Pros
Sweet colleagues. Office is located near Commonwealth MRT station.
Cons
The first day I started working here was the day I knew I made a huge mistake. Never have I seen an office still requiring their employees to clock in and out with a punch card machine. What are we, factory workers? And I don't even know if factories still do that anymore? But anyways, moving on. The company is run by a family of tyrants who have little to no respect for people outside of their family. Not a day goes by in the office without hearing one of them shoutings their heads off at one of the employees. The shoutings are often rife with verbal abuse; I've heard my colleagues being called 'stupid', 'embarrassing' and more. There's even hearsay that some colleagues have been cussed at in dialects but I haven't heard it for myself so that's that. With that said, there are much better ways to let an employee know that they've made a mistake - I for one know that screaming is not on the list. Useless meetings are held every so often where the chairman just babbles on and on about his life, his family and how 'happy' his family is. You mean *coughs* dysfunctional *cough*. The pantry is usually a place for employees to have a break in, to have their meals or have a quick snack in (this place does NOT offer you any edible snacks, by the way... Unless you're keen on Chinese New Year snacks that are either almost expiring or have expired). But at Star Publishing it has been indirectly instilled in employees that this is just a place for you to store your food in the employees' fridge (there are 2 fridges - one for the management i.e. the family and one for the rest of the employees), wash your hands, or get water/tea. I'd say that besides your monthly salary and bi-yearly bonuses, the welfare there is close to zero. On two occasions, one of the family members instructed the office cleaner to go around the office and ask every employee whether they took a SLICE OF CHEESE or a PACKET OF 3-IN-1 MILO from the management's fridge. Um, I'm pretty sure no one would do that because we can afford that? Also, none of us wants to go snooping around your nasty fridge because only heaven knows how much expired food is in there. Anyway, I stated this example because it goes to show the level of distrust this company has in the employees. On a similar note, each employee is also expected to write a daily report on what they did that day. If you don't submit yours at the end of each day, they'll question you the following day and assume you did nothing. Bravo! I could go on and on but I'm afraid I'll hit the word limit. But yes, due to reasons like the above, the workplace environment always felt hostile to me. I woke up every morning wondering why I put myself through such turmoil, but due to COVID-19 it was challenging to find another job and that's why I stayed put. During my one year at this place, I've seen about 15 people come and go. That's about 1-2 people each month, which is crazy. What's even crazier is that the management still doesn't realise there's anything wrong with them or the company despite the extremely high turnover.