A creative content manager in a high-end jewellery store… it’s perfectly reasonable to assume it pays an attractive salary.
Not to mention the prestige and legacy that comes with working for the brand. Elliott & Carmen Fine Jewellery (E&C) is, after all, an establishment that has been operating since 1999 and is currently at the shopping arcade of the historic Raffles Hotel.
So imagine the bemusement when a job posted by E&C offered a questionable $5 an hour for an intern or part-timer to take quality product shots and run the brand’s social media accounts. 
But in all fairness, the job required someone with very basic skills, including knowing how to use a digital camera, transfer images onto a computer, do some photo editing, and uh, “use social media”. Honestly, these aren’t even skills; they’re rudimentary things that (nearly) everyone living in the current era should already know.
Perhaps the portions that caused some concern is how the job requires successful applicants to work seven days a week and for only two hours a day at $5 per hour. Plus the part where applicants are even required to have a year’s experience each in social media marketing and photography. Which, to be fair, are experiences that everyone with a smartphone camera and a Facebook account already has.
The job posting — which was found on Glassdoor — was shared and mocked on Facebook yesterday (April 1), but has since been taken down by the original poster. 
April Fool’s gag or not, the job listing certainly ruffled a lot of feathers. Enough to prompt more than a few bad reviews on E&C’s Facebook page, which has now reached a below-average rating of 2.1 out of 5. 
The anger is understandable, we suppose. Offering compensation that measly can be seen as disrespect and ignorance towards people working in the creative field, noted one commenter. 
In a boilerplate answer copied and pasted in all their replies, E&C defended their move by saying that the money they’re offering is “strictly an allowance for them to gain experience”. Working out the monthly allowance to $880 a month, the store asserted that what they offered is “slightly above the market rate for interns”.
Oh, and according to them, they’ve already received an “overwhelming” volume of applicants already. 
‘A huge mistake’
Speaking to AsiaOne, E&C owner Leon Chu admits that the job listing was a huge mistake on their end. The man mentioned that he had assigned his son to put up a job listing for student interns, but the post was rushed out before he had a chance to review it.
Leon clarified that he was looking for a part-time tertiary student intern who could help the store carry out some basic tasks like taking pictures of their products and posting them on social media as the owner was “clueless” when it came to such things. He assured that they weren’t looking for someone professional — he would be fine if the intern took product photos with a smartphone.
The hourly wages and working hours posted were inaccurate too, he pointed out. Leon explained that the intern could actually work from home and didn’t have to be in the store all the time. Regarding remuneration, he mentioned that it would be an allowance of $880 monthly and not $10 a day as listed.
“I’d like to say a huge apology for the misunderstanding,” he told AsiaOne, expressing the hope that people would stop posting scathing comments about his business.
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