Korean Job Discussion Forums

BigBlackEquus · Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:13 pm Post subject: Hilarious face-saving story

Ok, so the Korean advisor/boss at my current school is all about "saving face." The school is a good place to work, minus this boss, who is a pain around contrac time.

Here is an example of his style:

My co-worker was not offered a chance to renew his contract. I was. My school assumed I would stay. I took another job. Now my school is getting desperate to find a new teacher, and realizes they made a big mistake in not hiring back my co-worker (he worked here for 2 years), and basically making him feel unwanted.

So how does our boss handle this one? You'd think the boss would need to kiss my co-worker's butt a bit, right? Wrong? The Korean solution? Attempt to create a sense of desperation/need for the job on behalf of my co-worker.

Rough paraphrase of the phone call from my boss to my co-worker:

Co-worker: Hello?
Boss: I need you to leave the apartment by February 7th.
Co-worker: WHAT? Ha! No way! My contract isn't up until February 26th! I'm not leaving until the contract is over!
Boss: If you sign another year, you can stay.
Co-worker: What?! Haha! Are you kidding? You didn't want me before. No thanks. I'll be leaving on February 26th, after the contract finishes....

Wrench · Joined: 07 Apr 2005

Hollywoodaction · Joined: 02 Jul 2004

That guy must have been a negotiator for North Korea.

BigBlackEquus · Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject:

The Koean co-workers don't like him.

His negotiating tactic is to come out and cut you down -- telling you why you aren't good enough for the last contract you had, much less accept any raise you propose.

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

It's like they're trying to ensure that their schools have the worst teachers they can get sometimes. All it would take is the guarantee of decent holiday time to get and keep experienced teachers.

jacl · Joined: 31 Oct 2005

LOL

Some of these "bosses" are like cartoon characters.

KumaraKitty · Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Location: Bucheon

My school just pulled something like this to save face today. My coworker of 3 months just lost her Grandfather. He died this morning and she was devestated at being away at this time. As I am head teacher, I took care of her this morning and assured her that I would go talk to the Director and have her shift covered for the day so she could grieve in privacy and be on the phone all day with her family.
I go in early, tell the Director this, and she reacts by demanding she comes in, then when I tell her she can't and we can cover the shifts, she disappears twice, and comes back with her husband to have a "meeting" with me. The husband talks in Korean, and she translates as they tell me that "unfortunately" I am no longer head teacher as of now, including a 300,000/month pay cut. Of course this had been in the works for SEVERAL months they claimed, and I was a disappointing Head Teacher but EXCELLENT friend and Native Speaker Teacher.
I am up for renewal after 2YEARS at this school, in only 2 months.
Tonight I think she realized she may have over reacted as she begged me to talk more about it tomorrow, but WTF??
She's upset that my teacher cannot come in for ONE day, and she decides to punish Me because I did my job? Now she's back pedalling and begging me to chat more..Good GOD!

jacl · Joined: 31 Oct 2005

BigBlackEquus · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 7:53 am Post subject:

As long as we're telling stories...

I'm working a camp at a non-public gov't school. It snows. They need to clear snow off of the football field for graduation, which is coming soon. So what does the dictatorial principal do? Has all of the teachers (Korean teachers) available SCOOP SNOW off of the field. IN HIGH HEELS, suits and dress shoes, no less! The whole friggin field was cleared by about 20 teachers using shovels and a board tied to a truck! They were out there scraping for at least an hour, that I know of. Likely longer. The principal barked orders in between warm-ups while they scooped. The next day, several teachers were sick, but still working.

That day, I happened to be teaching the word, "stingy." I had the students look out the window, and explained how stingy the principal was for having the teachers clear snow instead of paying to hire a truck with a blade to do it.

Old fat expat · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:28 pm Post subject:

HRM best practice and the Korean work environment are mutually exclusive.

At my hogwon the head teacher married just before winter camp and moved to a nearby city. At the last minute the director decided he needed his Korean teachers to work in the mornings. The head teacher explained to the director that the new schedule would require her to be away from home for over 15 hours. The director suggested she not live with her husband until after winter camp was over. WTF? "I'm sorry honey but my profit margin is more important than your honeymoon period".

To date 4 of the 5 Korean staff have left since I started work here. This should be a red flag for management. You would think.

It's as if hogwon owners think that maintaining the worker/servant hierarchy in as crude and explicit way is good for workplace moral. Confused

flint · Joined: 11 Apr 2004

Last Hagwon I was at in the last 8 months of my time there (I was there almost 3 years) no one was happy. The main cause of the displeasure was, surprise surprise, the Director and her husband. Their idea of finding out what the problems were and trying to resolve them was to tell all the Korean teachers they must be happy at all times. If anyone showed any negativity, at any time, they would be fired. Lots of fake smiles on the faces of the Korean teachers after that. Also a lot of muttered comments about the Director.

After calling in one of the foreign teachers and telling him he was a bad teacher, the Korean teachers didn't want to work with him, and related BS like that he received similar treatment. For some reason he wasn't smiling anymore, and didn't look happy. He was told that if he didn't appear happy he would be fired.

kermo · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 6:41 pm Post subject:

joe_doufu · Joined: 09 May 2005 Location: Elsewhere

There is a Happy Valley in Hong Kong. It's quite a nice place to live, actually.

Novernae · Joined: 02 Mar 2005

I love contract time mess up stories.

So my husband and I are the only foreign teachers in a long time who were planning on re-signing. They wanted everyone to sign on until the end of the semester, and we agreed happily, and raised them an extra year (love the coworkers, area, and apartment, and had found them potential replacements for the tachers leaving with MAs so they wouldn't need to risk more bad teachers). About a week ago (contract is up in 4 weeks, new contract not signed yet) they tell us that we have to mark journals. The school has decided that since we have 5 non-teaching hours a week, we can do all the journals. I run the numbers for them and this is how the conversation goes.

Boss: You have 5 free hours, mark these journals.
Me: But this is ten hours of work, according to how much time you say to spend on each journal.
Boss: Right, your number system is very good. You have the time now so mark the journals.
Me: But it's impossible.
Boss: That's OK, just try.
Me: but we have too much prep.
Boss: Cut down your prep.
Me: OK, give me the files for the books so I can make tests,
Boss: Sorry, can't do that, you might steal the books (which of course are all stolen themselves)
Boss: Oh, and here are two extra classes every week.

The worst part is that when we came this was a great school. We were really exctited about signing on again, but now we won't be. It wouldn't really be that good of a place to work anymore. The Korean teachers are all about to have breakdowns (they changed the system in January and have everyone working all day with no prep, because whatever idiot came up with the system also came up with an 'infalable' formula of how much extra work each teacher could do.)

kermo · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:23 pm Post subject:

I had one of those bosses who thought I had a) a time machine or b) willingness to do heaps of overtime for nothing.
I was expected to phone each of my students and chat with them for 5 minutes each. Some teachers had 20 students. I had 90. This means, of course, more journals and exams to mark too.
I did the math and showed them the time they were giving me versus the work they were giving me. I told them I was concerned. I want to do a good job, I said, but I feel like I'm being set up to fail. In order to do the work you've given me, I'm going to have to work outside of school hours. This presents us with a choice:
a) I work for free
b) You pay me for overtime
c) This work doesn't get done

I said that I wasn't okay with choice a, but I knew they weren't okay with choice b. That leaves us with choice c, and that's what I cheerfully did from then on.

By the way, to highlight the super-elite human resources these skills wielded by my boss, it was announced that although a measly $50 bonus had been extended to teachers with more than 70 students, it was henceforth being rescinded because it wasn't affecting attendance numbers. The outcome was a predictable decline in morale which they utterly failed to understand. Extra work = a little extra pay? Balderdash!