簪香食品有限公司

Before considering whether to join this company, be sure to click in and take a look before making a decision.

Before considering whether to join this company, be sure to click in and take a look before making a decision.

During the interview, they make the job sound incredibly appealing, but to put it bluntly, you are simply a delivery driver. The company does not need sales staff and does not value the sales function, so your daily work consists of making deliveries, returning to the company to do miscellaneous tasks after finishing them, or going elsewhere to pick up goods or deliver samples. The company's drivers have somewhat different duties from what people generally understand a driver's work to involve. Because they cannot recruit warehouse staff, drivers must sort and load the goods themselves and occasionally organize the warehouse. Routes are not necessarily fixed; sometimes you have to cover other drivers' areas. Once you have basically finished delivering the day's goods, there is nothing else to do, so you can return to the company and wait until the end of the workday. This is a family business: the owner is the father, and the managers beneath him are the older and younger brothers. The older brother left partway through at one point, while the younger brother has stayed with the company and run it. Because the sales function is not valued, the company's business is basically very poor. Simply put, it is living off its past success. I chose to join because I believed the copy they posted on their job-recruitment website. All I can say is that I was extremely disappointed overall, and as for what they write on 104, just take it with a grain of salt.

What follows is entirely my personal impression. The two brothers both struck me as rather immature and emotional. Many verbal promises and pleasant words should be taken with a grain of salt. The older brother may be rather full of himself because he once worked at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. In terms of personality, he came across to me as petty and narrow-minded. For example, on the morning of my last day, I simply placed my “personal belongings” on the desk, as I did every day and as every driver did. This gentleman actually went out of his way to move my “personal belongings” from the office to the break room, and told me not to put personal belongings on the desk. So the surface covered with miscellaneous items, tools, and various parts was supposedly an office desk! Two colleagues who heard this were stunned. Apparently, on an employee's last day, their personal belongings get moved to the break room? I also cannot understand what there is to be proud of about working at a hotel for six years before finally becoming an assistant manager, then sheepishly returning to take over his father's business. By that logic, since I once worked as an R&D employee at Formosa Plastics, should I think I am the king of intelligence? Perhaps he thinks everyone else is an uneducated, uncivilized idiot. You may need a little patience when communicating with him, but I just want to say that procurement is not sales. If he were really that capable, the business would not be in such terrible shape. As for the younger brother, he is the company's primary operator, so he is generally the person to talk to when something comes up, since he is usually more constructive.

If you simply want to deliver goods at an underperforming company comfortably for the rest of your life, this company will suit you well.

But if you want to work at a company with room for growth, where you can learn the sales skills you want to develop, please leave as soon as possible.

The salary uses the “perfect-attendance bonus” system that workers complain about most. When I applied, the salary listed on 104 was NT$37,000 or more, but only after the actual interview did they tell me that the salary was NT$35,000 plus a NT$1,000 perfect-attendance bonus. I actually felt like walking out right then. Even combined, it was less than the NT$37,000 listed on 104. I can only blame my own stupidity; I should have realized earlier that there was something wrong with this company. Also, the older brother told me that in my second month he would print business cards for me and have me do sales, but until my final day, I was still making deliveries every day.

Because they have never been able to recruit enough drivers, they finally raised the driver salary to the market rate of NT$43,000 recently, but they are still playing the same game: posting a high salary on 104 and then cutting it down after you actually start (to NT$40,000). When I asked for a raise, the younger brother told me that my salary would at least match the amount shown in their updated 104 listing. In the end, my raise only changed it from NT$35,000 + NT$1,000 to NT$38,000 + NT$1,000. Employees are not idiots, and I was truly fed up with this employer's constant lies. Another statement from the older brother made me realize that this is a company reluctant to pay employees more. He asked me, “For a sales driver, if you take out the driver portion (of the salary), could you make a living on pure sales?” I was genuinely astonished to hear such a statement. Why not say that, in addition to being responsible for sales performance, sales staff also have to do physical labor and make deliveries, so the base salary should be higher? This also shows that the manager not only does not value the company's sales function, but has no understanding of it whatsoever. I have never seen a company larger than Zanxiang that does not have a dedicated sales department. The key point is that sales salaries elsewhere are exactly the same as at Zanxiang—and those jobs do not also require you to make deliveries. Finally, one interesting fact: the company's old owner is a devout Tzu Chi follower.

To summarize the pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Follows the Labor Standards Act; overtime hours are properly counted, and you leave work on time (remember to photograph your punch-card record).

2. Business is very poor, so the volume of goods is generally low and there is a lot of free time.

3. The price for employees buying the company's own products is genuinely very cheap.

Cons:

1. Drivers work eight consecutive hours, and the company does not clearly state that there is a one-hour break.

2. Internal responsibilities and division of labor are unclear.

3. 104 says things like, “Want to take on the challenge of a high salary?” I have no idea how they define “high salary”..... And do not believe the sensational claims written there.

4. Overall efficiency is very poor.

5. Do not arrive at the company too early. I recommend clocking in right on time, because the manager, the older brother, will ask you to do miscellaneous tasks in advance.

6. I was once asked to make motorcycle deliveries “along the way” after clocking out and finishing work.

7. Drivers need to pay attention to their own safety when driving. Basically, if you accidentally hit something, you pay for everything. Here is a short story: On only my second day of being sent out alone to make deliveries, when I had just learned to drive a manual-transmission vehicle, I accidentally hit a Taipower electrical box. The next day, Saturday, the manager, the older brother, nervously called me and demanded that I immediately report it to the police, urging me to take all the blame and make absolutely sure the company was not implicated. The police told me to ask whether the company had insurance for the vehicle. The response I received was, “Yes, we do have some...” and then nothing more happened. I paid the entire repair bill.

8. Salaries are paid on the fifth of each month and are delayed when that date falls on a holiday. Yes, you read that correctly—I am not mistaken: they are delayed when there is a holiday. Honestly, I have never worked for a company that delayed salary payments.

9. Payslips are sometimes forgotten and employees need to remind them.

10. Remember to check your monthly labor and health insurance enrollment yourself.

11. Drivers must not place their “personal belongings” on the esteemed “office desk.”

The boss is eloquent.

The hiring is for the Italian restaurant downstairs. PT employees are not covered by labor or health insurance, and full-time employees only get seven days off per month.