麥迪森醫藥股份有限公司

The company has many orders, so there’s no fear of running out of work. They’re very short-staffed.

There are cliques among colleagues in the quality department.

Those who are exhausted suffer the most, and supervisors often keep a close eye on them.

Those on good terms with the supervisor have it easy.

The production line requires shift work.

People with connections can get fixed shifts and also work overtime in other departments to earn extra money.

Some people slack off during overtime just to pass the time, earning money until their hours are completely maxed out.

1. Flexible working hours: the scheduled hours are 8:00–17:00. You can arrive up to 30 minutes late, but you must leave that much later as well. In other words, if you start at 8:15, you must leave at 17:15.

2. Meals are provided. The weekly menu is posted on the bulletin board in advance, and the food is acceptable.

3. There is an employee parking lot. Those who arrive early can park under the roof.

4. If you want a stable job, you can give it a try. The working hours and salary are stable, but the salary does not increase. If you stay too long, you will become useless.

5. The environmental control quality-control team has to go to the production line at least one day a week. You manage the timing yourself. Once you get the hang of it, you can generally control things well, so supervisors actually do not know how long you spend on the production line.

6. There is a meeting every morning, and sometimes there are short quizzes. They are generally not too difficult and serve as a small supplement to your relevant knowledge.

7. Environmental control has an independent laboratory, so it is relatively free compared with people working in areas such as stability testing.

8. Some colleagues listen to music with wireless earphones, and the supervisor does not object.

9. If you know how to pass work off to others, you do not have to do much yourself. However, if work is still assigned to you, act like an extremely unintelligent useless person, and eventually—perhaps after a day—the work will probably be assigned to someone else. (For example, not finishing your own assigned work even after working overtime...)

10. For the three major holidays, the company gives Xindong Ying Nursing Home gift vouchers. If you do not want them, you can resell them to others at 80% of their face value. The year-end bonus is less than one month’s salary.

11. Dinner expenses are subsidized when working overtime at night, apparently $65 (I’ve forgotten...).

12. Most colleagues are generally decent people; they simply stick to their own duties and do not form close relationships.

The position is Quality Control Technician (Environmental Control). Madison Pharmaceuticals is a subsidiary of Xindong, mainly producing eye drops.

1. The salary is low. Quality control starts at $28,000, and even a salary adjustment is only $2,000. After labor and health insurance deductions, it is still under $30,000.

2. There is a distinction between men and women. The company believes men should help move heavy items (incoming raw materials and containers), so male hires receive $2,000 more than female hires—$30,000—subject to further discussion after three months. (I wonder what it means when the job bank says the company follows the Gender Equality in Employment Act??)

3. Overtime cannot be reported if it is less than half an hour. If you start work punctually at 8:00 and happen to need to work until 17:30, the flexible-hours system allows you to start 30 minutes later, so the half hour cannot be reported as overtime. You have to stay until 18:00 to receive overtime pay. (Then who would still want to start and leave work on time?)

4. The supervisors are useless. There are two quality-control supervisors: one is a female section manager who plays the good cop and seems not to manage anything; the other is a male team leader who plays the bad cop, lecturing and scolding people at every morning meeting and losing his temper easily. He appears to manage things, but quality control ranks below quality assurance, and whenever QA says something, he does not dare respond. He often chats at his desk during work, yet works overtime every day—and still monitors how long the people under him work overtime. (I do not know what he is busy with; he cannot finish it during regular working hours.)

5. There is a half-day Saturday rotation. Environmental control staff do not have to rotate, but people in the other chemistry and chemical-engineering roles do.

6. The office atmosphere is bureaucratic. Quality control is subordinate to quality assurance, quality assurance is subordinate to the pharmacists, and there is also a senior manager surnamed Kuo from Xindong’s headquarters. He speaks extremely loudly and sharply, talks loudly even during other people’s lunch breaks, and opens other people’s lockers without permission. Where is his sense of propriety? There are also long-serving QA employees who speak loudly. The problem is that even when the QC supervisor knows that their subordinates are not at fault, or that practices could be adjusted, they do not dare argue for their position and only dare to obey and carry out instructions.

7. When I joined, there were no seats available, so I had to squeeze into a seat at a shared computer. Personal belongings had to be placed on a desk shared with someone else. (Later, R&D was moved to another office and some people resigned, so more seats became available.)

8. There was a test during the interview, asking about basic formulations or chemistry questions. However, I had been out of school too long and had forgotten them. I was told that because I had no experience, the salary could only be this much. Little did I know that this was the case for everyone, because the colleagues inspecting packaging materials had not studied chemistry at all and could not perform the inspections either.

9. Sometimes you need to read single-page documents in the original language. You only need a general understanding because they are not directly related to the environmental-control work, but knowing English makes the job easier.

10. The main environmental-control duties are going to the production line at scheduled times to collect and distribute petri dishes and perform particle testing. Every day, you count microbial colonies according to the incubation time. There are also some tests that require using a biosafety cabinet, although they account for only a small portion of the work. The work itself is not complicated, but there is a tremendous amount of writing. Every day feels like writing as punishment. The boxes are very small, so you also have to write very small; therefore, they will not hire someone whose handwriting is too unattractive.

11. Gossip spreads faster than your hunger. If you submit your resignation at 8:30, many people will already know by the time you encounter someone from Materials at 10:00.

12. Connections let people take shortcuts. Someone who is close to someone else can have her daughter transferred into the department, even if she has no relevant experience or educational background. So what exactly is the interview testing?

13. You have to change into cleanroom clothing to enter the production line for environmental-control work. Even in winter, you come out with your entire head soaked in sweat.