Korean Job Discussion Forums

[edwardcatflap]

[CentralCali]

[TheUrbanMyth]

One thing that should be noted here...many schools do NOT have an "official handler". Helping the foreigner is generally sloughed off on the youngest/best English speaker there. She (it seems to be generally a "she" in my experience) usually has no manual or anything like that...it's just dumped in her lap and she has to sort it out.

[Who's Your Daddy?]

[faeriehazel]

If a school provides housing, it's reasonable to expect that the place will be habitable when the teacher arrives. My mom used to work as a coordinator at a hakwon and I remember her griping about how some teachers would leave their place an absolute mess (like with half eaten food under the bed) and they'd have to pay the cleaning lady extra to deal with that crap before the next teacher moved in. When the hakwon was small and still growing, she and the hakwon owner would clean the apartments themselves.

Although - my mom did seem to go beyond the call of duty when it came to taking care of her teachers. I remember once she went to the doctor with one of the teachers just to hold his hand while he got a shot (he was terrified of needles).

[Smithington]

Update

So I see the "FT supervisor" in the teachers' room at lunch time on Monday. I ask her if she had received my email informing her that I had paid the bill but that my electicity had still been turned off. She says she didn't receive it. I ask her if she received my text message. She said she had not. I ask her if she had found her cell phone. She said she had. So clearly she was lying. Anyway, I tell her that the bill has been paid and I really need to have my electricity turned on. Knowing full well that I cannot speak Korean, she tells me to phone him. I remind her again that I don't speak Korean, and ask if she will phone him. She says, "No, I don't want the stress." I remind her that I have stress. I am without any electricity in my home. All the food in my refrigerator is ruined. She says she doesn't want to get involved. I'm thinking to myself, "Amy, you are involved. This situation developed because you didn't do your job. Is it really too much to ask that you take twenty seconds and call the guy and get my hot water and electricity back on? You have, after all, been assigned by the school to help me when difficulties arise. This is such a case. I haven't asked a thing of you in six months. All I'm asking is that you make a twenty second phone call. You're glued to your smart phone for half your waking day. You don't even have to break your routine. Just press a different button and utter a few words then go back to tweeting or whatever the hell you're doing." But knowing full well that a foreigner loses every such conversation in the Korean workplace, I simply sigh and turn back to the computer. Nothing good can come from continuing the conversation.

Five minutes later she gets up to leave. I say, "Amy, I have a question." (For some reason they always seem to be called Amy.) "If it's not the building manager's job to clean the building, whose job is it?" She says, "In Korea the tenants clean their own building." I tell her, politely and without showing any irritation, that I have lived in several apartments in Korea and that has never been the case. At the same time I'm thinking, "But if this situation is indeed different, and the tenants should clean this particular building, that's information you should have given me months ago. You've known that I had concerns about the building not being cleaned. That tidbit of information would have altered everything, my bills would have been paid, and I'd have electricity." But I say nothing. Then she says, "Besides the building is cleaned once a month." What? It's cleaned once a month? Which is it? Is it cleaned by the management or is it not? Do I need to go home this evening and buy a broom, mop, bucket and cleaning soap or will someone be along next week to do it? Rather than take that route I simply tell her that it has not been cleaned once a month. I have seen the same stains in the hallway for the last four months. She says, "I have to believe what he told me." I'm thinking, "No you don't. You choose to believe what he says, and you do so because he's Korean. Dismissing my word because it clashes with that of a Korean is just insulting. It's also stupid and lazy.) She adds that no other tenants have complained. Again, she's accepting his word on that. He would say that, after all, wouldn't he. And if he is actually correct about that, then that says something about the building and its tenants. Slum dwellers don't normally complain about living in a slum. People who spit in hallways aren't particularly fussy about the state of the building.

Anyway, I head home wondering how I'm going to deal with this situation. I walk through the door and hear the sound of the refrigerator running. I try the light switch and on turn the lights. My electricity is back on. No thanks to %&*@ Amy. This entire situation could have been prevented if she had taken two minutes away from her shopping network to do her job.

Have to go now. I have a class to teach with co-teacher Amy.

[Lucas]

[Smithington]

[Scorpion]

OP, you have to love the way they always do the 'double talk' thing when talking to waygookin. It is the tenants' job to clean the building. It's not their job to clean the building. The manager cleans the building once a month, but he doesn't do that because it's not his job. Also, I have to take his word that he does clean the building, but the reason he doesn't do it is because it's not his responsibility. It's the same game they play with intentionally-confusing contracts, and mind-boggling immigration rules. Give as much garbled, confusing and contradictory information to the foreigner as you can. Clarity is useful to them, so make sure they never see the first of it. I'm sure the Korean hogwan association offers courses on this very theme. Nice to hear that the public school representatives aren't far behind.

Korean awesomeness.

[jvalmer]

[Unposter]

I am not really surprised by what happened.

We can all talk about the ideal but that is moot, this is the reality of the situation. Your co-teacher is disengaging from you. And, it is probably because you treat her at worse like a servant and at best like a personal assistant. Either way, you have a damaged relationship and your situation will only get worse, not better.

You may want to talk to her and say something like it looks like we have gotten off on the wrong foot but let's try to find a way to make this work or you can just let this run its course but if you don't find a way to engage her, you are going to completely lose her IMHO.

And, I would definitely not totally blame her. You have contributed to this situation whether you want to accept that or not.

If you are interested, I have more to say on the subject but so far you don't really seem interested so this is all I have to say at this point. But, if you change your mind, I am more than willing to give more advice.

Good luck and I hope I am wrong and it all works out for the best.

[CentralCali]

"Amy" is a popular fake name for Korean girls because it's one of the shortest.

Nobody gives a hoot if the Korean teachers' contracts have housing, airfare, sick days, or relocation allowance nor does it matter what the Korean teacher's salary is. It simply does not matter what benefits are included in their contracts. What's at issue here is what her duties are and what the benefits in the foreign teacher's contracts are.

The OP is going about this all wrong. He's continuing to rely completely on a clearly incompetent and/or lazy individual to get something done. Nothing will get done. Take the issue up the chain of supervision and, for your own sanity, get another of the K English teachers to do the translation.

If all else fails--or if the situation is serious (as it certainly seems to be), call the Office of Education GET management office yourself.

[schwa]

Some public school main co-teachers are gems & some are duds. I've dealt with both types & everything in between. Life goes on. You adjust.

The OP, it seems to me, has boxed himself into a corner by having an extended tizzy over relatively minor stuff he could have far more efficiently just dealt with himself. Without the silly line-in-the-sand confrontationalism.

All schools dislike & tend to tune out nitpickers & arguers, which the OP's lengthy repetitive rants suggest he is.

[ThingsComeAround]

Wow- lots of Keyboard Warriors, cowards, and sycophants on this thread.
Moving into a new school, they provide your housing. Should it be clean? Absolutely. You would not put up with that BS home, and we pay a deposit to EPIK/the school to keep everything managed if problems arise, like the NET has to leave early.

I think the OP could have handled his 'handler' better, but she does seem to be incompetent, and indifferent. Why place the teacher in filthy housing then do nothing? It is her job to hire a cleaning woman with money that belongs to the SCHOOL which is given to them by EPIK, right? It wasn't done because she could treat herself to samgyupsal -OR- the principal decided he didn't really need to spend all of the English budget on the FT. The OP might not have considered that.

Where the OP went wrong was he stopped paying maintenance. I also had my apartment cleaned once a year, it was dingy but in a nice area. Maybe my building was lucky since we had an 'open hall' where it doubled as a balcony and bugs weren't that prevalent. I never stopped paying bills because that reflects poorly on ME. He also relied on an unreliable woman, who he knew was unreliable and got negative results. Why was he expecting a miracle? There are none in the Han

[ontheway]