Can I Have a Bitch about Taiwanese Working Life?

Can I have a bitch about Taiwneese working life?

So my girflfirend has recently started a new job. She is working as a coordinator/translator/ assistant/ bla bla to some of the high level management at a very large company here in Kaohsiung. I don’t want to name names as they have some foreign management who could well be on here (you never know).

The role is challenging, stressful and tiring for only NT$23000 per month. That’s fine, she knew that before she signed on the dotted line. What she didn’t anticipate was the amount of extra unpaid effort that is required. For instance every day after her contractual clocking off time she has to attend a meeting. Many times she has to wait for the senior management and people in Taipei to come online before the meeting can start. On occasions these meetings have lasted over 2 hours – all unpaid. Furthermore the definition of “lunchbreak” is being stretched to a 10 minute rush to the restaurant and then back to your desk. There is no written rule but everyone in the office feels obliged to do this.

My own situation is not nearly as bad as this but it is still starting to grate with me. When I first started at my school everything was hunky-dory and not a problem. However after a few weeks the demands and pressures expected of me are steadily increasing. There is also a certain level of ambiguity where I am left without a clear answer to my questions. For instance this Saturday I need to attend a school party. In my contract is says that I will get paid for a list of events throughout the year. This event is not on the list. When asked the management simply state “we are looking into it”. I have also been allocated 2 hours for demo classes but I have been assigned 5 30 mins classes. Of course this doesn’t add up and my suggestion that I will be cutting the classes down to 24 mins each to fit in the allocated time caused some unrest.

I really don’t know what to do or say regarding the situation here in Taiwan. I guess that everyone must suffer like this. I understand that the country is a “tiger” economy and has grown from a relatively poor state to become one of the best economy’s in Asia but whatever happened to a fair days work for a fair days pay?

Rant over.

Unpaid overtime is absolutely the norm here. Sorry, but if you work in an office and don’t work for the government, the chances are your company will expect this. Two hours extra a day is also not unusual in the tech industry.

Yes, it’s shit. My suggestion? Build towards another career. She should find something she enjoys or aspires to do, and get the training to do it while toughing it out at this one. Otherwise, if PA/translator is what she wants to do, then try to see this current job as “getting your chops” - a great opportunity to develop skills for a while at admittedly shitty pay.

On the school thing - it’s been a long time since I was a teacher, but I remember I put my foot down hard and early on overtime. I simply didn’t do any, because I knew that they would take the piss if I started. Didn’t win me any friends, but on the other hand I didn’t have to waste random Sundays with bullshit activities. You can do this without being directly confrontational - the face-saving way is to express regret that you have already paid for the train and hotel for your weekend away, so sadly you won’t be able to make it. They’ll get the picture.

I wish I could say the same. :frowning:

I wish I could say the same. :frowning:[/quote]

After five months, I hope to never set foot inside an EFL classroom again.

I wish I could say the same. :frowning:[/quote]

After five months, I hope to never set foot inside an EFL classroom again.[/quote]
Aaaaaarrrrggggghhhhhh!!! You’re not helping!

That said, I am sincerely happy for you! :thumbsup: Good luck with the Speech Therapy thing.

The apostrophe police are coming to get you.

Sorry, just couldn’t resist it :slight_smile: Seriously, I think Taffy has the right idea. Pretty much everyone in Taiwan wants to be their own boss, and you can understand why. What really pisses me off about the overtime guilt-trip is that the managers think they’re being clever, squeezing a load of extra work out of people for no extra money. They’re too daft to realise that people put in proportionately less effort. Treat people like dirt and you get productivity on the same level; and besides, people get tired. It just isn’t humanly possible to work more than about 10 hours a day, and that’s with generous breaks included. People show up for the office, feel bleary all day, put in some half-assed work, and slink home again. Crazy.

I tend to rage against the machine these days. Fortunately, I work for myself and when I see our subcontractors doing stupid things (like making people stay until 9pm for no obvious reason) I tell them it’s stupid. They don’t take any notice of course, because they’ve got an MBA and I haven’t, and I’m sure they despise the asshole foreigner with his know-it-all attitude and crazy foreign habit of eating at lunchtime, but it makes me feel better. I used to tiptoe around ‘cultural’ issues, but I’ve finally got to the point where I really don’t care, and it feels good. Crucial point is, of course, they can’t fire me. If you can line up alternative employment, it’s very liberating to tell people, when they are “looking into” paying you for your work, that you’ll “look into” turning up. The ‘employees are my slaves’ attitude is one of the few aspects of Taiwanese culture that needs to die in a ditch with a broken bottle in its head, ASAP.

btw, I don’t mean I hate my job: complete opposite, in fact. I live and breathe what I do and I’m bloody good at it. But I wouldn’t be any use at a typical Taiwanese company because that’s not what they want. They offer a mediocre salary and expect only mediocre performance. I know, I know - I’m generalising. But it’s way more common than it should be, as per OP’s original rant.

Suck it up.
With regards to unpaid labour, learn to play off what needs to be done, and which does not. Pre-empt those that do, and if you can’t clock it, then make it show somehow.
Stick to your perimeter, and make those that encroach, pay, if not in money, then in time. I always made it par for the course that I would be sick the following Monday from a Saturday unpaid schmiel.

I hate working for TW companies too. They have no concept of OFF WORK. They are happy with you working till 11pm or until the cows come home (actually AFTER the cows already came home).

Friend worked at a US bank branch in Taipei and it was like that too. She gets home at 11pm if shes lucky. Maybe once a week she can get home by 9pm and she lives a five min cab ride away.

And she goes in (has to) at least one day on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday or sometimes for a few hours both days !!

Ridiculous !

Just that people stay long in the office does not mean that they work hard.
Just block MSN, Skype and all other chat clients and all work is done by 6pm.

Drunken post time!

[quote=“robi666”]Just that people stay long in the office does not mean that they work hard.
Just block MSN, Skype and all other chat clients and all work is done by 6pm.[/quote]

Ignoring for a moment the baffling phrase “all work is done”, I think it’s pretty ridiculous to expect employee productivity to increase when you treat them like children. I kinda think that if they can’t be given responsibility for getting something done and then do it, maybe you should just fire them and hire some grownups.

Vaguely relatedly, a quote from a recent pretty creepy news story:

Some more hazily remembered stats: Almost no-one can do a professional job well for even six hours a day, let alone ten. And if you’re not taking five-minute breaks every half hour (breaks away from the computer, walking around, talking, etc), then your focus and output drops off precipitously.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had better metrics for productivity than “time spent in chair”?

Everything said here is true.

There are a number of interpretations for why this Taiwanese system of capitalism is so grueling on the labor force, but here is what I think:

-The stoic nature of the Chinese Confucian society lends itself to the top down totalitarian status quo. Watch this video from Troy Parfitt’s website. He says it a lot better than me. The lack of voice from the employees either by choice or through fear, leads to a management dominated commerce. Why is it I get passed by 5 Porsche 911 GS3’s each morning while the college educated girl on the scooter next to me is going in for her 10 hour day making 150NT/Hr? Greed. Pure greed by management and an overall lack of empathy for their fellow man. Reminds me of something you might read about from 18 -1900’s American Industrial Revolution.

-It has been said earlier, but the quality of work being performed is shite. When you know you HAVE to be in the office til’ 10pm (for no more money) each night for no other reason than showing your commitment to your job, then there is no good motivator to be efficient. What I find strange is I have seen workers pushed to their limits and worked to the breaking point, but instead of getting angry and looking for ways to make changes for workers rights, they quietly disappear off into the job market. I have asked many workers about the disparity between pay and job demands, many believe it is their duty to Taiwan to work as hard as possible…

-You know all that smoke we got to breath in last Saturday and Sunday? Well it wasn’t for home heating purposes, it was mindless knit twits burning ghost money in their money ovens wisely next to my scooter’s leaking petrol tank. Why you ask? Well clearly it is so the Gods will rain upon them good luck for attaining real moneies here on earth. I could rant about this dumb shit all day long, but the point is that being busy is part of the Chinese culture and part of society; it simply increases one’s chances of getting more money. The problem is that the new generation of workers coming into the force are modern youth who mostly find all that supersticious dogma to be nothing more than that.

-This is a tough one to generalize, but the Taiwanese don’t really have much of a life. In America, especially California, there is as much to life style as there is to success. Only slowly is the concept of ‘quality of life’ setting in. I am seeing a lot of people road cycling and swimming and playing basketball and other life enhancing activities that don’t involve working all night long. And who’s buying condos at 11pm on a Sunday? GO HOME ALREADY!

-The Taiwanese are in a tough spot in the world. The fear is that Taiwan is surrounded by a few billion people who would love a piece of the Taiwan lifestyle. Maybe this is what people mean by ‘I work hard for Taiwan’. If Taiwan decides to become France and work 35 hours a week and such, than quickly business will drift off to the other rising economies filled with a work forces dying to make $23000NT a month for 60 hours work!

:2cents:

T

[quote=“Brendon”]Drunken post time!

[quote=“robi666”]Just that people stay long in the office does not mean that they work hard.
Just block MSN, Skype and all other chat clients and all work is done by 6pm.[/quote]

Ignoring for a moment the baffling phrase “all work is done”, I think it’s pretty ridiculous to expect employee productivity to increase when you treat them like children. I kinda think that if they can’t be given responsibility for getting something done and then do it, maybe you should just fire them and hire some grownups.

Vaguely relatedly, a quote from a recent pretty creepy news story:

Some more hazily remembered stats: Almost no-one can do a professional job well for even six hours a day, let alone ten. And if you’re not taking five-minute breaks every half hour (breaks away from the computer, walking around, talking, etc), then your focus and output drops off precipitously.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had better metrics for productivity than “time spent in chair”?[/quote]

Love this post.

I found back in my pre-teaching days, those dark ages when i had a real job, that I excelled by having the internet open at my work station. I would go through heavy work spurts, and then check the news, heavy work spurt, then check ebay…and so on. It looked like a distraction from the outside, but it was the little reward of ‘the internet’ that made me work harder and ended up getting more done. I was a manager too, so productivity was my concern.

In contrast, I also had a job (which turned out to be my last) where the internet was blocked and/or monitored and I felt that nothing was ever worth doing because there was no ‘brain break’ reward. I know everyone’s different, but your quoted study from Australia sounds right to me.

T

Relatedly, I find that I am much, much more productive, regardless of what I’m doing, if I’m not beholden to a clock. From day one of job one, I’ve alwasy felt that punching a time clock was degrading. And managers who micro manage the time stamps are complete tools, IMO. You end up with seventy or eighty people lined up in front of a clock for five or ten minutes at the beginning and end of the day because they’ve all got to beat the clock for that one vital minute! How the hell does that help production? It means I need to wrap up a quarter hour early so I can have a spot at the front of the time clock line!

Wow, finally some sensible people posting here… :smiley:
I saw all this shit during my first job here and realised pretty quickly that I don’t want to work for a local company.
It’s taken me a lot of time and effort to finally get to the stage where I’m doing ok with my own business, but at least I’m my own boss and I work my own hours, most of the time.

Yet, every time I visit a local company, I see most, if not all the things mentioned here. It’s just insane that some of the leading companies in their respective industry are based here, even more so when you realise how they operate.
It’s actually quite sad to see what goes on here, as most companies could and would do so much better if they were just willing to make small changes and listen to some outside criticism/input, but alas, they’re all too “proud” to listen to anyone that’s not of equal status and being a local of course…

Maybe one day…

two words
TIME MANAGEMENT
if you are organized and can plan then do it. saves a lot of time.

Way back in the day, before I became a teacher, I worked in an office doing invoicing. It was a pretty simple job and most invoices required only a few changes from the previous month’s invoice and then a couple of re-calculations. Yet they’d had all sorts of problems because the only people who could do it without screwing it up were the managers and their time was too valuable to be doing invoicing. What was meant to be an eight hour job took me about one and a half hours per day. So, by 10:30, I’d be done for the day (except for a handful of invoices that might come in after lunch). I would go and ask around the office to see if there was anything else that needed to be done, but there rarely was. So, inevitably, I’d end up surfing the internet. One day, my boss had internet access blocked on my computer because I wasn’t supposed to be surfing the internet. No, what I should have been doing was spending eight hours and making a whole lot of mistakes instead of doing everything correctly in one and a half hours. I ended up letting them find someone who would do just that. I swear, my boss could have been a Taiwanese boss.

In Taiwan, it’s all about face. Their contract may say they work from 9-5, but if you clock out at 5 before any of your other co-workers you’re gonna lose face. You are always competing with your co-workers here, if you leave early it’s a sign you’re not as committed as they are and the boss will either fire you/not give you bonuses etc…

Also another thing I’ve noticed is that they believe in work long, not smart. The longer you’re clocked in the more face you have, even if 6 of those 12 hours they just kinda spaced out/chatted(totally normal for Taiwanese). If they worked smart, they could be done with the days work in the normal 8 hours and go home by 5. I understand working late to make deadlines and what not, but working late and weekends all year round for peanuts? :loco: At least they get that 1 week off for the lunar new year!!!

The Taiwanese economy grew by over 10% last year. Something must be working.

[quote=“baberenglish”]two words
TIME MANAGEMENT
if you are organized and can plan then do it. saves a lot of time.[/quote]

It’s nothing to do with TIME MANAGEMENT, people who finish their job for the day at 4pm are still expected to put in the overtime like the other staff. It’s all to do with everybody SEEN to be working together. The management/bosses expect this in general, if you don’t put in the overtime (mostly just sitting at your desk) you may well get fired and you won’t be getting that bonus.

As I have argued many times before many things in Taiwan take a long time to change, they change on the surface but the attitudes to work/lifestyle/individuality takes a very long time to change. A poster above said young people don’t really believe in the paper burning thing, I feel plenty of old people don’t either…but it doesn’t stop them doing it!

Some of this cutlure comes from Japanese companies and management style, some of it from the US electronics industry where this it is commonplace. What is really ridiculous is when you see this type of overtime working culture applied in traditional industries such as mechanical, chemical, medical which have no such urgent time pressure. Taiwanese took these management styles are either over applied them or failed to adjust over the years. Taiwan has a ‘ping ming’ immigrant society, people grow up with this culture and the willingness to put in extra work or time has been abused by employers. It is certainly not the same as Mainland China.

BTW, not every company in Taiwan operates in this way. Factory and manual workers do not do this, shift on, shift off. Many traditional industry companies in Taichung/Kaoshiung do not do this. It is more prevalent in Taipei which is a very busy competitive city.

God some people don’t learn a thing. The US economy grew like bananas in the early 2000s, so did Ireland, so did Spain, so did Greece…according to their GDP figures.
Growth figures without context are useless.