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produced by phoenix.com's eye of the storm

text | lv yinling

email for tip-off complaints: [email protected]

before every long holiday, the complaints of "working like cattle and horses" never get old. this time, it is even more surprising than the long-criticized "adjusted holidays". a news that a listed company would "take 4 days off and make up 3 days" during the national day holiday sparked a discussion on social platforms.

the so-called "4 days off and 3 days make up" is the company's vacation model summarized by employees. according to the notice, the company requires "4 days off and 3 days of make up" during the national day holiday, which means that employees have to work 8 consecutive days before and after the 4-day holiday.

the listed company at the center of the public opinion storm is arrow home furnishing group co., ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "arrow home furnishing"), headquartered in foshan. its main businesses are furniture manufacturing and bathroom products, and its brands such as anhua and faenza are well-known.

in addition to the workers' anger, many netizens also exposed the company's "religious" management style as a "public punishment" - executives worshiping buddha, employees offering lamps, stacking gold ingots at work, and other "mysterious operations" that made many employees exclaim "unbelievable". why do they worship buddha while working? some employees even asked directly: "can a black-hearted company go far? will buddha bless us?"

regarding the relevant discussions, phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" sent an interview letter to arrow home furnishing for verification. as of press time, no response has been received.

01 a building has a worship hall on multiple floors, and employees take turns to provide lights

recently, phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" noticed that a picture of wrigley executives collectively worshipping buddha was circulating online. in the picture, more than a dozen executives were kneeling to worship the gods in front of them, and several monks in yellow robes were presiding over the ceremony. song cheng, a former employee who worked at wrigley home for two years, told phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" that this was a picture from a long time ago, and the location was the exhibition hall of the old headquarters building in chancheng district, foshan. he had also encountered such a scene, but was stopped from taking pictures.

_{online pictures}

such scenes are nothing new inside arrow home furnishing. song cheng told phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" that the company has attached great importance to worshiping buddha from the beginning. when he joined the company in 2021, he noticed that there was an area on the first floor of the building dedicated to guan gong, and the entire 24th and 25th floors were also used to worship guan gong and worship buddha and offer lights.

song cheng asked the old employees out of curiosity and found out that the boss's wife believed in the influence of gods and buddhas on the company's development. every year, the company's senior executives would go to the south china sea to worship gods with the boss's wife. the company also attached great importance to the zodiac sign. "if the zodiac sign conflicts with the boss's wife, you cannot be promoted to a senior executive, while those with a prosperous zodiac sign may be promoted as an exception."

at the beginning of 2022, the company required employees to go to the lobby to worship gods after work. song cheng also lined up in a long line of hundreds of people to worship guan gong. he has also seen that the company asked employees to fold ingots for worship during work hours. although it is common in many restaurants, hotels, and companies in foshan to offer sacrifices to "gods", it is still a new thing to lead employees to worship frequently.

song cheng told phoenix.com’s “eye of the storm” that even though some departments of the company moved to the new headquarters building in lecong town this year, the lighting on the top floor of the old building continued.

the screenshot of the notice obtained by phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" shows that the arrow building arranged for anhua, e-commerce, finance and other departments to take turns to provide lights every day, and each unit sent three people to provide lights in the 25th floor buddhist hall and the 24th floor guan gong room. there are many requirements for providing lights. not only must an auspicious time be selected in advance, but women are not allowed to provide lights during their menstrual period. in addition, skirts, heavy makeup, loose hair, shorts, and slippers are not allowed. apart from these employees who provide lights, few people have been to this mysterious place on the top floor, where only authorized people can enter by swiping the door control.

_{photo provided by the interviewee}

not only in the headquarters building, but also in the office building of zhongying shengda, xiaodi, who works for the faenza brand under wrigley, can clearly feel this unique corporate culture.

unlike the headquarters, his office building only has one room that is set aside as a buddhist temple. although it is not big, only about ten square meters, it is fully equipped with buddha statues and offerings. walking in the corridor of the company, one can clearly hear the sound of buddhist scriptures playing all day long. there is constant incense burning in the room, and the smell of incense is everywhere.

the company regularly requires different departments to rotate and send a man to the buddhist temple to worship buddha and offer lamps. he received this task not long after he joined the company. he entered the buddhist temple, and other employees played the role of guides and presided over the lamp offering ceremony. according to the guide's requirements, he first drew three incense sticks, lit them, bowed three times, inserted the incense into the incense burner, and then lit more than a dozen small candles one by one. after that, the guide gave him a piece of paper, and he read the buddhist scriptures and blessing words on the paper as required. he still remembers that these words included prayers for the company and employees' performance.

the scriptures on the paper were obscure and difficult to understand. he only had a vague understanding of them. as he was reading them, he felt puzzled. he came to work, but ended up lighting incense and candles, chanting scriptures and praying for blessings in this closed room. although the ceremony took less than ten minutes, xiao di felt very uncomfortable. he was very surprised that a listed company with modern corporate management could impose the boss's personal beliefs on all employees.

xiaodi resigned after working for a few months. before leaving, he found that many of the company's middle-level managers had changed their profile pictures to images of some kind of buddhist imagery. he heard that it might be a suggestion from a master in the company, and some departments changed their profile pictures because of poor performance.

the company's finance department is also a department with a strong religious color. liang yong, who used to work in the finance department, told phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" that this may be because the boss lady of arrow home furnishing is mainly responsible for the company's financial work.

in addition to offering lamps and worshipping buddha, when liang yong joined the company in 2021, he heard from old employees that "in the past, when interviewing financial personnel, they also had to ask about their birth date and zodiac sign, but later these steps were not so strict."

he still remembers that before he left, the boss's wife had mobilized the finance staff to buy a pot of lucky bamboo and keep it at their workstations. what he thinks is the most outrageous thing is that when the company usually organizes inventory, the information such as time, personnel, location, and inventory scope is not fully informed, which makes people confused. but when organizing the finance department employees to go to guanyin mountain for team building and blessing, the process is made very detailed and clear.

02 workers who work like cattle and horses: no paid annual leave, national day holiday is squeezed

the company's excessive emphasis on gods and buddhas made it difficult for many employees to understand and they had no place to vent their complaints. it was not until the company's disguised deductions in the welfare system became more and more exaggerated that this emotion slowly seemed to find an outlet.

phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" noticed that recently an employee posted a message exposing the company's "4-for-3" policy. after the post was deleted, the employee changed his nickname to "wrigley cow & horse workers", which triggered more employees to discuss and express support in related topics.

several arrow home furnishing employees told phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" that the company's implementation of the long and short week system is a common phenomenon in the home furnishing industry in foshan, and they have become accustomed to it. however, they find it unacceptable that statutory holidays are being squeezed out less and less.

"now the industry is in a state of internal competition. if you don't work overtime, someone else will. in addition, there are fewer jobs this year, so people in the company are generally able to accept the big and small week system. i think they are numb to it." xiaodi said, "but for a long holiday like national day, the 'four days off and three days off' policy does not triple the salary. for us young people, we have to promote consumption, find boyfriends and girlfriends, go out for travel, and go back to our hometown to spend time with our families. the time is too tight."

he said that this was not the first time the company had deducted holidays. this year, the statutory holiday for the dragon boat festival was three days, but it coincided with the "short week" and he had to work on saturday, so he actually only had two days off. in addition, at arrow home furnishing, there is no such thing as paid annual leave or overtime pay.

however, song cheng remembered that although arrow home furnishing also cut a lot of holidays last year, it was not as exaggerated as this year. last year, it was generally 1-2 days less than the normal holidays, and the national day holiday was 5 days off and 2 days were added. he believes that this year may be due to poor performance, so they cut more.

in addition to the fact that the working hours make employees feel exhausted like "being a beast of burden", many employees also mentioned to phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" that the company also has many problems with salary setting.

liang yong clearly remembers that at the beginning of the interview, he paid close attention to the company's social security and housing fund payment ratio, and specifically asked about the payment base of arrow's five insurances and one housing fund. the interviewer only vaguely replied, "it is paid in full." liang yong was relieved, because if the payment is paid in full, it means that no matter how the payment ratio fluctuates, the impact will not be significant.

unexpectedly, when he signed the contract after officially joining the company, he found that the company's routines were still hard to guard against. the company's salary structure is basic salary plus performance plus commission. the basic salary on the contract is only 1,900 yuan, but in fact the basic salary of employees is 4,000-7,000 yuan. he questioned it, and the answer he got was another excuse: the company's employees signed contracts with a basic salary of 1,900 yuan because the company implements a salary confidentiality system.

in his subsequent work, he realized that such an arrangement was to pay less social security and provident fund. paying according to the base amount of 1,900 yuan would reduce a lot of burden for enterprises.

liang yong originally thought that listed companies would be more likely to comply with the provisions of the labor law, but it was not until then that he discovered that reality disappointed him.

song cheng also confirmed this to phoenix.com’s eye of the storm. he also added that the company’s wages are paid between the 25th and 28th of the next month, and performance wages can only be received if they meet the assessment requirements of the month, and a portion will be reserved for payment in the quarter.

03 even with the blessing of gods and buddhas, it is difficult to prevent a sharp decline in performance

in fact, arrow home furnishing's various practices in withholding holidays and wages may also be a microcosm of the impact of the overall downturn in the home furnishing industry in recent years.

in recent years, the home furnishing industry, which relies on real estate, has also been hit hard by the cyclical nature of the real estate industry. since last year, there have been constant reports of home furnishing companies going bankrupt, cutting salaries, laying off employees, and ipo terminations, and the industry has entered a brutal winter.

data shows that the number of registered furniture manufacturing companies in china increased to 28,000 in 2021, but in the first half of 2022, the number of registered home furnishing manufacturing companies in china dropped to 23,800. this means that in just half a year, nearly 50,000 domestic home furnishing companies have disappeared.

the industry's cold winter is still continuing this year. wind data shows that as of september 10, among the top 20 home furniture companies by total market value, 10 companies had negative growth in net profit attributable to their parent companies in the first half of the year, accounting for half of the total. among them, in addition to arrow home furnishing's net profit attributable to its parent company falling by 77.8%, the situation of lejia shares is not optimistic, falling by 64%, and camellia shares fell by 397%.

founded in april 2013, arrow home furnishing completed its listing on the shenzhen stock exchange in less than ten years under the leadership of chairman xie yuerong. it then hit the daily limit and its market value reached 16.4 billion yuan.

however, in the year of its listing, arrow home furnishing faced the dilemma of "increasing profits but not revenues". this year, its performance has plummeted. in the first quarter alone, its net profit attributable to the parent company was a loss of 90 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3004%, shocking the industry.

several employees told phoenix.com’s eye of the storm that they had long been aware of the company’s declining performance. “the overall environment is not good, so it’s normal to have losses. but the huge drop in the first quarter still shocked us.”

as early as a few years ago, liang yong felt that the company was trying to cut costs. he told phoenix.com's "eye of the storm" that the company's management style was family-style, the rules were relatively chaotic, and there was a "one-man show" on where to "spend money." as a financial officer, he would review and approve the funds allocated to dealers according to the company's rules and regulations. after the review was completed, at the last step, if the boss's wife felt that the money was too much, she would cut part of the money, for example, directly changing 5 million to 3 million, without giving any reason, and stamping it herself.

"since the boss lady can make the decision on the spur of the moment without any calculation, why are there so many procedures ahead?" he felt very puzzled.

song cheng also felt this very early. he still remembers that on october 26, 2022, the day the company successfully went public, it sent a message saying that everyone would get "chicken legs" at noon. unexpectedly, this was not a funny metaphor. it turned out that employees were really just asked to line up in the cafeteria to get chicken legs. he was too lazy to line up and just thought it was funny, thinking that such a way of celebration was "unacceptable."

"the company has tried every means to save money this year. it was rumored some time ago that all employees would have their salaries cut by 10% and switch to a two-day weekend, but this was met with strong opposition, so it has not been implemented yet," said song cheng.

(xiao di, song cheng, and liang yong are all pseudonyms in this article.)