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iamthecheese86
Joined: 12 Oct 2010
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 Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:52 am Post subject: Some days make you want to rip your hair out |
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| Days when students cry and scream and kick and hit and don't do their work, no matter what you say. Days when you find out your planned five-day vacation overlaps with one day off for everyone and your boss tries to tell you it's too bad for you it still counts as five days of your vacation. When you were trying to find out for a MONTH beforehand when the school vacation is, and this day happens to be NEXT Friday. Not some far-off date a month from now or something. And when you try to communicate about it it just causes more confusion because his English is crap. |
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jrwhite82
Joined: 22 May 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:58 am Post subject: |
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Sorry to hear it man. I think the kids have about had it for 2010. Mine were TERRIBLE today. I lost my voice trying to talk over them.
This vacation couldn't come soon enough!
And sorry to hear about your vacation troubles. I think if your boss knows youre a good teacher and you keep pushing it he will buckle on it. He won't be happy about it, but he will do it. It happened to me once too. Fight the good fight!
Merry Christmas! Try to enjoy it! |
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iamthecheese86
Joined: 12 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 5:01 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks jrwhite. That actually helps a lot to hear. Still so frustrating though. Anyway, I hope you have a Merry Christmas as well! |
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interestedinhanguk
Joined: 23 Aug 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:17 am Post subject: |
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| Keep your head up, you'll be fine. I too worry about the vacation issue. Everyone has the 5 weekdays between Christmas and Ne Years. However, I'm supposed to have the following Monday and Tuesday as well. They'll probably flip when I'm not there on Monday. |
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Wiltern
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:04 am Post subject: Re: Some days make you want to rip your hair out |
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| iamthecheese86 wrote: |
| ....because his English is crap. |
Maybe it should be a question of your Korean being crap. What country are you in? I was in Italy not long ago and met Italians whose english was 'crap', which made it harder for me. The nerve of them!
The sense of entitlement some Westerners in Korea exhibit is downright pathetic. You should have just said there's a language barrier. |
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Xylox
Joined: 09 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:41 am Post subject: Re: Some days make you want to rip your hair out |
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| Wiltern wrote: |
| iamthecheese86 wrote: |
| ....because his English is crap. |
Maybe it should be a question of your Korean being crap. What country are you in? I was in Italy not long ago and met Italians whose english was 'crap', which made it harder for me. The nerve of them!
The sense of entitlement some Westerners in Korea exhibit is downright pathetic. You should have just said there's a language barrier. |
Ugh, they specifically recruit people who don't speak Korean. Its kind of like having a mine boss who barely knows anything about mining. Quit your crying douche. |
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Adios_Corea
Joined: 17 Dec 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:54 pm Post subject: Re: Some days make you want to rip your hair out |
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| Xylox wrote: |
| Ugh, they specifically recruit people who don't speak Korean. Its kind of like having a mine boss who barely knows anything about mining. Quit your crying douche. |
+1
I love these people who think that you can go from speaking zero Korean to being able to explain fairly complex ideas in Korean in less than 1 year.
It isn't as though we've all immigrated to Korea and refused to learn the language....we were all INVITED here, and in many cases lured here by beneficial salary packages. The onus in this scenario is on the employer to be able to communicate in English....at the supermarket, sure, we need to be able to speak Korean or not complain, but at our workplace we should be able to speak in English to our boss, or at least have someone present who can translate for us....very few teaching jobs in Korea require that their employees learn Korean. |
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Illysook
Joined: 30 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 5:31 pm Post subject: |
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| I'd love to test out the typical apologist's skills in speaking Hangeul. The truth is that employment is a relationship and that communication needs to happen from both ends. This can be really difficult when the parties don't speak the same language either literally or figuratively. In many cases here, employers and employees are speaking different languages in as many ways as possible. Don't beat yourself up over it and don't get too heated up over it, otherwise it is likely to get worse. |
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iamthecheese86
Joined: 12 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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No need to get so off topic here. This topic isn't about who should speak what language. It's a topic about workplace difficulties that are perfectly legitimate.
I had no intention of being ethnocentric and am the last person to ever say "Everyone should just speak English!" I am making every attempt to learn some Korean, but as another poster said, they hire us specifically telling us we need know no Korean, and our boss purported to be a Korean-American who speaks fluent English. That is just plain untrue. All of his employees are English-speakers who don't speak Korean. I agree the onus is on him there. Of course elsewhere in Korea I'm not going to get annoyed when people can't speak very good English. In those situations I get annoyed that I can't speak very good Korean. So, no need to get so testy, and let's get back on topic here. |
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bobbybigfoot
Joined: 05 May 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: Some days make you want to rip your hair out |
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| Xylox wrote: |
| Wiltern wrote: |
| iamthecheese86 wrote: |
| ....because his English is crap. |
Maybe it should be a question of your Korean being crap. What country are you in? I was in Italy not long ago and met Italians whose english was 'crap', which made it harder for me. The nerve of them!
The sense of entitlement some Westerners in Korea exhibit is downright pathetic. You should have just said there's a language barrier. |
Ugh, they specifically recruit people who don't speak Korean. Its kind of like having a mine boss who barely knows anything about mining. Quit your crying douche. |
Hard to refute this. |
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nathanrutledge
Joined: 01 May 2008
Location: Marakesh
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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I moved into my apartment and found a used condom IN the bed (after they had supposedly cleaned).
The kids don't care about anything and walk all over me and my coworkers. Anytime I try to enforce a modicum of discipline in the classroom, I get a lecture from my coworkers about students "human rights" and how we cannot punish them, i.e. be late/stay late, confiscation of cell phones for the day, stand up if your sleeping.
My MS Office is all in Korean and its 07, which I have no experience with. I asked my coworker if she could get the tech guy to switch it over/install '03 for me FOUR TIMES, each time receiving an affirmative, yet it hasn't been done.
I asked in OCTOBER to schedule winter camp for the first week of February so I could use MY vacation and MY money to take a CELTA course. This was denied out of hand, the reason being winter camp had already been scheduled. I asked last week when we were doing winter camp - the response was "oh, we haven't even asked the kids if they want to do it yet."
I could go on and on and on...
I feel your pain brother. |
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machoman
Joined: 11 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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| nathanrutledge wrote: |
I moved into my apartment and found a used condom IN the bed (after they had supposedly cleaned).
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that's awesome. did you show your landlord? |
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nathanrutledge
Joined: 01 May 2008
Location: Marakesh
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| machoman wrote: |
| nathanrutledge wrote: |
I moved into my apartment and found a used condom IN the bed (after they had supposedly cleaned).
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that's awesome. did you show your landlord? |
Koreans love CSI. I bagged it and tagged it after photographing it. Then, without breaking the chain of custody, took it to my coworkers.
Seriously though, I DID bag it and THOUGHT about taking it to work. The old teacher had left it there and didn't really do ANYTHING to clean, even though they said they had it cleaned. Right... My coworkers really didn't care. That should have been the first sign to jump bail, as it were... |
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machoman
Joined: 11 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| nathanrutledge wrote: |
| machoman wrote: |
| nathanrutledge wrote: |
I moved into my apartment and found a used condom IN the bed (after they had supposedly cleaned).
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that's awesome. did you show your landlord? |
Koreans love CSI. I bagged it and tagged it after photographing it. Then, without breaking the chain of custody, took it to my coworkers.
Seriously though, I DID bag it and THOUGHT about taking it to work. The old teacher had left it there and didn't really do ANYTHING to clean, even though they said they had it cleaned. Right... My coworkers really didn't care. That should have been the first sign to jump bail, as it were... |
that seriously must've been intentional on the part of the old teacher. (assuming it was a male teacher) |
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creeper1
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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| nathanrutledge wrote: |
I moved into my apartment and found a used condom IN the bed (after they had supposedly cleaned).
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Looks like the waygook teacher before you was a party guy  .
He probably left it there for the Koreans as a courtesy.
How can you find a reason to blame your employer for something that was quite clearly your predecessor's fault? |
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