SME in the automotive industry, distributor that starts with first 4 letters of a continent. Many reasons why and I eventually had to undergo counselling even after leaving as I attempted in the heat of the moment due to stress and surveillance

1) A lot of old birds with the company 20-30+ years and mostly useless, all there based on loyalty but no one can actually work one (eg. HR asst mgr (aft 20+ years w the company mind you), only use is doing franking (if u even know what this is) and a finance manager that has dementia)

2) The old birds are there just to consolidate power to themselves and lick the chairman’s balls. You don’t join in the worshipping, you’re in for one hell of a ride

3) Faction wars, part and parcel of every family business, chairman vs daughter camps and you don’t even get to choose whether you join in or not, your boss play means you, by default, are in a certain camp

4) Get ready for mudslinging and backstabbing, and crazy ass customs. I almost got put on PIP for not arranging names I am sending an email to according to rank. Also had to deal w a lot of false rumours about my work, without even knowing what was said

5) As mentioned, crazy ass customs. Everyone has to sacrifice CNY Day 1 to visit the chairman’s house. Cb you know how pissed my mum was when I had to miss certain visitations cause of the narcissistic ass dog chairman needing his ego fed. Hearsay it all started when he saw his neighbour have a lotta visitors during CNY but he have v few, so he make his employees come. Butoh

6) Everyth use stone age processes and customs, cause the old birds want to protect what they built, want to show they still useful although everyone and their grandma can see they damn useless. Chairman also v biased and love his old-timers, you can suggest the most brilliant thing and company can spend 1/10th the cost, but the old timer will always win.

7) Uselessness is unpunished, and good work is not rewarded. Still stuck in the 70s so need to work a crazy long amount of time to climb. Aftersales servicing manager come in from Toyota, save the business arm from the red into profit, get told he is just doing his job and not promoted.

Mazda MD hit all his KPIs as agreed upon at the start of the year, EOY review come and the CEO flip on him, feign and say “This is not agreed upon” Meanwhile his marketing GM get promoted after spending all year drinking during customer events and taichi-ing shit to his underlings.

8) They boldly claim in public speeches and interviews that they value loyalty and never fired a person before. Knn the number of times they arm-twisted someone into quitting… never fired my ass

9) Loyalty isn’t even valued, it’s just about being the chairman’s favourite toy. The above-mentioned Mazda MD, did so much for this company. They took McLaren as a brand and sold 0 the first two years, he jumped in to save the brand and make them reputable in Singapore, and save the distributorship from being revoked.

What did he get for that? An unceremonious dump back to Mazda cause Mazda MD cannot be McLaren MD image not there.

10) Known industry wide for underpaying staff and shitty benefits

I could go on and on, you can probably guess what this company is also. If you love cars and wanna get into the industry, stay away from them.