#101
[Title: I am exposing the M brand of a certain program alumni influencer representative.]
I apologize in advance, as this post will be long.
Last year, I was hired as a planning MD intern at a fashion startup company (I’ll call it Company M for convenience) for about three months. It was the first job I found after graduating from university, and I was happy because the CEO was supposedly a family member of a designer I greatly respected.
However, Company M was the worst first workplace of my life.
I’ll try to summarize the reasons as follows:
- Salary and Work Environment
My salary was at the level of an hourly general office part-time job. Although I was new to the workforce, considering that I graduated from a four-year university in Seoul and had quite a few certifications necessary for practical work, it was truly an unfair amount.
However, as you know, it’s common in our industry to start with below-average salaries. Sadly, because it’s so common, I thought it couldn’t be helped. I had no practical work experience, and I believed this job would become good experience for me.
Actually, the problem was that they deducted 10% from even that salary. They said that after the three-month probationary period, I would be converted to a regular employee and work under better salary conditions afterward. This was something I wasn’t informed about during the interview.
I felt wronged but decided to endure it. It was an investment for the future. I believed what my senior said—that if this brand did well, it would be as good as my own achievement.
Looking back now, it was nothing but a foolish thought. Everything the senior and CEO promised were all verbal promises, and in reality, nothing was guaranteed for me.
Even if all of that had been true and legally binding, those three months were difficult to endure with only hope for a future that hadn’t come yet. Company M was such a place for me.
I still remember it vividly—the image of myself cleaning all day in a corner of a shared office because we didn’t even have a private office. There were six people but only four seats, so I don’t even remember sitting in a chair with a backrest.
They said this office was “temporary,” so bear with it a little. The CEOs who went to look for a new office were always silent with no news. I don’t even know if they really wanted to find a new office. The CEOs barely set foot in the office and seemed to have no interest in how we were working.
Eventually, I couldn’t handle the overwhelming paperwork organization and bought a laptop with my own money. Most of the work had to be processed while crammed into a corner of the shared cafeteria.
If I had known from the beginning that the company had no intention of preparing a workspace for me, I wouldn’t have endured this mistreatment for 100 days. Isn’t “happiness comes after hardship” just an old saying?
- Inadequate Training and Disorganized Work Distribution
The phrase I heard most while working at Company M was undoubtedly “figure it out yourself.” Figure it out yourself. Research it yourself. Analyze it yourself… What exactly was I supposed to figure out?
Shamefully, I didn’t have that ability, and the company had no system to help someone like me. A company where you have to download product planning document templates from the internet? There wasn’t a single properly organized template, so later I had to create templates myself and upload them to the drive. Of course, no one looked at them.
Field research—figure it out yourself. Company analysis—figure it out yourself. Going to the raw materials market—figure it out yourself. Even meals—figure it out yourself. The talk about meal allowances, saying that considering the prices in this area, it was like feeding me only good things every meal, was all smooth talk. When they said, “There’s only one corporate card, so should I follow you out on field work to buy for you too?” what should I have said? In the end, every time I went out for market research, I often filled my hunger at restaurants where nearby merchants frequently ate.
If only they had acknowledged the results I created through such hardship, but Company M was far from such a place. Crude. Hard to understand. Boring. They would often throw away my proposals with insincere reactions, and even scolded me saying, “Why are you trying to teach when the CEOs will handle all this stuff anyway?”
Now I can say it: What was really hard to understand were the CEO’s designs and proposals. I told them several times that in clothing sales, universality is as important as rarity or originality. The people who buy and wear these clothes aren’t runway models.
But the CEO always designed for only one or two people and pursued only interesting and stimulating work. Then shouldn’t the CEO’s clothes be hung in fashion show exhibition halls rather than sold on websites?
The senior planning MD who claimed to have worked at the CEO’s family member’s brand—you always looked at me and criticized me, saying, “Where in this industry would hire someone who works like you?” Whatever work I brought, you were always busy finding faults first, and you didn’t hesitate to criticize my appearance, saying that someone trying to establish themselves in the fashion industry dressing shabbily showed they didn’t know basic manners.
Looking back, these were nothing but absurd remarks. What could someone like me, fresh out of college, have accomplished so greatly? With that salary, that environment, and having to run errands for the CEO and senior several times a day—how did things like proxy credit card pickup, sending personal packages, and buying limited edition products from department stores on three-hour round trips help nurture members of this industry?
It would have been good if I had known this was ultimately part of the process of pushing me out. But I didn’t know this was part of the groundwork to kick me out within the three-month probationary period, and I was obsessed with the thought that I had to endure and do my best to improve my capabilities.
Those were days when I was exhausted from doubting whether I really deserved to establish myself in this industry, whether I was a useful human being. After suffering from those words for three months, I eventually couldn’t endure the insomnia, depression, and panic symptoms and am currently receiving psychiatric treatment. Are you satisfied now?
- Wrongful Dismissal
After three months passed like that, I received a unilateral dismissal notice just before being converted to a regular employee. The reason was that my work ability was excessively inadequate and I had a negative impact on the company atmosphere.
At 11 PM, I suddenly lost my job. It was just one text message: “You don’t need to come in from tomorrow.” It was a dismissal without explanation or sincerity.
The next day, I protested to the company that the unilateral dismissal was unfair. I even cited Article 26 of the Labor Standards Act, which states that employers must give at least 30 days’ notice when dismissing workers.
However, Company M countered that the clause was meaningless because I was a probationary employee who hadn’t completed three months. They even claimed that I had caused massive damage to the company by failing to properly secure a production contract for the embroidered jacket design, which was one of the main products to be released in the second half of next year.
But this doesn’t serve as a rebuttal to Article 23 of the Labor Standards Act, which states that employers cannot dismiss workers without just cause. The reason that company rejected the embroidered jacket design wasn’t due to my inadequate work ability, but because implementing the design was realistically impossible.
Therefore, I judged the dismissal to be unfair and am going through the Labor Relations Commission relief application process. Depending on the situation, I’m also prepared to file a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
- The Sincerity the CEO Showed on the Program They Appeared on Later?
Actually, all of this is extremely personal business, and no matter how unfair it is, I think it’s something that shouldn’t be spread around. I wanted to resolve this matter as amicably and quietly as possible. Since I entered this industry with affection, I also wanted to return through another company after completing treatment and recovery.
However, this summer, the CEO appeared on a program. I heard the filming date was this spring. Although I knew it was currently the most popular program, I personally couldn’t bear to watch it, so I didn’t actually watch it.
After that program ended, whenever stories about the brand and shopping mall that were supposed to launch circulated, I was tormented by memories of the past. With a glimmer of hope, I checked job search sites and found a posting recruiting a new planning MD for Company M.
Therefore, I write this post hoping that no more victims like me will emerge. I hope no one will spend a precious season of their life in pain like I did, deceived by the fame of the program and brand.
I also expose that the CEO’s statement that it was merely a fateful meeting that later developed into a good relationship leading to business partnership is an act of deceiving the public.
I state again that there were two CEOs when I worked at M Brand. Of course, one person handled almost all the actual work, but whenever they came and went to the office, the two were always together. There are more than one or two people in the industry who have seen both their faces, so why are you trying to cover the sky with your palm?
I wrote this post prepared for my personal information to be exposed. Though I’m scared and frightened, I courageously inform the world of what I experienced, and I earnestly hope that wrong things will be corrected, even if belatedly.
Thank you for reading this long post.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
