Korean Job Discussion Forums

[antifan]

My hagwon boss sporadically demands that teachers give money so the hagwon can buy the students presents.

This week being Children's Day, we have to pay the boss 20,000 won.

Now I would have to say I am not completely opposed to this, as I like to treat my students sometimes.

However, its also kind of a pet peeve when a place of work makes you spend money. This is also the third time we had to shell out money to buy the kids stupid trinkets.

What are your opinions? Would you just say no way?

[CentralCali]

How can your boss make you purchase something for someone else with your own funds? Simply inform the boss that you'll be happy to get the items as long as he provides the cash in advance.

[Who's Your Daddy?]

[YTMND]

It's called save face gift giving. It depends on the situation actually. How many students? 20,000 doesn't get you that far. So, apparently they are pooling that money to get stuff.

My opposition to that would be that that's like having teachers pay for chalk, paper, and toilet paper which are business expenses.

I would support it though if we were able to contribute some ideas how to spend it, majority rules type of thing. If it was just once every 3 or 4 months, I wouldn't worry at all (especially if it were just at the end of a contract period).

[jurassic82]

Tell your boss you will buy your own gifts for the kids. Buy a big bag a candy which I am sure is way cheaper than 20,000 won if bought at COSTCO or Homeplus. It is kind of BS that your boss is asking for money to buy gifts for the kids. If he or she wants their Academy to do well then they should make their own personal investment.

[Troglodyte]

It's a small sign that the school is cutting corners on the budget. Although it's not serious, you should still keep an eye out for other signs that they might not be doing well financially or that they may try to cheat you later on.

A successful school would have simply bought the gifts. They wouldn't ask the teachers to contribute. Unless everyone is chipping in for a gift for a co-worker or for a party or such, your boss shouldn't normally ask you to contribute.

I probably wouldn't say "no". It will get you into a pissing fight with the boss or create bad feelings (that you'll have to live with for the rest of your time here). BUT you should keep it in mind when other little things come up.

[comm]

[luckylady]

this reminds me of my first year in Korea and another teacher I met who was working at different hakwon down the street. their hakwon wasn't doing too well and he was spending time before and after classes going around putting up flyers for the boss advertising their school, all on his own time.

maybe he just was worried about losing his job? I don't know but it's the same thing - his boss was asking him to work extra time for free - yours is asking for some of your pay back in the form of "gift money for the students" which is bogus.

you can handle it as you like but the best all around way is to just say NO.

[sojusucks]

[PatrickGHBusan]

I find this practice to be very odd. I do not see why teachers should pay for the school giving gifts to students. That is a school policy and should come out of its budget.

I know that a some of the places I worked at while in Korea we had a "Teacher's fund" where everyone put some money in so that when teachers had babies, got married or left (moved on to other employment for example or went home in the case of westerners) the school could throw a party for that teacher or buy a gift.

That was a nice gesture and was voluntary for those teachers who wished to contribute (most usually did). I personally would not give my school money to buy gifts for the kids unless the school was doing it as a charity thing to buy gifts for poorer kids who could not afford to attend the hakwon. Otherwise, that to me is a school policy and comes out of the owners budget.

[northway]

[jlb]

Forced "giving" is one of my major pet-peeves in a work environment, here and back home.

Like when I worked at a hagwon, we'd all have to chip in 3000 Won for a cake each time there was a birthday. Sometimes, it was people that I didn't even know that worked at the neighboring math hagwon. It was weird and annoying and felt like I was doing it every week. If I know it's someone's birthday, and I actually like them, I'll do something special like take them out for dinner or a drink or something. But chipping in for cake for random people? Not my style.

And at my uni foreign teacher's residence. There used to be this Korean lady who lived here who was the wife of one of the teachers. She was ALWAYS collecting money for Christmas gifts, Chuseok gifts, Seolnal gifts, going-away gifts for the garbage man, the maintenance man, the cleaning lady, the student assistant, the international coordinator, etc, etc, etc. And it wasn't 3000/person/occasion. It was like 10 000. It really ended up being a lot of money over the course of a year. I usually tried to avoid her, or just make up some excuse about not having cash on me or something, but she'd like corner you to get it. And I think I was on her "evil-foreigner" list because I wouldn't just give her endless amounts of money without any questioning.

Anyway, the school asking you to chip in for gifts for the kids? Ridiculous. Tell them to shove it, and that you'll buy your own gifts for children's day. Seriously, who says yes to this stuff?

[PatrickGHBusan]

[northway]

[PatrickGHBusan]