Korean Job Discussion Forums

[periwinkle]

I've worked with some super biatches when I was a flight attendant, but hands down, the worst person I've ever worked with was at my first hakwon in Incheon. We both arrived in Korea on the same day, but he became supervisor quite quickly, as he kissed the wonjang's ass like you wouldn't believe. We came to hate each other, as he hated Americans (I was the only one at my hakwon). Also, he didn't have any use for me, because I wasn't a means to get something (he used people). He was downright mean to the kids (sometimes the kids came late, and once I saw him getting in this terrified kid's face, yelling, "Why were you late?!"- my hakwon could've cared less if kids were late- he just wanted to show what a big man he was).

He began enforcing all these ridiculous rules just to control us. If we needed to use the bathroom during class, we had to stand at the door and call him to watch our class while we were gone. Then, he forbade the teachers to consume liquids in the classroom. After that, we weren't allowed to take a break during the kindy classes, which we normally did when the kids were having a snack (the bus ladies handled snack time)- we had to stay in the class with the kids, so no break.

My co-workers figured he had some dirt on the wonjang, so that was why he had the amount of control he did. I've never seen such a master manipulator. The first day he became supervisor, he had a meeting to bark all the new rules to us (he used to talk down to us as though we were children). Then he said he was taking the rest of the afternoon off because he had the flu (at this school, no matter how sick you were, you were to come in, even if just to lie half dead on the floor). Well, after work, myself and another co-worker saw him at Lotte mart shopping with some juicy girl. I told the Korean admin guy about it because I hated the tool so much. Then he was relentless in his treatment of me.

A new teacher was hired- one of the finest people I've ever met. Well, the new guy immediately figured out the situation, and he wouldn't take any shite. New guy was fired, and they wouldn't give him a release letter. Evil supervisor told the new guy (who was Maori) that he wouldn't get back to New Zealand on a hakwon ticket, and he have to row his canoe back.

Only thing I had to console myself with at the time was my belief (as a Christian) that I knew in my heart where this guy was going after his death. Really, he was the most evil individual I've ever met.

[Dan The Chainsawman]

In all fairness I have probably given people my share of headaches in one situation or another. However, I have gotten some absolute migraines from some real idiotic people. Most of them I have met when I was working as a Wilderness Youth Counselor.

Two people immediately spring to mind the first was a well meaning young man who I actually thought was a pretty interesting fellow despite his inability to control 12 year olds. I was the lead counselor of this group of hyper active little spazoids who I loved to death and by surviving 9 straight months of insane hell I had somehow either won their trust or frightened them all into submission. Either way after 9 months I finally had the group of them under control enough to where we would accomplish routine tasks, and have a good time.

It was about then when they hired me a new cocounselor as the rest of mine had all quit citing various excuses like, "Those kids are total animals." Or my favorite, "That counselor (me) is worse than the kids!" I think that situation was over me insisting that we as counselors make our own beds in the cabin rather than having a kid do it for us. Over time they had effectively ran off all of my cocounselors and left me alone with the group until the hired a replacement. This new fellow was not all that bad and would probably had made a descent counselor had he grown a spine, and actually gone through puberty so that his voice did not sound like a frightened little mouse.

My group immediately took a liking to this new chap. They liked to make him cry, throw things at him, punch him, kick him, one of them pissed on his leg at the urinal, all sorts of lovely things. Now this is all the stuff I went through with the little twerps and somehow survived to get them to respect/fear me enough so that I could safely take a pee without feeling a warm trickle down the outside of my leg. This new fellow could not cope with them in anyway shape or form. I tried to help him out in everyway possible, but he just could not pull his head out of his butt.

I would get all the hard work down with the group by working them like animals for three days straight. We would have all our campus chores done, and our campsite would be a picture of perfection. I would take 2 days off and come back to find burn marks on one of the buildings and my new cocounselor in the supervisors office sobbing.

I can't say I hated the guy, but I did seriously encourage him to go back to college to get his masters degree in whatever he was doing. I think it was theology because one of his biggest hang ups was when the kids said god damn it, or jesus christ. I remember one day they were all lined up and he was preaching at them. I walked up to witness one of the kids telling him in no uncertain terms to suck his bleepity blank. Now had I known the whole thing started over the kid saying god damn it, I would have never hollered, "God damn it get your ass in line boy!"


The next person I still despise to this day. This is one of those supervisors that left me feeling totally exhausted just for trying to talk to her. She was a stuck up *beep* of a woman who seemed to think that no one else but her could run this group of kids I had inheritated from her. She regularly berated me in front of the kids. She regularly wrote me up for dorky crap like reading in our meeting even though I was reading before the meeting and no one had announced that it had started yet.

My favorite was she tried to get me put on suspension because I had restrained to many kids one day. Now I hated restraining kids but my boys must have loved it. They used to do everything they could to get themselves put in a restraint. So Miss fussy butt wanders down to the group and pulls two kids out to question them about a specific restraint that was without question the worst mess I have ever had to perform. The conversation that I overheard from around the corner goes like this(more or less):

Miss fussy butt: Is Mr. ####### using proper proceedures to restrain you kids?

Kid #1: Not really but it is kind of hard to do that.

Kid #2: Yeah it is way messed up Miss fussy butt you should help him out more.

Miss fussy butt: What is going on why is he not following proceedure?

Kid #1: Well It was kind of hard to at the time he was sort of busy.

Kid #2: Yeah he was dodging rocks.

Miss Fussy Butt: What do you mean dodging rocks?

Kid #1: Well he restrained Kid #2 for throwing rocks at me, and I was busy throwing rocks at him. Mr. ###### was then busy restraining #2 and trying not to get hit by my rocks at the same time.

Kid #2: says to #1, "You !$#%#$%@#$"

Miss fussy butt: Hey now watch your language!

Later after having restrained both the kids right in front of miss fussy butt who tried to do it herself but got rolled like drunk sailor by these two boys walked off in a huff as I was rolling around in the mud restraining two boys at once.

She even tried to mess with my evaluations, and all sorts of stuff. Needless to say when she finally quit I did a little victory dance and forgot all about her.

[Zyzyfer]

Maybe I'm lucky, but I haven't really ever worked with anyone who got on my nerves at work. The worst I've had is a worker/roommate who was impressively messy, and another coworker who pretty much hated my guts, but that's about it. Back home, I got along with most everyone at a job.

Actually, I forgot about Korean coworkers. When I was at the middle school, there were two teachers there who despised me, and I wasn't very fond of them, either. They were snooty twats, though.

[Beej]

Andrew Mayer. Anyone with me on that one?

[peppermint]

In Korea- fairly sure I worked with the poster known as spliff
( not him, just his avatar)

but the real winners came from a summer job I had in university. I was working as a security guard at the central sorting plant for Canada post that year, and that place was freak central.

The people that deliver your mail are nice, normal folks for the most part- they get to see daylight sometimes. The people that sort your mail, on the other hand, are the reason the phrase "going postal" came into existence. That building was wallpapered with newsclippings of shooting rampages and notices about how to apply for stress leave.

Apparently they were necesary, because one guy spent most of his days sitting in the lunch room, with the lights off in there. Everytime anyone would walk past, he'd shout " Be careful! THEY'RE WATCHING YOU!!!!!!!!!!! I wonder what he'd do if he knew I'd been the one operating the security cameras?

Then there was Dmitri, one of the other security guards. He was an older guy who'd emmigrated from Guyana a few years before. He'd been highly placed in the government there in the 80s, before the coup. That's what he told me as he was adding more whiskey to his coffee. He was actually a pretty decent guy all the same.

There were lots more, the guy who got busted stealing Readers digest condensed books, the peoople who thought it would be fun to burn an effigy of the premier one day before work . .

[Real Reality]

[JongnoGuru]

That guy Peri was talking about -- that was you, wasn't it? Incheon? A hagwon? A whole bunch of years ago? No?

[Hater Depot]

In Korea -- without question, Mrs. Kim. Everyone in the school hated her. She was extremely mean to her kids. I went to class one day to find her screaming at one kid in Korean, reducing her to tears; after about 10 minutes of this she noticed me and told me to leave. She could barely form a single coherent sentence in English, and when she did come to class she was either so frightening that I couldn't teach or she was utterly useless, eventually she started using the computers to shop for new bedsheets. She got sent to another school and claimed she was going to study English in America for a few months.

In America -- oh Lord. The last year I worked preschool, the lead teacher of the fifth graders was a total idiot and utterly incompetent. If I'd met him abroad he would be on the freaky waegooks thread right now. Conversations with him consisted of him telling the same ridiculous lies about his past over and over (he was a 3rd degree black belt; his ex-girlfriend had turned the police against him but he still carried around a grainy photo of her); if you tried to steer the conversation in a different direction his inability to comperehend anything else became painfully obvious. Within the first week his co-teacher had to save a child from drowning in the river. His sheer stupidity became legendary around the school.

[joe_doufu]

I know I've had bad co-workers but honestly can't remember their offenses. I guess I've blocked out those memories.

Or maybe I'm just a slacker who's always found a way not to have to work (e.g. graduate school)

[cruisemonkey]

joe baby... being the Prof's slave and a TA are work (but you get to meet cute undergrad chicks who'll hang on you're every word... among other things).

[joe_doufu]

[Bulsajo]

Poll needs another option: "other" or "none of the above":

A lazy s.o.b. from Ecuador named Galo who would stand around all day with his hands in his pants, fondling his marble sack- seriously.
How can do dredge a salmon spawing bed with your hands in your pants?
That's right, you can't.
S.o.b. probably sits around in his hacienda all day leering at all the campesinas.
(so much for fostering cross-cultural awareness...)

[Grotto]

The black biatch from hell known as 'Cheryl'.

A wannabe whatever the hell you call it...born middle classed but oh so wanted to be a ghetto biatch. Did all of the stereotypical things 'black' people do on TV.
Taught her students E-bonics because she thought it was funny.
Got drunk daily and slept with a puke bucket by her bed as she usually got so wasted she would puke...but couldnt stumble to the washroom in time.
Played ghetto rap-crap on her stereo at full blast
Was the most negative person I have ever met...a constant babble about how she hated it here...how anyone(other than her of course) was a loser who couldnt find a job back home.
Swore that she would never return to Korea.

Then returned a year later because she couldnt find a job back in the states

[just because]

In short...worked here...

Enough said as he really was a psycho who was missing a screw

[Ya-ta Boy]

I have several nominees to select from, but the uncontested winner is the NotAmerican female who poisoned the office with her presence for a year. The one who chanted and stomped on the floor keeping the people downstairs and upstairs awake (we all lived in the same building). The one who made a two-day issue out of misplacing her purse (it was our fault). Details in the freakiest way-gook thread.