Coming here from the SF Bay Area and working in the technology and science industries there, it is extremely hard to find a starting point when describing what is wrong with Taiwan’s Human Resources. It seems there is more emphasis on the ‘Resources’ than the ‘Human’. I’d like to think it is a result of the Taiwanese not ‘geting out’ into the world enough to realize their own faults and inefficiencies, but yet they create special rules for foreigners working here as if to say “We know you probably won’t work here under our ‘slave-like’ policies, so here’s more money for less hours!” It’s an admission of guilt surrounding their knowledge of a better way, but refusal to exercise it.
Reading these types of threads really makes me appreciate where I work at the moment. I mean i show up 30 mins late & leave 15-20 mins early everyday. Theres no record of attendence (i.e. fingerprints) but people expect you to come around a certain time and as long as you get your work done and its of good quality generally no one cares and people are happy. Not to mention our lunch breaks are not time specific so we can generally take our time.
I find in this work environment because it gives more responsibility to the employees, they tend to work harder. I.e. you see many more people working overtime even though it wasnt requested because they are getting paid failry for their work and appreciate it. Seems to me I wont be working in Taiwan anytime soon by the looks at it.
Does she have a sister? I want one of these! Where do you get them? Is it something santa will bring? My ex used to lay into me something awful if I dared to even mention people behaving like fuckwits (like for example turning onto a main road without looking or indicating).
finley: She has two, both older. The eldest is married and has three kids, and she puts up with all sorts of nonsense from her mother-in-law and her husband’s family, with whom she lives. She’s also generally exceptionally disorganised and, as we Australians say, would be lucky if she could run a piss-up in a brewery.
My wife describes her middle sister as being quite attractive to Taiwanese men, but she’d drive me up the fucking wall. She’s a vapid, lazy, spoilt woman going on eleven who pulls stupid faces in photos and all of the other inane shit that many women in their twenties go on with here. She puts up with bullshit from bosses until she regularly moves to another dead-end job where she doesn’t have to think or work hard. In short, she’s a fucking nightmare. You’d fuck her, provided there were few or no strings attached, but I don’t think she’s that good looking that you’d lavish cutesy shit and bubble tea on her just to get your dick in her, let alone marry her. My wife loves her unconditionally, of course, but her middle sister does frustrate her (and her father!) immensely at times.
My wife, on the other hand, is the bee’s knees and then some. One of my closest friends, who is generally exceptionally critical of Taiwanese people, people in general, and his friend’s significant others, describes my wife as the only significant other (Taiwanese or foreign) of any of the people he knows in Taiwan that he actually likes.
[quote=“Maceck”]Coming here from the SF Bay Area and working in the technology and science industries there, it is extremely hard to find a starting point when describing what is wrong with Taiwan’s Human Resources. It seems there is more emphasis on the ‘Resources’ than the ‘Human’. I’d like to think it is a result of the Taiwanese not ‘geting out’ into the world enough to realize their own faults and inefficiencies, but yet they create special rules for foreigners working here as if to say “We know you probably won’t work here under our ‘slave-like’ policies, so here’s more money for less hours!” It’s an admission of guilt surrounding their knowledge of a better way, but refusal to exercise it.
Fucking weird shit. Can’t wrap my head around it.[/quote]
My company HR manager “suggests” that I should teach her English twice a week. Free of charge of course. In order to improve my inter-company “guanxi” with key personnel (namely herself). She name drops to remind me of her 20+ year “professional” relationship with the president of the company. She also casually tells me that a colleague in my team has been teaching programming to her precious engineering student of a son for the last 2 years(!).
[quote=“e30rusty”][quote=“Maceck”]Coming here from the SF Bay Area and working in the technology and science industries there, it is extremely hard to find a starting point when describing what is wrong with Taiwan’s Human Resources. It seems there is more emphasis on the ‘Resources’ than the ‘Human’. I’d like to think it is a result of the Taiwanese not ‘geting out’ into the world enough to realize their own faults and inefficiencies, but yet they create special rules for foreigners working here as if to say “We know you probably won’t work here under our ‘slave-like’ policies, so here’s more money for less hours!” It’s an admission of guilt surrounding their knowledge of a better way, but refusal to exercise it.
Fucking weird shit. Can’t wrap my head around it.[/quote]
My company HR manager “suggests” that I should teach her English twice a week. Free of charge of course. In order to improve my inter-company “guanxi” with key personnel (namely herself). She name drops to remind me of her 20+ year “professional” relationship with the president of the company. She also casually tells me that a colleague in my team has been teaching programming to her precious engineering student of a son for the last 2 years(!).
—[/quote]
Go for it. But embarrassingly mention that you have no prior experience of teaching English and not sure what to do, yet you’re so excited to be trying something new. Then teach lessons with grammar and vocabularly light years out of her reach and either:
Drone on in a monotone going into all the technical intricacies of the grammar, and using examples with the vocabulary that she would never have a hope of using or even to grasp.
Speak way too quickly for her to understand, gloss over any explanations continuously mentioning how easy English grammar is compared to Chinese, then explain something else and mention again, “See! It’s so easy, right?”
If she whines, apologize profusely, reminding her that you did tell her you have no experience teaching English and that because it’s so easy for you that you can’t understand why people have an difficulties picking it up quickly. Mention things like how uneducated illiterate Africans living in the bush even learn to speak fluently just from speaking to native speakers.
Another strategy would be to find out what she wants to learn; “American” English, or “British” English. Then go the other way regarding spelling and pronunciation. This is especially useful is she wants to learn “American” English, because then you can draw parallels to US spelling and simplified Chinese and how it’s basically just “peasant” writing for illiterates. Go on tirades about how “American” English developed out of poor peasants immigrating to the colonies and taking their “bastardized” pronunciation etc etc with them. If you are North American, and she calls you on that, say, “Yes, but we don’t all speak/spell like that! Heresy!! I went to (insert relevant school), we learned “proper” Queens English!!!”
Of course, vice versa, you could go on about Brits not moving with the times and being stuck up arseholes blah blah blah. The key here is tirades!!
However, if your function in the company is a language one, this may be tricky.
Bismark, if I ever need to get out of something, you’re the man I’ll ask for advice. Too bad I wasn’t on forumosa during my Hess days, you would have been invaluable. Didn’t you also give a tutorial on how to out-psycho a psycho xiao jie?
Bravo!
oh my goodness! I was thinking about coming back to Taiwan to work for a couple of year just to spend some quality time with my family. I currently live in the US and work as an accountant.
I came on to see what the working life is like in Taiwan since I pretty much have zero idea about what’s really going on. LOL i kinda got scared! I am not the type of person who stays late at work just because. I leave when I finish my job and I usually complete my tasks within my work hours. So I’m really not sure if I should come back to work for a while or stay here in the states,
Guys, don’t miss the case of the overworked doctor -overload of 300 plus hours a month- who had a stroke. Now, he’s unable to go to the bath by himself, doesn’t recognize hsi family members… and got a pitiful amount as compensation. Wife is suing but outlook is grim.
But did the hospital overwork him that much? Or did he work himself to death to make the kind of money that doctors expect to make. Also, surely he understood the risks to his health. After all, he is a doctor. And it’s not like he couldn’t have found another job somewhere else.
Of course it’s a tragedy and by all accounts he was a dedicated and caring doctor. His family is suing for NT$38 million.
[quote=“NonTocareLeTete”]Bismark, if I ever need to get out of something, you’re the man I’ll ask for advice. Too bad I wasn’t on forumosa during my Hess days, you would have been invaluable. Didn’t you also give a tutorial on how to out-psycho a psycho xiao jie?
Bravo![/quote]
I think Bismarck’s post is a fun read but not really ment to be used at all. Do you want to go through hours and hours and days&weeks of working this thing out by basically playing here and kind of confronting her? Are you sure the outcome will just be what you hope for? Seems that to enjoy that game you have to be a psycho yourself.
Oh, it’s not about enjoying yourself? Well, then just do what she asked for, she is the local and might be right about the perks she’s hinting at.
Only 38,000,000NTD? It seems like a lot, but if they got that and then got a 5% p.a. return, then the family would get 158,333NTD/month, which doesn’t include inflation. Purely from a financial point of view, how does that monthly income compare to the lost doctor’s salary plus that of a full-time carer? I’m guessing it’s not a good deal, and that’s if they even get that much.
Tell that to the wife, who takes care of hubby and two kids and can’t leave any of them alone for a second. Hubby looks OK but remember, he’s incapable of taking care of himself.
Doctors have to work long hours here in Taiwan as per SOP -like flight engineers and airport personell, maxing out beyond international convenctions. Choice has little in the matter.
Back home, my brotere who is a doctor also double shifts, but there is a strict limit and he’s not being forced: he volunteers, as the experience will help his career and most importantly, he needs the money. In Taiwan, I don’t think they get overtime pay. Remember overtime is expected.
At a big hospital like the one he was working for the average salary is about NT$200,000. The head of a hospital makes NT$500,000. A doctor with a successful private practice can make a lot more. The highest tort award ever awarded in Taiwan for complete disability was about NT$30 million. The amounts are slowly rising.
Feiren: So it doesn’t sound like a good deal then. They’re losing the 200,000NTD/month he would have earnt, plus say, 35,000NTD/month his wife would have earnt (possibly more), for a total of 235,000NTD/month. Yet even if this works out, at a conservative estimate, they’ll be getting 158,333NTD/month. So they’re almost 80,000NTD/month in the hole, plus the dad is incapacitated.
that doesnt sound like too much… my coworkers probably put in at least that number of hours. theoretically they get everything above the usual work hours as saved up holiday time (because there is no overtime pay) but of course they dont have time to use that because they have to work… i average 200 hours with normal office hours (but only because i come and leave on time since i dont have enough work anyway in my position as intern). they dont leave on time… they do overtime and mostly work through weekends too on shifts…
this week i will probably do work that i could finish in 4 hours overall if i took my time doing it… but i will still be here sitting around for 45 hours… without actual pay (apparently paid internship is forbidden by the government… i do get a small amount of pocket money at least though). only here because of my gf and i got only 4 weeks left. but the thought of the huge mountain of money i could make if i worked this much in germany even on extremely low pay is still something i dont like to think about.
the money part yes thats just for me personally… the main point of my post was the working conditions of my coworkers who do actual work and endless workhours
Feiren: Sure, but if she wasn’t working before then she probably had free time on her hands. Now, she either has to devote all of her time to caring for her husband or she needs to pay someone else to do so.
thats just for me personally… the main point of my post was the working conditions of my coworkers who do actual work and endless workhours