華郁旅行社有限公司(高雄分公司)

Three holiday bonuses, plus a year-end bonus and a travel bonus

Annual salary: According to the boss’s wife’s calculations, it is NT$400,000, but if you do not win the boss’s wife’s favor, the total will definitely be less than NT$400,000, including the year-end bonus.

Working hours: 08:30–17:30

Year-end bonus: Determined by the boss’s wife.

Bonuses: Three holiday bonuses (originally half a month’s salary for everyone regardless of seniority; later changed so employees who stayed for three years could receive a full month’s salary, although very few young employees stayed for more than three years) + travel bonus (according to the boss’s wife, this bonus is given whenever she feels like giving it and may be withheld whenever she does not; I received it throughout my time there, but during a discussion at one point, it was used as a bargaining chip).

Job duties: Arranging seafarers’ itineraries, booking flights, and handling related documents. It is indeed challenging work because seafarers of various nationalities travel to all kinds of places you may never even have heard of to board ships. Therefore, you must research the relevant regulations, arrange routes, and contact agents to ensure that the seafarers arrive safely at their destinations.

Impressions:

The company environment is not bad, but there are many older, more experienced employees. They are all very friendly toward younger employees in private, but at work, because they cannot keep up with the times and are unwilling to learn new things, there is a generation gap between them and younger employees. They refuse to listen to younger employees’ suggestions and deliberately work slowly, leaving late as if they were very busy. In reality, everyone handles roughly the same amount of official business, and younger employees even have to help deal with tasks that senior employees cannot finish because they work slowly. Under these circumstances, younger employees can still leave on time because they use more efficient methods, but the boss’s wife only notices the senior employees working overtime and assumes that the younger employees, who leave early, have little to do. She then assigns even more work to the younger employees. The boss’s wife is always very concerned about how colleagues get along, but if you tell her about problems with senior employees, there will absolutely be no improvement, because the senior employees are “very busy and working hard,” while young people “do not understand”;)

Also, when applying, make absolutely sure whether you are being hired as an operations (OP) staff member, because the boss’s wife may only tell you after you have been working for a while that you are merely an assistant. In the end, all the work you do is attributed to the senior employees’ hard work, not yours, because you are “just an assistant” and supposedly not capable of handling that much.

Additional information:

Before 2019, employees who had completed one year of service were entitled to 10 days of leave (not including bereavement leave, sick leave, and similar types of leave). The company originally did not reimburse expenses based on actual receipts, but in 2019 it decided to start doing so, and leave therefore became governed by the Labor Standards Act.

1. The year-end bonus is fairly generous; in the first year, I received two months’ worth. The boss says there is no upper limit to the year-end bonus (but the amount depends on his mood, and some people have worked there for five years and still received only two months’ worth).

2. The Mid-Autumn Festival and Dragon Boat Festival bonuses are quite good, at half a month’s salary each (but if you want your labor and health insurance reported based on your actual salary, the boss will say that the bonuses will not be as high; they are currently underreported).

3. There is also a fairly generous travel bonus (same as above: you have to accept underreporting to receive it).

4. Working hours are fairly flexible. There is no required dress code, and makeup is not necessarily required. You can eat and drink, answer your mobile phone, and occasionally the boss brings food for everyone. At Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone shares gift boxes.

5. The company has a refrigerator, microwave, and rice cooker available for use, and food delivery can also be ordered.

6. The air conditioning is extremely strong, so you do not need to worry about being hot.

7. You can learn two reservation systems and build relationships with airlines.

8. You can book your own tickets yourself, and the company can pay in advance (of course, you still have to pay it back yourself afterward; card payments are also accepted).

9. Colleagues generally get along fairly well (apart from certain people).

10. Unused annual leave is converted into cash.

11. Salaries are paid very punctually, and bonuses are not delayed either. Supposedly, salary advances are possible (I personally have never requested one).

It may be suitable if you want a relaxed job until retirement, but if you are young and want to feel that you are steadily advancing in your career, that is basically impossible.

1. The company basically only handles fishing-industry-related business, so its scope is rather limited and it is different from a typical travel agency.

2. The company is essentially run as a one-person dictatorship. Whatever the long-serving employees say is considered right; even when they are wrong, they are treated as right. If the matter is reported to the boss, the boss says the senior employees must be respected because they are old enough to be your mothers.

2. There is 24-hour on-call duty. Sometimes you need to follow up on visas in the middle of the night or deal with crew members being stuck at the airport. If you miss a call, you will be criticized.

3. Employees are not allowed to coordinate their leave within the company. Even if someone is available to cover for you, it is still not allowed. If you really need to take leave, the boss will hold a meeting to “ask” colleagues not to take leave during that period, and you still have to remain on call while on leave—even if you are overseas.

4. If you are overseas or not in Kaohsiung, you must bring a laptop (the company does not provide one; you must supply your own). Regardless of whether you are using your own days off (e.g. the Dragon Boat Festival holiday or Lunar New Year holiday), you must report it to the boss.

5. Bereavement leave is not necessarily granted. In the original poster’s case, because it was the second family member to die that year, bereavement leave was granted, and they specifically instructed the person not to tell other colleagues. When the first family member died, they said not to focus on these trivial matters and that everything would depend on the year-end bonus (the deceased relatives were the person’s paternal grandfather and paternal grandmother).

6. The probationary period is three months, during which leave cannot be taken; any leave taken is deducted from your pay. After three months, you get only four days of leave; after one year, ten days. In the future, regardless of how long you stay, you will still have only ten days (this was the rule before I resigned; I do not know whether it has changed since then).

7. You must maintain a good relationship with the ticketing staff so they can help customers handle seat arrangements on Saturdays and Sundays.

8. There is a lot of gossip within the company. If a senior employee does not like you, they will viciously smear you behind your back.

9. You are not allowed to swat mosquitoes at work because senior employees will be startled and become very angry. You must notify them before swatting a mosquito.

10. The position advertised was for an English-language staff member. At the interview, they said you would have to learn everything. When no one was available to answer the phone, you would be pushed to the front line. Once someone else was available to answer, you would become an assistant and could only do what senior employees instructed. If you had questions or felt something violated your moral principles, the senior employees would tell you that you had to do it anyway; this has always been the case.

11. You must learn to use Paint to alter various documents.

12. If there is an error in a reservation, it is considered your fault even if it was actually the senior employee’s fault.

13. When senior employees speak loudly, it is because their teeth are bad; when you speak loudly, it is considered disrespectful.

14. Regarding all of the above, the boss will say that working outside means learning to endure things.

15. Even when a typhoon day is officially declared a holiday, you still have to go to the office and cannot clock in (but you will receive compensatory leave). Once every three weeks, you must work a half-day Saturday shift (09:00–12:00), and you likewise cannot clock in.

16. Everyone clocks out at the standard end time. There is no overtime pay, but you receive NT$200 in a missed-meal allowance if you work past 8:00 p.m.

17. Labor and health insurance cannot be reported based on your actual salary. If you request actual reporting, the boss will tell you that the year-end bonus, the three festival bonuses, and the travel bonus will have to be reduced.

18. The boss only cares about what the senior employees say; everything other employees say is treated as nonsense.

The year-end bonus is fairly generous.

1. Typhoon days off are not necessarily granted. Even when work and classes are suspended due to torrential rain, employees are still required to report to work, and they are not allowed to clock in or out in order to avoid labor inspections.

2. Bereavement leave is not necessarily granted. When asking the boss whether leave can be taken in accordance with the Labor Standards Act, the boss will tell you not to quibble over those few days of leave.

3. When disputes arise between colleagues, the boss will not mediate. Young employees should remember to defer to senior colleagues, because they have also been very tolerant of you.

4. The year-end bonus is fairly generous, but salaries do not increase, and the insured salary for labor and health insurance is not reported at the full amount. When this issue is raised, the boss will say, “Don’t focus on the present; look to the future (the year-end bonus).”