特力集團＿HOLA＿HOLA CASA＿HOLA Petite＿Crate&Barrel＿特力屋股份有限公司

1. The HR interviewer asked very detailed questions

2. There was a logic test

3. The interview process was okay

I asked for a salary of 50,000 and was rejected

The advantage is that it’s fairly relaxed when there are no customers in the store.

There is so much merchandise that you can never finish restocking. When people quit, they aren’t replaced. Supervisors understand the products even less than regular employees. The pay is low, and the bonus is less than a thousand after three months. Changing the shelves will wear you out.

I've been working at the headquarters for over a year now.

The colleagues are nice, and the work atmosphere is relaxed. As long as you can meet your work objectives, that's all that matters—the supervisor doesn't micromanage.

There are very few benefits; they only meet the requirements of the Labor Standards Act. Subsidies for bonuses, employee trips, and other activities are all at the bare minimum. The company is extremely stingy.

They don't replace people when positions become vacant. Unless everyone resigns because they really can't take it anymore, they won't hire replacements.

If you're a little older, coming here to coast along isn't a bad option. The supervisors are all talk and bluffing. If you're young, I don't recommend coming here.

1 Colleagues are pleasant to work with

1 Entry-level employees are not covered by the Labor Standards Act

2 No year-end bonus; salaries and bonuses are reduced year by year, while retaining employees who are of no use to the headquarters

3 The departments handling agency brands only engage in internal conflict and lack much cohesion

4 Too late to catch up with the Internet era. Hola products have no distinctive features, and their prices cannot keep up either. Sales staff are required to ask customers to purchase online.

Then, if customers stop coming to the store, where will the sales staff’s bonuses come from?

This is basically slow suicide. The store cannot retain its young employees

After notifying me about the interview, they asked me to provide my basic information. Once the company saw that my expected salary differed from the compensation they were willing to offer, they called to cancel the interview, saving me a wasted trip.

Applied for the Visual Merchandising position at the Xitun branch of HOLA.

The company said they were only willing to pay NT$24,000–25,000. I do not recommend going to the interview!!! NT$24,000 is far too low for someone who can do graphic design.

特力屋

Time off can be scheduled flexibly, although sometimes taking leave is prohibited.

No year-end bonus and no performance bonuses (because the system keeps changing and the figures they announce are exaggerated). The salary is terrible and is hardly ever adjusted, and there are few benefits. Performance evaluations are based on whether the supervisor likes you; whether you can do the job is not important—what matters is whether you know how to say pleasing things. The longer you work there, the less you may earn compared with new hires. The salary of a regular full-time employee can be lower than that of an hourly part-time worker (when calculated based on the same number of hours). Full-time employees have heavy responsibilities but low pay, while the company is also preparing to go public and list its shares.

Punctual working hours

Leave follows the Labor Standards Act—the longer you work, the better your leave gets

On typhoon days, you can claim taxi fares for commuting to work

Not much overtime

The salary is very fixed, and raises are small

To transfer between departments or be promoted to section manager, you have to transfer to another store

Job responsibilities change at any time depending on the person, so capable employees being overworked is normal. Senior staff are all very good at passing the buck in order to survive

Bonuses can change without warning: monthly bonuses become quarterly bonuses, and the targets keep being set higher and higher. They clearly have no intention of paying them, and the actual amount received is also very small

If you want to work here, think it through carefully: your base salary is basically the money you will be earning in the future. Make sure you can accept that before joining. Also, every year when everyone discusses year-end bonuses, it is very painful, because the two words “year-end bonus” do not exist in our dictionary.

If you have joined and want to work until retirement without seeking promotion or transferring stores, learn how to slack off from colleagues who have been here for more than a decade. After hanging around long enough, at least you will have annual leave!

Every day you move goods for customers, only to see the next day that the products have been put back in their original category and need to be moved again. Or you move goods for customers and, a few days later, see them returned in a battered condition. This is everyday life here; you have to be able to take it in stride to last long.

Changing shifts is exhausting

None. I felt very disrespected.

I never even submitted an application. The other party’s HR called me on their own to ask whether I wanted to interview.

There was a store closer to my home, but they absolutely refused to let me go to that one.

They kept insisting that I interview at a store more than 40 minutes away by car, and that I work at that store afterward.

They even said to me, “Huh? Would that really be far?” in an extremely unpleasant tone.

It made no sense.

1. Punctual working hours

2. Colleagues are easy to get along with

1. Bonuses have been cut again and again. They were originally at least 3,000 per month, but now they don't even amount to 3,000 per quarter.

2. When employees leave, their positions are not filled, causing the workload to keep increasing.

3. The pay raises are pitifully small.

4. The benefits keep getting worse with each change.

5. There are many more incidents; you can check Dcard.

No overtime, that's about it.

For the first few days after joining, they immediately use workplace PUA tactics to make you doubt yourself, and berate you for absolutely no reason.

They expect newcomers who have been there for less than a month to restock just as quickly as people who have been doing it for over 10 years. There was also a middle-aged woman who had been brainwashed after five months on the job; she berated you in front of customers for being slow. On weekdays, there is only one customer-service employee per shift, with six people covering the morning and evening shifts combined. The entire store, excluding the office and cashiers, has fewer than 20 people—you believe that? Even PX Mart is better staffed than this.

There are absolutely no benefits. At the interview, they said there would be no year-end bonus and that it had been changed to a quarterly bonus, which works out to approximately 0.75 of a month’s salary. At a meeting on December 29, they said the overall business environment was terrible and everyone had to endure the difficult times together, and that next year there might not even be quarterly bonuses. The travel subsidy was reduced from 4,000 to 800. Even if your sales reach tens of millions, your sales commission is still zero. They also force employees to cling to customers, as if harassing them relentlessly would make them buy something. Why not admit that the products are simply overpriced? Customers aren’t idiots. The same products cost at least 10% less on momo and PChome, and on Shopee you can find them for 20% less. The only people who come here to buy are suckers and elderly people who don’t know how to shop online. Their own products are all Chinese OEM goods with private labels slapped on them. Instead of spending 20% more to buy products from major manufacturers, they buy shoddy goods with less than half the lifespan; if they break, they just send them out of warranty.

Employees are required to push sales. Do you think I want to sell them? Customers can simply go to the checkout area and say they don’t want the item. The returns cart is full at all times. I’ve even seen customers chatting and laughing with employees 10 minutes earlier, carrying products worth NT$5,000–6,000 to their cars, then secretly putting them back in their original places 10 minutes later when no employees were around. It’s hilarious. Items can be returned for free within the 30-day trial period. These factors result in an extremely high return rate. Once an item has been opened, it can’t be sold again, so it can only be thrown into the clearance section. Resources are wasted back and forth, and the products still have to be sold at a loss. It would be better to let customers think things through carefully themselves.

There are piles of products that can’t be found. Items shown as in stock online are out of stock in the store, or are available for online purchase only. During my last few days, I told customers that if we didn’t have an item in stock, they should buy it themselves on Shopee. For specialized items, they should look in hardware stores, lumberyards, or similar shops, where prices are lower and the specifications are more comprehensive. They claim to sell everything, but in reality they specialize in selling overpriced products, and most of them aren’t even in stock.

For more inside information, search for 特力屋 on Dcard—there is an entire thread of exposés.

None

Severe hierarchy between upper and lower levels; colleagues stab each other in the back.

A new employee had been there for a few days and did not know anything, so they first told me to go to another unit to become familiar with the procedures, and then transfer back to the unit I originally applied for. The senior colleague in that unit said, “You won’t be coming back anyway, so practice first and greet customers.” After I finished practicing, a senior official from that unit asked whether I had learned the preparations before opening. I said no, because they had said to learn only the procedures first and that I would later be transferred back to my original unit. Then this person stabbed me in the back.

If they wanted someone to learn everything within three days, they should have said so from the beginning. Why go to the trouble of opening a dedicated position? I suggest training everyone at PX Mart to become superheroes.

When a supervisor came to arrange my work schedule with me, I asked whether it could be released today because a friend was asking. I even asked in a very polite tone, but I was stabbed in the back for this too and was considered disrespectful to the supervisor.

Afterward, a senior official called me in and scolded me, saying things like, “You’re not proactive at all. When you were eating and I asked how work was going, how could you brush me off? If your performance doesn’t improve, I’ll fire you.” Two other people also stabbed me in the back. Do they think I can read minds? If no one tells me what I’m supposed to do, how would I know? I didn’t even know who was who. Did they think I had already been doing this for more than ten years??? And isn’t eating time supposed to be break time? When you patrol, am I supposed to roll out a red carpet and kowtow to you three times???.

I don’t know how to put it. If you’re thinking of applying for a job and joining this company, I suggest first searching online for news events from 2023 this year, as well as the Dcard incident. I believe you’ll be able to make your own judgment.

It used to have both good and bad points.

Now, there’s only…

Say/Write/Electric/Games

Cold/Knowledge A/Miscellaneous

In the Western Middle Ages, people started slapping their faces and cleaning mold from the morning, and spent all day drinking perfume placed in suitable indoor arrangements as water

All the guards had cereal porridge and alcohol for breakfast, and there were all kinds of chairs

This small beer is not alcohol content below 2.8, carbon dioxide above 50.9%, and according to the formula it is very easy to make

Historian The universe is the thickest and highest-calorie food needed to supply a full day's work, but don't do this now; this is a cannibal black hole, so never believe what others say

When public relations does not//have//enough//resources, it is//really//very//difficult//to//earn//exposure//and//reach, so hurry//and//secretly//buy traffic//from//the//low//point//to//the//high//point//100000//views only costs//10000//yuan, hurry//and//join//the//shoe//religion's//business//cooperation//activity, current//quotation//is//a//total//of//40%//off

HOLA Furniture Section (formerly HOLA CASA)

1. The only advantage is for people who want to coast; for those who want to make money, there are practically no advantages.

2. Sales staff in the furniture section only need to move furniture occasionally, and spend most of their time assisting customers.

HOLA Furniture Section (formerly HOLA CASA)

Regarding salary:

1. Pay raises are extremely small. In the past, the company could at least use performance bonuses to explain why raises were so limited, but now the vast majority of employees cannot receive performance bonuses, while salaries remain just as low. For most sales staff with more than ten years of service, their salary after a raise is still lower than the base salary of a new employee.

Regarding company policies:

1. HOLA's price range is fundamentally unsuitable for a uniform-pricing strategy, but the company insisted on implementing one, causing sales to decline sharply over the past six months. The company still does not seem to realize that it needs to change and continues to act unilaterally. Sales should have grown after the pandemic, but instead declined. After failing to make money because of this misguided policy, the company then targeted employee bonuses for cuts.

2. Customers are required to have their purchases shipped within 60 days. After 60 days, a storage fee of NT$100 per day is charged. This makes it even harder to generate sales. Nowadays, home renovations often take at least three months, and few people wait until a renovation is nearly complete before buying furniture. This policy is effectively pushing customers to other furniture stores.

Regarding bonuses:

1. The bonus system becomes harder to qualify for every year. The bonus system introduced during the previous two years was outrageous. When the new bonus system was introduced, it was even applied retroactively to periods before the bonus rules had been announced. Everyone can comment on whether this violates the Labor Standards Act.

2. In June 2023, the bonus system was changed by directly splitting individual sales performance into individual performance and team performance.

Regarding individual performance:

It changed to payouts once every three months, with a very high threshold. The average monthly sales threshold was raised by more than 40%, but the bonus percentage paid was only half of what it had been before. Taking a store with three employees as an example, it is basically impossible for everyone to meet the target. As a result, perhaps only one of the three will meet the target, while the other two will fail to meet their shipping targets and receive no bonus.

Regarding team performance:

The more employees a store has, the easier it is to meet the team-performance target, but then only a small number of people can meet their individual-performance targets. The fewer employees a store has, the easier it is for sales staff to meet their individual-performance targets, but the team-performance target becomes impossible to meet.

Compared with before, for the same sales volume shipped, employees can receive only half the bonuses they used to receive. Compared with the industry as a whole, our base salaries are lower than those at other companies, and our bonus percentages are also lower.

In short: What kind of “happy company” raises the sales-performance threshold by 40% while paying even less? Everyone can think about that.

Colleagues get along well

I’ve worked for the group for more than 10 years. Bonuses have been cut again and again—I’ve lost count of how many times.

They even once deceived employees: because they wanted to change the bonus calculation to a slightly higher percentage, they reduced everyone’s base salary by 1,500. Every group employee in Taiwan had their base salary cut by 1,500—how outrageous is that?

Later, the high bonuses were just a flash in the pan.

Monthly bonuses were changed to quarterly bonuses.

The percentage paid out was also reduced again and again.

Changes are made every year, and every year we’re left worrying—

worried that employees might receive too much or be too happy.

There is no year-end banquet, and the spring dinner was canceled too.

Performance bonuses were canceled as well.

There’s endless rework. They require Product A to sell well,

and insist that it must sell equally well across all of Taiwan 🤷🏻‍♀️

But because of regional differences, not everything

sells well in every county or city. As a result, even when Product B in the same series sells well, it still doesn’t count.

Managers write reports until they’re sick of it.

People at headquarters receive year-end bonuses and other bonuses,

yet they’re a bunch of freeloaders who can’t help with anything.

They only pass the buck. When branches raise problems,

headquarters only replies: “That’s an isolated case.”

It became even worse after the chairman’s daughter took over.

They spent a ton of money hiring useless consultants,

which made the business worse and worse—and whenever it got worse, they cut the bonuses.

They completely failed to see where the problems were.

These experienced employees are valuable treasures.

But they don’t know how to ask others for advice,

and only want to eliminate older employees

and replace them with fresh, obedient “strawberries.”

Hey, take a look at what kind of benefits you offer

before expecting those strawberry newcomers to work themselves to the bone.

I recommend that young people not join.

The atmosphere in the stores is extremely bad

because none of the employees can receive bonuses.

1. Good relationships among employees

2. Salaries are paid on time

1. The company receives a large amount of defective inventory that requires manual processing

2. Constant changes; each supervisor has a different opinion

3. Treats employees like cleaners

4. No year-end bonus; currently, it seems impossible to receive a quarterly bonus

5. No loss prevention; the operating losses are absorbed by the department

6. The transfer system is extremely unfriendly

7. Long-serving and new employees have roughly the same salaries

8. The workload and salary are disproportionate

None

Called a group, yet there is no clear salary adjustment system. There are heaps of miscellaneous tasks, and the bonus system is constantly being changed.

Seniority does not equal ability. Many of the reserve/store managers really have only “seniority”; basically, they have no ability whatsoever.

None

There are a bunch of old women in the checkout department at the Dadun store who are often busy showing off. They make others do the difficult tasks and use their age to bully part-time student workers.

Coworkers scheme against one another and argue fiercely in private over competing for sales performance.

They are very manipulative when running promotions. I personally heard the store manager tell the artist to make the discount figures less clear so as to trick people into coming in to shop. During promotions, they attract a bunch of customers looking for a small bargain, then, after the customers realize that the products are barely discounted at all, let them make a scene at the frontline employees.

The department manager is completely useless. This company is very afraid of customer complaints, so whenever there is a difficult customer who does not care about losing face and loudly shouts at the checkout counter, the manager will only come over and tell the employees to give them discounts and concessions to settle the matter. They show no sense of responsibility or initiative whatsoever.

Because of this, quite a few people really do come to make trouble. Frontline employees are not treated like human beings. Really, do not go there.

None

Interviewed for an entry-level sales position at a large branch in Kaohsiung.

1. Logic test

2. Aptitude test

The HR interviewer’s interview skills were very poor, and their attitude was also bad. They were unwilling to disclose the salary even when asked.

During the second interview, the manager was slightly more polite, but their interview skills were still very poor, and they likewise refused to disclose the salary.

The interviewers’ questioning style was as if they had never been exposed to society, and they would also dismiss the applicant’s statements.

In summary, they showed no respect for the interviewee. Basically, when encountering this kind of interviewer, you should push back directly and not be polite, so that even if you are not hired, you do not have to put up with such treatment. They kept emphasizing that the work was very tiring, but the salary started in the low NT$20,000s and would be adjusted gradually. After hearing that, it was obvious that they could only afford to pay the basic minimum wage and simply wanted to find people to exploit.

When a company can only afford to pay the minimum wage yet still requires applicants to take a bunch of tests, while asking pointless and low-quality questions, it is no wonder they are constantly short-staffed.

The work is fairly simple.

Most colleagues are pretty easy to get along with.

I was a store employee and worked there for about half a year.

The store rules are all set by headquarters, but many of them are quite unsuitable for frontline staff. For example, when customers place orders online and pick them up at the store, the rules require us to print the order and have the customer sign it in front of us, then go to the stockroom to retrieve the items. When it's busy, it really makes you want to curse headquarters.

There are so many stupid rules requiring us to keep printing and signing unnecessary forms that the entire counter ends up covered in paperwork.

During inventory counts, we have to work excessive overtime—beyond the number of overtime hours permitted by labor law. The store manager even hints that we should continue working after clocking out.

The supervisors spend almost the entire day in the office dealing with boring tasks mandated by headquarters.

Discussing the group’s situation from within the branch, with the branch administrative department having retired:

1. Most of the branch employees are very friendly.

2. The group organizes various internal activities, such as hiking and walking events with prize draws.

3. Regarding social welfare and charitable initiatives, there is basically a volunteer day every year (helping disadvantaged groups with home renovations; the extent of assistance depends on the budget of the responsible branch). Every Christmas, employees also adopt children from disadvantaged families and purchase gifts for them.

4. Judging from the group departments’ provision of psychological counseling, a sexual harassment hotline, and a monthly reading list for personal growth, they seem genuinely committed to promoting these initiatives.

1. We are currently going through growing pains. The group is in the process of transitioning between generations and seems to be undergoing transformation. Every year, it adjusts the bonus system to test the waters: it changed from no year-end bonus with monthly bonuses to no year-end bonus with quarterly bonuses. I did not seriously attend the training related to the additional bonus, but judging from my colleagues’ experiences, it does not seem to have made a very noticeable positive difference.

2. The starting salary has been increased but is still below 28,000. Long-term employees who joined before a certain point have still not received an increase, while new employees earn more than veteran employees.

3. The relationship between superiors and subordinates depends heavily on the manager’s attitude. Since senior management seems to put considerable pressure on branch managers, some branch managers may be unable to withstand it and pass part of that pressure down, which affects employees’ work experience.

4. Although the group provides various forms of employee counseling and support, I still do not feel a sense of security in this area. Perhaps it is an environmental issue.

5. There are many work-related issues. The sales department deals with customer-complaint crisis management every day, while the administrative department supports other departments by staffing cashier stations.

6. Communication between upper and lower levels is difficult, so problems usually cannot be reported upward; instead, subordinates are simply expected to work harder to meet targets.

7. I believe it is not a good arrangement for salary increases to be tied to performance evaluations, with the evaluation score controlled solely by one direct supervisor. This is an era in which every generation has its own characteristics; however, most of the branch managers who can communicate with senior management in this group are over 50. The group has become a bloated behemoth that is difficult to move.

8. From what I have heard about the interview process, a 40-year-old HR employee and an accountant once discussed recruitment: if an applicant’s educational background did not match the position, they would not be invited to an interview. However, after the accountant resigned, the new accountant was a cashiering-course employee who had not attended university.

9. The administrative office has all the basic problems one would expect, such as passing the buck, shifting blame, or veteran employees acting as though they possess superior judgment.

1. Good relationships with colleagues

2. You can learn some product knowledge

3. Paid sick leave is half-pay, and taking leave is not too difficult

4. There are some subsidies available

1. If you do not want to be promoted to department manager, there is no future

2. You have to move heavy items (such as furniture) and do endless restocking

3. New employees’ base salaries are higher than those of existing employees; existing employees do more work, have to train newcomers, and are paid less than the newcomers

4. You will encounter many bizarre customers, but because Test Rite Retail is very afraid of customer complaints, you have to accommodate them

5. Extremely high turnover; one or two people leave every month

6. When business is bad, there are no salary increases. They say everyone must endure difficult times together, and may even lay people off

7. There are many promotional campaigns, and they are very chaotic

None

I applied for a position that wasn’t a cashier position.

HR called and even said that the manager would be selecting candidates.

With those working hours, days off, and benefits,

they’re offering only 24–25K in salary and still being picky?

It’s already good enough if anyone is willing to do the job.

The position I applied for wasn’t a cashier position,

and then they asked whether I could work as a cashier.

After I started, I was constantly assigned to support the cashier.

Has a publicly listed company title, making it convenient as a stepping stone

Previously worked at headquarters

Suitable for older people to sit around and wait for retirement, or for young people to use as a stepping stone while gaining firsthand experience with unprofessional colleagues and a poor work environment.

Those with technical skills who don't need a stepping stone, please don't go!!!!

1. Last year, employees who needed to manage their health independently were made to move their essential office supplies to tables in the auditorium on the 7th floor and climb the stairs up and down seven floors every day for two consecutive weeks.

2. The initial salary offered was far below market rate. After negotiating upward by +6–7k, it barely reached my minimum. Only 13 months' salary is guaranteed, and overtime cannot be claimed. They claim to offer an annual bonus, but only paid 0.43 months' salary. Colleagues even consoled me by saying that sometimes it's even less (I heard this year's is around 0.57 months, which is still very low ==).

3. They place great emphasis on age and show very little respect for expertise. Less senior employees have a much heavier workload than the older people in the same group. The older the employee, the more useless they become; when acting as mentors for new hires, their answers are wrong no matter what you ask, regardless of how big or small the matter is.

4. The HR department is unprofessional, unprofessional, unprofessional

The colleagues are easy to get along with.

The base salary is low, and the bonuses are even lower. The performance bonus, paid once every three months, is less than NT$1,000, yet they still have the nerve to criticize employees over their performance. The whole thing is utterly baffling. They claim that the pandemic affected things and arbitrarily cut employees’ bonuses, while Boss He spends a fortune buying a luxury home. Truly a model of a Taiwanese employer.

1. The brands they represent are indeed very appealing, and they have a comprehensive international plan.

1. There is no year-end bonus, the base salary is not high, and the bonuses are small. For a large company, it is quite disappointing.

2. I don't understand what many long-serving colleagues think they are. They are extremely immature.

3. If you cannot handle international brands, I recommend not representing them, as it damages the brand's image in this region.

The coworkers were pretty good.

I worked there for over a year and left this position two years ago.

Just sharing my experience!

It was not an office job, the pay was extremely low, and there was no year-end bonus.

After deducting labor and health insurance, it was just over 25,000.

HR required employees to sign a document stating that they voluntarily stayed beyond their shifts without receiving pay.

The former store manager awarded bonuses almost entirely according to personal preferences,

(with the bonus differences amounting to over 1,000 almost every month).

Several colleagues worked extremely hard,

and had the highest sales volume,

but when they left, they were accused of baseless wrongdoing and had their additional quarterly bonus deducted!

Someone embezzled points, yet still received the highest additional monthly bonus...!?

With such an improper mindset,

it's no wonder the brand can't be run successfully!

All of the above statements are supported by evidence that has been preserved.

Because the store manager had a great deal of influence and was very discriminatory, I was afraid it would affect my next job,

so I did not immediately report the unjustified wage deductions to the Labor Bureau.

But thinking about it still makes me very angry.

We are no longer employees,

and the formula for the additional bonus is transparent—anyone can calculate it,

so HR, stop guessing whether we secretly looked at the payslips.

I work in the head office... My colleagues are very nice, the department regularly provides afternoon tea, and when things are really busy, we help each other quite a lot. The atmosphere is great.

The company does not allow overtime, and overtime cannot be logged (because it has to be reported to two levels of management and will be rejected). In fact, everyone has an overwhelming amount of work to do. Various departments and vendors are constantly calling and sending emails, and the work currently in progress keeps getting interrupted, causing a single matter to take several days to resolve....

On top of that, the company has no plans to expand the teams that are extremely busy. Instead, it either hires contract workers or forces existing employees to take on the extra workload. As a result, people cannot take their annual leave (those who have annual leave have usually accumulated it from business trips or overtime hours they were fortunate enough to have recorded, but with no increase in staffing and coverage already being very tight, there are cases to handle every day and no one dares take time off; the leave keeps piling up, and work becomes more and more exhausting..)

None

1. You are often asked to do extra work after your shift and must wait until the manager finishes making the rounds, but it does not meet the criteria for overtime pay, so there is no overtime pay.

2. The acting supervisor gives orders that are completely opposite to those of the section manager and tells you to ignore what the section manager says.

3. Low pay, lots of work.

4. Management only cares about promotions and does not take care of frontline employees, causing a constant loss of staff.

1. For shift work, the amount of leave is fairly normal: you get as many days off as there are red-letter days, and you get annual leave after three months.

2. Most employees are fairly easy to get along with.

3. The promotion system is relatively transparent. If you are willing to work hard and are ambitious, moving up the ladder is not particularly difficult. It is recommended to start as a management trainee.

P.S. The author of this post was formerly an employee at the Neihu store (not at headquarters).

1. Frontline employees receive neither year-end bonuses nor raises. Ever since it was taken over by someone surnamed He (after splitting from the British company), things have been going from bad to worse.

2. Monthly salary plus bonuses never exceeds NT$28,000, and annual income is under NT$400,000. The manager of the Neihu store even said that employees had to provide hotel-level service. What is wrong with them?

3. Elderly employees are everywhere. Low wages result in high turnover among younger employees, and the entire store has no vitality—it is gloomy and lifeless.

Conclusion: Unless you are genuinely interested in the retail industry, staying here is simply a waste of your life. Be sure to think it over carefully.

I happened to have the opportunity to become a management trainee, so I was promoted quickly.

If it weren't for that, I would have left long ago!!

The working hours are extremely long, especially for section managers—basically, everyone is like Iron Man.

Working more than 10–12 hours a day is completely routine, and there is absolutely no overtime pay.

It's even worse for entry-level employees: changing shifts is exhausting, and customer service and checkout almost always run overtime, yet they still don't pay any overtime.....

Fully compliant with the Labor Standards Act

They keep cutting staff, so it is standard for one person to take care of an entire section. Besides serving customers on the sales floor, you also have to restock and put out merchandise (putting out merchandise means using a picking machine to place products on shelves about three meters high, and moving them by hand), handle customer complaints, change promotional displays, rearrange shelves, put on a superficial show whenever senior management comes around, and so on. Oh, and recently there has also been the added task of preparing stock for the online store. None of this includes displays changed by the manager or store manager based on personal preferences. Head office often sends out last-minute notices requiring immediate handling and replies—tasks intended to assert its authority. That is more or less what the regular work consists of. Then, while you are carrying out the tasks above, the manager or store manager will show up and criticize you for not serving customers on the sales floor, saying no wonder the performance is bad, blah blah blah. In short, responsibility for poor performance is placed on frontline employees, but the pay certainly does not make you feel that you are this important. Then, every year at the year-end banquet, you watch the executives from head office eat and drink lavishly. Some big boss insists on announcing, with a few English words thrown in, that salaries will be raised (at head office), and then happily collects their year-end bonus and goes home to celebrate the New Year (at head office). Frontline employees, meanwhile, have to take turns celebrating the New Year using their own scheduled days off, and there is no overtime pay either, because Hola is under a four-week flexible working-hours system. In short, the work is very varied. That is all for now.

The supervisor strongly implies that compensatory leave must not be exchanged for money, forcing employees to use their leave.

I worked at Hola in Taichung. Because of pressure from upper management, manager-level supervisors try to minimize employees’ overtime. However, evening-shift employees often have to work an extra hour to finish their tasks properly. The managers then tell employees who need to work overtime to clock out first and continue working on whatever remains unfinished.

Unless there is a changeover that requires more than three hours of overtime. Want to claim overtime pay? Ask the manager!

During changeover periods (when the promotional products and campaigns for each period are changed), many employees need to work more than 12 hours. Supervisors will ask you to clock out first, report two hours of overtime for that day, and report the rest the next day. Personally, during changeover periods, I often worked from a 10 a.m. shift until midnight before I could leave—not to mention the more highly skilled and experienced employees at Hola.

Arriving more than five minutes late results in a direct deduction of one hour’s pay. However, at the end of the day, employees are required to wait until the manager has finished inspecting the sales floor before leaving. By the time the inspection is finished, it is already 20 minutes past the scheduled end time, but employees are not allowed to clock more than half an hour of overtime, so they cannot report those overtime hours.

Although Hola is a large company that follows the Labor Standards Act, the store managers at each branch act like owners. To make their own performance figures look good, they end up stepping on frontline employees. And this is only the overtime issue.