Korean Job Discussion Forums

[michaelambling]

When I was younger, an employer once said to me "you should be grateful for having this wonderful job". The "wonderful job" was 40 hours a week of managing a language school of 25 people for 2.7 million won a month in one of the most expensive countries in the world (it wasn't Britain, but imagine living on �1400 in Britain).

But I was grateful. Partly because I was inexperienced, partly because I was an English major who had spent two years virtually unemployed in America and knew how much the world doesn't care for humanities majors. But, most of all, I was grateful because I was an idiot.

In ANY job, you are paid no more than what the market demands. You are exchanging your services for a salary, and you're getting either what you deserve or less than that. Don't let employers feed you this crap; you are exchanging your services for money, and they are making a profit off of it. Also, you can always find a job elsewhere, especially in the TEFL industry.

With the economic downturn, a lot of companies think they have a great excuse for making employees obedient and obsequious. Don't let them turn you into a slave, and don't smile while they take a dump on you.

[Otherside]

While I agree with your sentiment. Unfortunatly, unless you have a very specialised skillset, you ARE replacable, and in the current economic situation, there will be someone who IS grateful for that job.

[michaelambling]

[Eedoryeong]

This is a troubling phrase to receive from an employer, it's true.

But it's also a silly resentment to form against the memory of your old job. Irrespective of your employer's questionable motives in trying to influence you, you really could still defend your attempts to have listened and to have been grateful for having had that job. Being grateful for having that job probably made you more open - as a young, inexperienced nobody - to learning all you could about the job so you could be better at it. And if you actually did that, it would begin the network of growth leading you onto bigger and better things. If you stop pissing on your garden, it's likely the plants will grow better and likely you'll spend more time in it learning how to be a better gardener. There's also a law about people being exactly where they want to be. Well it's more of a philosophy than a law but I think existentialism applies well here.

Don't be all knotted up because of gratitude for one's job. Most Westerners have an inflated sense of entitlement anyway. Maybe your boss just met one too many and thought you were one of that miserable herd. It doesn't matter. You know where that message should be coming from now. But I hope you don't think the message is crap. How you going to focus on getting good at your job if you're constantly pissing on it?

[Otherside]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I'm grateful for my school, my co-workers, and my students. It may not be the highest-paying job I'm capable of doing, but it is by far the best and most rewarding job I've ever had.

[michaelambling]

[T-J]

Few get rich working for someone else. However the risk of losing everything is much greater when you work for yourself or own your own enterprise. Do you want the safety of a paycheck or are you willing to take a risk. Safety is inversely proportional to reward. The question to ask yourself isn't how much compensation you think your worth. The question you need to ask yourself is how much risk you are willing to take. Know yourself and be satisfied with the answer.

[jkelly80]

Wages for the qualified often rise during tight job market because the qualified workers' expertise is so much more valued.

[bobbybigfoot]

Anyone who listens to Michaellambling is a fool.

This is bad advice. Not the first time either from this poster.

You can be grateful and not be a sucker at the same time. They aren't mutually exclusive as this warped poster claims.

[madoka]

[tefain]

[michaelambling]

[nosmallplans]

Being grateful and being a slave are completely different.

OP is an ungrateful bastard and in the eyes of this poster, is, "ruining it for everyone."

[jkelly80]

what the shit people!?!?!? don't you understand supply and demand? is this 1932? you're MAKING THEM MONEY! sack up.