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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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 Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 4:00 pm Post subject: Moving into Filth |
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One thing I do not understand, is how people can live in filth, much, grime and a high level of unsanitary conditions...and simply carry one.
I moved into this apartment and the teacher moving out, did not clean at all. The bathroom looks like a forest trail, old and stained pillows left behind, garbage everywhere....disgusting.
In fact, he moved in when someone else left and I don't think the person bothered to clean after the previous guy...who had a dog.
I just do not understand how people allow themselves to live in filth. It is bad enough that
...the apartment has no natural light
...does not have plug-ins in areas that make sense
...the bathroom is a disaster area due to not having a light fixture cover
and the washing machine needing a plug-in extension that spans across,
getting rather close to the shower
...walls that have not been cleaned in years
...a flop mat for a bed
...no wardrobe for clothes
Well, I know what I will be doing my holiday and it will take me that long to clean.
Rant over |
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EZE
Joined: 05 May 2012
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 4:36 pm Post subject: Re: Moving into Filth |
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Quit the job now. The condition of your apartment when you move in is the best indicator of how your school is going to treat you on everything else.
My first hagwon had me in two different apartments during my contract. They were both reasonably clean. I had to do some cleaning, but nothing major. It was a great hagwon overall. The pay was on time, the pay was accurate, they were good people, etc.
My second hagwon, the infamous chain Wonderland, moved me into an apartment that looked like this, with a slightly cleaner bathroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8RmWpwPiz4 The boss would outright steal portions of the pay, which was routinely late. She took money out of our paychecks for utility bills and would pocket the money instead of paying the bills, resulting in utility cutoffs. I was replacing a midnight runner, a co-worker later pulled a midnight runner, and two days later I pulled a midnight runner.
I'm currently at my third hagwon and the apartment was totally clean when I moved in. I'm in my third year because it's a great hagwon overall.
Do you work for Wonderland? |
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Quit the job now. The condition of your apartment when you move in is the best indicator of how your school is going to treat you on everything else.
My first hagwon had me in two different apartments during my contract. They were both reasonably clean. I had to do some cleaning, but nothing major. It was a great hagwon overall. The pay was on time, the pay was accurate, they were good people, etc.
My second hagwon, the infamous chain Wonderland, moved me into an apartment that looked like this, with a slightly cleaner bathroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8RmWpwPiz4 The boss would outright steal portions of the pay, which was routinely late. She took money out of our paychecks for utility bills and would pocket the money instead of paying the bills, resulting in utility cutoffs. I was replacing a midnight runner, a co-worker later pulled a midnight runner, and two days later I pulled a midnight runner.
I'm currently at my third hagwon and the apartment was totally clean when I moved in. I'm in my third year because it's a great hagwon overall.
Do you work for Wonderland? |
Wow...OK, I is not as bad as the place on youtube.
No, it is not a Wonderland (been there, done that...I feel your pain).
Interestingly enough, the school is, or seems to be, good. The guy I replaced was there two years and the one before him, the same. The contract is good and I have all the legal requirements.
The rub is, the school manager has not been to the apartment, much less, even knows where it is at. The actual owner, is in charge.
Once I get it cleaned up, I think it will be alright. Though, not having much sunlight is a bit depressing.
If it were not for the holiday, I would have simply hired two cleaning ladies to come in and take care of it.
However, there are some plus sides
I was left with a...
1. Couch (used an abused but doable)
2. Microwave
3. Toaster (for cooking...Nachos!!!)
4. TONS of dishes (which, I am washing ALL of them)
5. French press for coffee
6. Some sort of quick-wiz-whirp blender for smoothies
7. A/C
8. Huge desk with book shelf
9. Tools
As I was in the military, cleaning is not really an issue. I just would like to have had moved into a place that was ALREADY cleared.
But, the manager did not even come by to check it out before I moved in.
I think I will be having a polite chat with her come Thursday about this (unclogging the drain, obtaining proper light covers so I don't get electrocuted while taking a shower, getting some screens so I can open the windows without having to become a hornet/mogi hunter)
Ah well...could be worse. Though, the villa manager came by last night, as she saw my light on. She was a bit surprised when she saw all thrash I had gathered...
But again, I just don't understand how people can live in squalor and I have always cleaned up my living quarters before moving out...always. |
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Sesame
Joined: 16 Mar 2014
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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| To teach esl your life must be in a filthy state so it only fits to physically live in filth, too. |
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| To teach esl your life must be in a filthy state so it only fits to physically live in filth, too. |
Wow, almost made it to four replies before an a-hole response.
Well, I guess taking a long overdue break from academia and receiving an honorable discharge from the military DOES constitute a filthy life.
Thanks for setting me straight. |
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Adam Carolla
Joined: 26 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Sesame wrote: |
| To teach esl your life must be in a filthy state so it only fits to physically live in filth, too. |
Translation: I'm an a-hole, and you know what? I don't mind if people know it. |
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Translation: I'm an a-hole, and you know what? I don't mind if people know it. |
Ahhh...I see.
Well...back to the cleaning. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Hire a cleaning service. Max cost should be 200 bucks for serious disaster areas. 80-100 for standard thorough scrub downs. 40-60 for places that were pretty nice to begin with but you want them to get the dust out, scrub the bathroom and kitchen, and vacuum and mop everything. |
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Who's Your Daddy?
Joined: 30 May 2010
Location: Victoria, Canada.
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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Tell the boss the condition isn't acceptable and he needs to get it cleaned (and pay for it).
If he was a smart boss he'd have inspected it before giving the departing teacher their final pay. Then he would have told the teacher to clean it, or he'd deducting the cleaning womans fee from their final pay. [This is the reason for housing deposits.] |
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Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Go to Namdaemun Market in the basement and buy some Ajax. Unplug everything in the bathroom. Get a scrub brush and go to town cleaning. Buy a new pillow. Don't sleep on other people's stuff. Gross. Buy some Pine Sol, Palmalive Anti Bacterial Soap, etc (Underground Markets). Scrub yer place clean and keep it clean. You're right about filth. I knew of some folks that left garbage around. Mostly papers or empty wrappers. Strange. |
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 3:37 am Post subject: |
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Oh believe me fellas...I'm taking care of it.
Though, I'm not going to walk into work on Thursday with full battle rattle.
But...the manager and I will have a talk about it and hopefully she will not try and spin it off on me. THEN, we will have a problem.
No worries...either way, it is being handled.
But...for any newbies out there...make sure you see photos of the housing and make dam sure the place is clean, furnished and not a squatter hole.
I saw the housing before I moved in...I was "told" it would be cleaned up by the time I moved in.
phuck it...could always be worse...like, NOT having a home. |
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Chaparrastique
Joined: 01 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 5:52 am Post subject: |
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Its a Korean tradition to leave your apartment in a mess for the next person who moves in. Koreans have actually told me this.
Expats tend to follow the tendency. |
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Squire
Joined: 26 Sep 2010
Location: Jeollanam-do
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 6:44 am Post subject: |
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| I lived like that as a student. A dirty place to live seems horrible but if you live there and let it gradually get worse by degrees you don't really notice it. I imagine the process of getting fat is similar. |
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PureLuck
Joined: 06 Jun 2014
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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Yep, "living in filth" is pretty relative. I have a low standard of living myself and tend to let my living space get pretty cluttered and untidy when I don't have visitors. I tidy up about once a week but on the fourth or fifth day it can start to look a little slobbish. But whenever I see other people's places with their perfectly dusted surfaces and made beds, I can't help wondering why someone would invest all that time in making their homes more habitable when the cleanliness is so transitory.
This topic always reminds me of a passage from one of my favourite novels:
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I have never forgotten our first encounter. We knew each other then only as fellow lodgers whose rooms were adjoining ones. Then one evening I came home from business and to my astonishment found Haller seated on the landing between the first and second floors. He was sitting on the top step and he moved to one side to let me pass. I asked him if he was all right and offered to take him up to the top.
Haller looked at me and I could see that I had awoken him from a kind of trance. Slowly he began to smile his delightful sad smile that has so often filled my heart with pity. Then he invited me to sit beside him. I thanked him, but said it was not my custom to sit on the stairs at other people's doors.
"Ah, yes," he said, and smiled the more. "You're quite right. But wait a moment, for I really must tell you what it was made me sit here for a bit."
He pointed as he spoke to the entrance of the first floor flat, where a widow lived. In the little space with parquet flooring between the stairs, the window and the glazed front door there stood a tall cupboard of mahogany, with some old pewter on it, and in front of the cupboard on the floor there were two plants, an azalea and an araucaria, in large pots which stood on low stands. The plants looked very pretty and were always kept spotlessly neat and clean, as I had often noticed with pleasure.
"Look at this little vestibule," Haller went on, "with the araucaria and its wonderful smell. Many a time I can't go by without pausing a moment. At your aunt's too, there reigns a wonderful smell of order and extreme cleanliness, but this little place of the araucaria, why, it's so shiningly clean, so dusted and polished and scoured, so inviolably clean that it positively glitters. I always have to take a deep breath of it as I go by. Don't you smell it too, a fragrance given off by the odor of floor polish and a faint whiff of turpentine together with the mahogany and the washed leaves of the plants—the very essence of bourgeois cleanliness, of neatness and meticulousness, of duty and devotion shown in little things. I don't know who lives here, but behind that glazed door there must be a paradise of cleanliness and spotless mediocrity, of ordered ways, a touching and anxious devotion to life's little habits and tasks.
"Do not, please, think for a moment," he went on when I said nothing in reply, "that I speak with irony. My dear sir, I would not for the world laugh at the bourgeois life. It is true that I live myself in another world, and perhaps I could not endure to live a single day in a house with araucarias. But though I am a shabby old Steppenwolf, still I'm the son of a mother, and my mother too was a middle-class man's wife and raised plants and took care to have her house and home as clean and neat and tidy as ever she could make it. All that is brought back to me by this breath of turpentine and by the araucaria, and so I sit down here every now and again; and I look into this quiet little garden of order and rejoice that such things still are." |
That having been said, I don't approve of people leaving their mess to be cleaned up by others. That's just bad manners. People ought to have a little more shame than that. |
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trueblue
Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Yep, "living in filth" is pretty relative. I have a low standard of living myself and tend to let my living space get pretty cluttered and untidy when I don't have visitors. I tidy up about once a week but on the fourth or fifth day it can start to look a little slobbish. But whenever I see other people's places with their perfectly dusted surfaces and made beds, I can't help wondering why someone would invest all that time in making their homes more habitable when the cleanliness is so transitory. |
To each their own, no arguments with that.
Though, I believe in keeping things clean...making the bed, washing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, not letting mold set in, sweeping/moping the floors....let's just say, I keep the mentality of wondering what my mother would say if she walked in.
...I'm still cleaning. The black mold on the bathroom ceiling was tough. I think the bathroom itself will be a process.
Holiday fun....as noted, it could be worse. |
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