Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Dan The Chainsawman]

My day has been nothing but an endless string of annoyances.

First thing this morning I found it raining wiping out my planes for a walk around the lake we have here in Ilsan.

I went online to sooth my annoyed self with some chat with a friend or two. Both of the friends I wanted to natter with spent the next two hours complaining about how much their jobs in the USA suck. Worst, both of them whined at me for moving to Korea, as I am supposed to be in Alabama helping them out.

Went to school and had my favorite student walk up to me and address me as Fat Pig ten or so times.

Lost one of my hearing aids in the elevator, and the blasted thing managed to fall down into the crack between the elevator, and the landing, and it went bye bye.

All my classes pretty much decided to be spazzoids of the first order. Must have been some in the Gimchee last night, probably crystal meth.

Got home and took my second DVD player back to Carrefours and much to my suspicion they rightfully told me to piss off about a refund. I can't say I blame them on that but it still annoyed me. I was planning to get sloshed on the refund money.

I came home with the DVD player that does not work, and sat down to check my email. Nothing but endless moaning and groaning from various sources about my time here in Korea. Apparently I am living it up over here while my family who all makes ten times more than I do are living at the very doors of poverty.

Tried to lay down, and just when I shut my eyes I hear this wailing from eight floors down. This is a bit of a surprise remember I wear hearing aids so normally I do not hear these things. I look out the window, and I see a mob of people across the street doing what I think is midget wrestling/divorce court on the corner. Well they could be grown up, but from 8 floors up everyone looks like a midget to me.

I wish I could find some way to blame it all on Korea, but so far I have not managed to find any plausible reason to offload the burden of responsibility. I think I will celebrate with a bottle of Soju, and go join the midget wrestlers on the corner.


Oh btw .. somewhere in all that I forgot to put in something about a stubbed toe, having a kid grab ahold of my goatee and swinging on it like tarzan, and having a girl tell my won jon that I am a bad teacher because I won't let her sit next to her friend in class the same friend that my won jon has to holler at regularly for being a butthead in my class. Still I am bad teacher and I should let the kids sit together is what my won jon says.

Bleeeeeeh............ I am going to bed. Tommorrow will be better.

[captain kirk]

Ah, an opportunity to publicly vent bile and venom at last, haha.

The manager at our school is a failed car salesman. Actually, he was a champion car salesman. But he's not in Los Angeles doing that anymore, he's managing at the haggie. Working too many hours. Too much on his mind. Great at his job but no respect.

He put in his notice last week threatening to quit unless the bigboss, the owner, gave him an assistant. The bigboss doesn't want to do nothin' for nobody. He's man of steel stubborn Korean moneybags man. His mantra is 'take advantage' and he likes to humm to the tune of 'you're all my minions, baby, so I just gotta take advantage of ya, ya dig?'.

The bigboss wants good people to work long hours and forget about respect. Self-respect especially. Maybe this works for Koreans, but the manager is kyopo. That is he lived in Korea until he was 18, then left for L.A. for twenty years. Now he's back. His plan is to escape back to L.A. and reel in English teachers as a recruiter. He needs to work up a stake to get started, some capital. But first he has to slave as a minion. Before he can become puppetmaster recruiter man.

I heard last week that the bigboss wanted to fire me a month ago. This is apparently because any lost students is teacher's fault. But the manager talked him out of it explaining the expense of hiring someone else. Getting them a visa, place to live and so on. Everyone knew this but me. I've got such a thick skin from living in Korea that someone would have to stand with a bullhorn in my ear and say, 'I don't like you, you're fired' before I'd pay any attention to them. Which is good, haha.

The manager calls the bigboss, behind his back and to us staff, 'the kockroach', haha. So it's really hard to take anything seriously at this place. The manager thinks the owner is a kockroach. Ask the manager what it would take to make him happy and cheer up and he says, 'the bigboss must die'.

Kind of a zany work environment, don't you think? So I said to the manager give me a month's notice if the boss decides to really fire me. Meanwhile I'm sort of the 'unsatisfactory employee'. But considering the cast of characters and the lack of educational activity, this means what? Diddly.

There's another foreign teacher, first time in Korea, who is learning just how cut-throat and scuzzy the hagwon business is, how fickle and money-grubbing. No job security and all that. So she's dancing around being super-effective and sometimes doesn't sleep nights, insomniac, though I hope she has the sense enough to curtail that. Not worth worrying about.

It's kind of amusing, but is working in a hagwon the meaning of life? I'll leave it up to you to decide. Good luck! Put your college degree to work and mull this over.

[Dan The Chainsawman]

hogwan measure of my life... *beep* no.