婦潔藥品有限公司

The only advantage is that “newcomers” leave work on time (if you’re not a newcomer, who knows, haha), but I estimate they do this because they’re afraid of scaring people away. There’s not much point in keeping you after hours anyway.

First of all, during the interview, I had arranged a time with HR, but when I arrived, I was told that HR was on leave that day. It took half an hour before someone showed up to handle the situation. I had absolutely no idea how such a major blunder could happen (at one point, I even considered just leaving). Only later did I find out that the HR staff member had just started the job as well. This completely gave me a very poor impression of the company. Let me give you the conclusion first: if you’re simply looking for a chaotic work experience to experience the hardships of life, challenge yourself to survive in the cracks of a harsh environment, and you don’t care about money or office politics, then you can come here for a challenge.

1. The system is chaotic—or rather, there is basically no system at all. Everyone has their own principles and standards for doing things, making it impossible to know whom you should listen to. For example: once your work fails to meet A’s needs, A will be dissatisfied. But if you are actually assigned to work under B, B will also be dissatisfied that you did not follow B’s instructions. You cannot please either side, and being a subordinate is extremely painful. Or A may ask why you never ask questions, even though you already asked B, and B says, “You’re asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?” This leaves subordinates completely unsure whether they should ask questions at all. Under all these double standards, decisions ultimately have to be made by someone higher up, but they often make decisions after hearing only fragments and taking things out of context, which frequently leads to extremely strange situations.

2. Office politics are severe. I often heard them privately discussing how people in other departments were bad or what so-and-so was like, or talking about how the people above them were this or that. Then, whenever they actually encountered those senior people, they would put on all kinds of performances and act. This stark contrast between how they behaved in front of and behind people is hard to accept. In addition, as long as you do not please your supervisor, they will use every possible method to undermine you, such as speaking badly about you to senior management and causing you to be called in for a meeting, or putting on the airs of a supervisor—standard tactics, basically. They show no genuine intention of resolving matters with you, and they even flatly deny things they said. Do you really have to record them before they’ll admit what they said? Communication among senior management, supervisors, and subordinates is completely cliff-like, and the supervisor shows none of the qualities a supervisor should have. (I later found out that they did not last long either, which explains why everything was such a mess.)

3. The workspace is cramped and the environment is terrible. Things are piled up messily everywhere—one pile here, another pile there—and they often make it impossible to pass through normally. Nothing has a designated place, so you cannot find things, or you spend huge amounts of time looking for them. It is even so dirty and disorderly that strange things are breeding. And they still want to implement GMP and GDP? Don’t make me laugh. If they really intended to do so, wouldn’t the consultants they hired faint at the sight of this?

4. To add to the cramped-space problem mentioned above, newly joined members do not even have a fixed seat. It feels as if you were hired as a migrant worker or odd-job laborer, giving you the impression that since you will not last long anyway, they do not even need to provide you with a seat. (After all, you are merely sent around to do various tasks unrelated to your job, while they grandly claim that they are letting you do more so you can learn more.)

5. The supervisor has serious problems with management and work allocation. The supervisor does not know how to allocate manpower, but only keeps saying things like, “I don’t have enough staff; I can’t finish everything.” When senior management actually assigns people to you, you simply send them off to do odd jobs (they really use them like student workers—is the company paying high salaries to hire student workers?), and then continue doing what you call your work according to your own methods. When something actually goes wrong, you shift the blame by saying the other person’s work efficiency was low, or that they failed to come and report to you. Please—if you casually sent the person away, what exactly were they supposed to report to you? When you assign people tasks, do you not even bother to check how far they have gotten? Is this really how you work? Being a subordinate here is truly pitiful. You are often assigned one task, then interrupted and called away to do something else. As a subordinate, you cannot refuse to help, especially as a newcomer. The result is that your work is constantly interrupted, and then you are criticized for having low work efficiency when completing the task you were assigned. You assign someone to do odd jobs or work outside their responsibilities, then turn around and blame them for doing it poorly. The logic is utterly baffling.

6. There are all kinds of behavior that disregards public safety, and I cannot even be bothered to point them out one by one. The fire hydrant is blocked by piles of things; the stairwell is packed with all kinds of miscellaneous items, making it extremely difficult to move through the stairs; no one even knows where the fire extinguishers have been put; and I do not even know whether emergency exits exist. Boxes are piled there as high as a mountain. Don’t think that making only the first floor look nice is enough, okay? If an accident really happens, are you going to rely on the elevator to transport people? They often do dangerous things for the sake of their so-called “work efficiency.” They genuinely have no safety awareness at all.

7. The management-level personnel are narrow-minded. Senior management only tells you that, as a subordinate, you need to be polite and report to your supervisor. It is true that subordinates should do this, but the supervisor does not return the courtesy and has no concern for subordinates at all. Personally, I believe that politeness and basic respect are two-way streets. It should not only be subordinates showing respect to supervisors; supervisors should show it to subordinates as well. But I did not feel that here. It was as if you were merely a consumable, and there was no need to tell you much. Still, this is understandable, since they apparently believe you will not stay long. They can even use their authority to force you out, without having to explain anything to you at all.

8. I would like to mention a small incident here. Everyone knows that the pandemic situation has been severe recently. During this period, both of my parents tested positive. I had eaten with my family a few days earlier, so as soon as I learned that a family member had tested positive, I immediately notified the company and asked what I should do. The company’s response made me feel that they did not care at all—truly, that was the impression I got—and I was even told to use personal leave to deal with it myself. If something had really happened, would it have been fine for me to go to work and infect everyone? They genuinely had no sense of crisis. Then, after I returned to work, no one mentioned the matter at all, as if nothing had happened. So is the government failing to act, while the businesses below it simply follow suit and do nothing?

9. This company’s approach to work is: “Because we cannot solve the problem, we solve the person who might create a problem.” This is a textbook example of the behavior of a stereotypical Taiwanese exploitative boss. Then they hide behind all kinds of bureaucratic language and tell you that this was a decision made after the company’s evaluation and consideration of its interests, blah blah blah. If you want to challenge this company, I advise everyone to think twice before proceeding.