standards Act. Everything is done according to the boss’s instructions, so the overtime calculations and deductions for different types of leave differ from the Labor Standards Act.
Administrative duties rotate among the other designers, one person per month. The person has to monitor two LINE accounts, answer the phone, and check emails, receiving a monthly allowance of 1,000.
In summer, the air conditioning is not turned on immediately when work starts because the boss tolerates heat well.
During the interview, they said the probationary period would be one month, after which the salary would increase by at least 1,000. The evaluation criteria were speed, degree of completion, and whether there were mistakes. Even though I met all the criteria, the increase was still only 1,000.
When the boss’s wife tried to persuade me to stay, I asked which requirement I had failed to meet. She said I had met them all, so the company simply refused to increase the amount.
The company wanted to retain me, but was unwilling to adjust any of my benefits or raise my salary. It was the first time I had experienced such an absurd attempt to retain an employee.
After leaving, I discovered when receiving my salary that I had not received the labor pension contribution; I only received it after proactively asking for it.
Some colleagues are easy to get along with
1. During the interview, they said employees would be covered by labor and health insurance, but after joining I found out it was union insurance instead. As a result, there was no employment insurance or labor pension, and I also had to make a trip to the union myself. They said the labor pension would be paid together after resignation, but that did not happen either. They claimed the company would calculate everything it owed and would not shortchange employees, but that was simply a lie. The NT$2,000 meal allowance was only available if you brought your own lunch, and bringing breakfast to eat at the company was not allowed.
2. They said that whoever had previously handled a certain client’s work would continue handling it. However, the senior employees would say that it was something new or that their current work was urgent, so the boss would assign the project to a newcomer—even when the deadline was not urgent.
3. Holiday overtime pay was not calculated according to the Labor Standards Act.
4. Files from past projects were not stored in a centralized location. The company’s seven computers all contained files created by different people, so whenever you needed to find an old file, you had to search every computer. The only files that were easy to find were those for print jobs sent to a particular printing company, because they had an organized Excel list.
5. The company had no customer service or administrative staff, so everyone had to take turns handling customer service each month. The person assigned to customer service that month could receive an additional NT$1,000 in salary, but the senior employees often took annual leave during the summer vacation in July and August—two days a week, meaning they did not actually perform customer service work for 10 days—yet they still received the full NT$1,000.
6. During the school-publication season, the person assigned to customer service would be extremely busy. The boss would also criticize the speed of manuscript production and demand that it be increased. If you did not frequently work overtime during the school-publication season, the boss would make all kinds of explicit and implicit suggestions that you should work overtime.
7. Work started at 8:00 a.m., but the air conditioning was not turned on until 9:00 a.m. If it rained and the weather was cooler, they would turn it on even later. Sometimes they would even turn off the air conditioning early in the afternoon.
Some colleagues are easy to get along with
1 High staff turnover
2 There are strict senior colleagues who constantly hover around you, visibly watching your screen
3 The office is completely open to the public, and customers (walk-ins) can also walk directly behind you and stare at you
4 Not recommended as a long-term job