Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JongnoGuru]

(Premise suggested by http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=53821&highlight= , Copyright (c) 2003-2006, Ya-ta Boy Productions)

We typically leave one job for another (or for the thrill of unemployment) because of mundane reasons. The contract was over and staying on wasn't an option. Better pay, better perks, better hours & conditions somewhere else. Didn't get along with the boss. New job's in a better location, it's handier. "Good career move", looks good on the resume. Going back to school, etc.

These reasons are all fine. All very sensible, reasonable, practical. But they're predictable, deadly boring, make bad cinema and nobody wants to hear those, least of all me.

Rather, tell us about the small, seemingly insignificant thing that pushed you over the edge, that you exploded over, that you blew all out of proportion, that a reasonably sane person wouldn't up and leave a job over, like you did -- unless they'd been driven to it by bigger & better reasons, as you were.

Simply put, what were your "last straws" -- not the biggest or heaviest straws. Ideally, these WILL NOT concern salary or hours, or even work per se. And they don't need to have made you quit that very day; they merely need to have been so galling and irksome as to ice the decision to leave for you.

Oh, one last requirement: Has to have been in Korea.

[Mashimaro]

I dislike children.. they are not small adults they are small satans

[tomato]

Mashimaro and I should have traded places.
I don't like teaching older kids and adults.
I found out the hard way that I can't teach a conversation class.
The job involved covering a page a day in a conversation textbook.
I just don't have the ability to spend the whole hour discussing questions like "What kind of movies do you like?" and "Do you like hot dogs?"

[JongnoGuru]

That's nice, guys. But where are the *beep* last straws in all this???


Okay, maybe I can put the ball in play with an example of my own.

I was working for a company, the honeymoon was hot & steamy, but this was long after we'd both cooled down. Started feeling like I was dragging myself to the office anymore. I hate that. It's worse than a hell-on-wheels job, because there's no built-in pain-for-reward mechanism. When you're just treading water is when that you start looking around and discovering things that annoy you, I guess. We were near the end of Year Two in this relationship, and contract renegotiations were a couple months away. Little things had started to bother me, but nothing serious enough to raise a fuss.

I came in one Monday morning to find everything from my office -- books, files, contents of my desk drawers, a potted plant, desk lamp, paintings, a bulletin board w/schedules & personal photos on it -- lying in the corridor outside the main office. (My own office was inside and against one wall of that main [open-plan] office.) Some of my things, like files and reports, were spilling onto the floor, and some had people's shoeprints on them.

These were things I had no intention of trashing, yet they were stuffed into two of those giant orange woven-polyester garbage bags -- the sturdy ones with the drawstring at the mouth, like we use for hauling away discarded building materials.

I stood there aghast. I couldn't believe they were firing me, but I didn't know what else it could possibly mean. They had their "spring cleaning" exercises one or twice a year, but those were miraculously announced a day or two ahead of time.

I went inside the main office and over to the girl who doubled as my unofficial secretary. I noticed the door to my office was closed, which it never was when I arrived. She's looking guilty/mysterious, and she stops me from going to my office. Everyone else is suspiciously too busy to greet me. We go back out into the hall and I hear the story.

Over the weekend they'd hired some older dude, a gyopo, a real coup as they saw it, and this was accompanied by much administrative footwork and fanfare. They simply "had no choice" but to give him my office.

Oh, and there was a flimsy pretense that I'd once asked for a better office, which was all the flimsier since they hadn't arranged a new one for me. No, the idea was, I'm to drag my garbage bag of belongings down to the far end of the conference room, or maybe the documents room, or under some kind soul's back porch until they sorted out where I'd set up shop next.

What angered me wasn't just how crassly and carelessly they treated me. But also knowing how difficult it was to get them to take quick & decisive action on anything of real, substantive, work-related importance to operations. That was always pulling teeth, that was moving mountains, that always delayed until forgotten. But when it's some shallow, meaningless, Korean-on-Korean ass-kissing display that does nobody any good (that old gyopo fart didn't even use the damn office his first week, he was busy looking for housing, meeting old friends, getting reacquainted with Seoul) well by God, in that case, we can't disrupt the Guru fast enough.

That day -- that Monday morning -- I desperately wanted to just leave the building and not return until ... I wasn't sure until when. But I couldn't, not until found somewhere to stow my things. I walked around the city all day long. I had a pager which I turned off. An hour in a coffee shop just sitting & thinking & wondering what to do next. An hour in a second coffee shop just sitting & thinking. An hour in a third just sitting.

That was my "last straw" there. I knew then that I wouldn't be staying another year, not after they made me feel like a dirty worm. (garbage-bagging my personal things???!!!... ) And I started putting feelers out for something new, starting looking at old offers I'd turned down in the past.

[anyway]

Sorry if you have read this before, but it bears repeating...

I was organizing a TESOL Certificate Program for a uni while doing the requisite freshman classes at my first job here. It involved creating a curriculum, choosing textbooks, recruiting the certificate students, recruiting a partner university in the states, and finally recruiting the director (with Phd) which the partner uni required. All that for a whopping $300 extra per month. What the hell I thought. I was Sisyphus in a former life.

After getting zero written instructions or directives from the director of the institute, I proceeded to do my darndest. Working plenty of extra hours, brain wracking, gut wrenching, writhing in a frenzy. After two months, I had to stage a sit down strike to get my extra c-notes. Not to mention reimbursed for some expenses I had covered, being the trusting soul I am.

I endured some very subtle condescension from the boss at first about my methods and "lack of positive attitude". He also gently criticized my lack of professionalism because I didn't create a email template which included my full title, school address, and telephone number at the bottom. His brow-beating got progressively worse as time wore on and he realized not many westerners wanted to do 5 month cert program. He even started having daily briefings to which I was not invited!

Early on we had long debate about whether to put numbers on the potential contract that he wanted to send the universities I had contacted about the proposal. I, as foreign expert (god bless chinese titles), said no way (!) because we barely established contact with them, let alone reached any kind of position for proposal. He just thought we could FedEx them a contract and they would see the dollar signs and fall all over themselves to get that DOUGH! Well, when nary a uni showed real interest, he deduced that it was because we didn't put the $$$ on the contract we shoved under their nose, requesting immediate action. Thus, I was the guilty party again.

We did finally get two universities interested - one was his contact from a NAFSA conference, the other was the result of my own cold-calling. Luckily, his contact had re-emailed because their first email was never "received" by the director. I knew of two other emails which he did not receive in his official uni account. When the director got the second email, he actually rang me at home on a Saturday to gloat because I had been very skeptical about getting a partner. I even brought in the Korean agent of TEFL International, whom the director scoffed at, calling them something like "small potatoes".

Soon after my uni contact expresses interest, he flies to the states last-minute (business class ticket was 4g) because by now his backside is to the fire to get this done. He was going to meet with his contact first, then with mine if his fell through. His negotiations with them were probably hampered by the fact that his staff had basically cut and paste that uni's LOGO for our own TESOL Program logo, just changing the name of the uni.
In the end, his contact came through and he never called the other uni back to tell them anything. (I know because she emailed me about 10 days later wondering if was going to visit or what).

SO (bear with me - we're closing in on the point) he arrives back in the land of the mourning to tell me that this partner requires that the TESOL program director and instructors have Phds!! BUT boss, i said, my contact only requires MAs. Yes, he said wisely, but they cost $20,000 more, and his eyes twinkled at the thought of his own cunning.

Now get this - he instructs me to place an ad for these people with a job description such as this "teach 15 hours a week and observe some practicums in the evening as well as office hours for 1.8 a month". I told him it was not possible to hire a western phd for that money. Sure, he said, plenty are out of work since 9/11. Sure.

Now, the climactic ending, in the end I had three people who interviewed for the job. The candidate the director wanted had a list of demands a mile long which began with twice the salary. The other two guys held somewhat questionable credentials. So my boss tried checking for all 3 fellows dissertations online on some university website. He couldn't find their dissertations. Therefore they didn't have Phds, he reasoned. Therefore, I didn't conduct the recruitment process properly. Therefore, I was demoted from the project for "unprofessionalism".

When informed of my errors and demotion, I was shaking with rage but managed to leave his office without raising my voice. Later, the secretary informed me that I might not be renewed. I needed to go and talk to the director and APOLOGIZE for whatever emotion I had shown. Wisely, I took along the head teacher as a witness. He told me that I had failed in almost aspect (except the curriculum) despite the 35 confirmed trainees (goal was 40) and the fact that I found a partner uni which would have only required MAs of the director/instructors.

Thus dropped the straw on my back. I thought he might actually try to make nice. I called him a liar and much more in a loud voice. I probably would have choked his fat neck if my colleague hadn't been there. I laid some smack down that he probably hadn't seen since grade school. Then I left and got the job I have now.

This same guy- the director - the guy who had his staff translate books on the Holocaust from English into Korean so he could put his name on it - the guy who told the secretary to lie to immigration about the TESOL program's use of trainees to teach freshman - the guy who let MAs teach in the program against contractual obligations - is now serving as a Fulbright Scholar in the states.

The program in question never did hire a single western Phd holder and is now being axed due to the sheer unfeasability of it (30 free foreigners per semester?) - or perhaps because the partner uni is pulling the plug because the Koreans never fulfilled contractual obligations.

Thanks for reading. The End.

[captain kirk]

Good story, Guru. You've got a good memory for details spinning your tales.

Don't think many people quit in Korean esl jobs. Immigration hates it and it makes it tough to get another job. Maybe you have to wait out the remainder of the one year visa by going 'on vacation' which, for months, is more like a siege (sure there is a beach and palms).

I think you'd get more answers if it was put to Korean bosses what was the last straw that made them fire the foreign teacher. With the number one answer being, 'someone else needed his/her job'(like your being moved out of office story) and 'it was month 11' (with severance due at month 12, very expensive and unpleasant so must be avoided, paying that. Anyway, it was only a carrot. Don't these foreign teachers have a sense of humor?).

There are truckloads of things about my current job at month ten that inspire me to quit. Top of the list is the boss, then the other foreign teacher's butt-smooching the boss so gaily. But I'd never quit. Immigration hates quitters.

[JongnoGuru]

It was reading Ya-ta's "I'm quitting if they don't change my lightbulb!" thread that got me listing the jobs I've left because of issues having nothing to do with money, work or my future career. I didn't think I had any such experiences, but no, I've actually had several. Three that I can remember:

1. being "dumpstered" (my previous post)

2. being jerked around over my vacation (not the number of days, but the specific departure/return dates )

3. being treated like a factory worker or a military conscript (and not just me, everyone was). The work itself wasn't unappealing, the pay was okay for those days, and the hours were... very rough. But with everyone working together it didn't seem as bad. Plus it kept me out of all kinds of woman trouble for a year. But I couldn't cope with everyone around me being barked at. Or the habit of a few senior executives -- former military types ran so much of Korea in those days -- to punctuate meetings by throwing or threatening to throw glass ashtrays at the heads of their subordinates. I only heard reports. And supposedly, flinching was considered bad for your promotion prospects. (okay, that's a joke... for the most part)

[mithridates]

I make the best paper airplane, and on a hot summer day I would fly them from the 5th floor and sometimes they would circle around for a full two minutes before dropping down. Once on a rainy day I threw one out and it just went up, up, up, up, and finally out of sight. That one was amazing. Another one on a rainy day kept on floating in a circle at the same height, until finally it had collected too much rain and suddenly just plummeted to the ground.

My paper airplanes are made in a different way that I've never seen anyone else make. They have a much larger wing area and they're held together with an ingenious contraption keeping them perfectly stable.

Too many of these paper airplanes got me in a bit of trouble. That didn't cause me to quit, but I started planning it because suddenly a lot of the fun had gone out of the job. The guy who told me to stop it was also a nice guy and close to the same age as me, and I didn't want to cause him any more stress as he was the nephew of the owner, and I thought perhaps it would be good to plan something else as the job was only planned to be somewhere around half a year anyway. Yes, this was Korea.

[nautilus]

Saving the life of idiot boy Kwak MaGee as he tried to jump out the window was perhaps my finest moment in the wonderful world of the hogwon. Too bad he then complained to mumsie of brutal manhandling and withdrew his vital parental funding from the school. I refused to apologise to the agonised 12 yr old for rescuing him from a splattered fate 4 stories below: and quitting was the only sane response to the parents fury.

[weatherman]

I was working for a provincial government here in Korea. Had my same gig lined up for the next year, but some Betty started crying about being moved to the teacher training facility. So they moved me instead. After being moved out of my normal cookie cutter apartment block style apartment (shared), I ended up in a shoe box where I had to put my clothes into a communal storage room shared by seven others and shared a kitchen by three others. Was in a city, now in the countryside as far as the eye could see, and had to walk 20 minutes just to take a bus to the nearest local city. At the dorm, the intercom system would go off at 6 and then at 7 to wake our sorry asses up. Lock down came at 10 pm and no socialization was allowed with the students(teachers) even within the building. Plus the walls were as thin as paper, so my director who slept in the room next to mine four days a week played his TV loud which over rid the sound of my TV even. I was losing sleep and perspective. On a field trip while on the bus coming back from the temple and mountain, some guy just kept on talking into the microphone about what seemed like nothing, Being stressed, tired and pissed off, I broke and told him on the bus to shut the *beep* up. He did and the whole ride back was in pure silence. I got stormed by the oldest student (teacher) for not knowing Korean culture and was reported to the head guy. I offered to resign that day to the director, he rejected my offer. Had new job, which I kept for six years, two months after this episode.

A very wonderful foreign teacher who as my sounding board and who I could talk to, help me to gain perspective immensely, and gave me strength. I am always thankful of him.

[Ya-ta Boy]

In gratitude for being promoted to corporate status, I'll play along.

I was working the hakwon split shift and feeling pretty fried. Going out for a beer or three after work finished at 9 didn't help. Boss man would leave a note telling the three foreign teachers there would be a meeting at 9:30 AM after the morning classes. So we would drag in to work at 6:30, teach the two morning classes and then sit around waiting for him to show. He would often show up late and sometimes not at all. Him cutting in to my nap time really got to me. After 6 months, I bailed.

[Captain Corea]

My coworker was fired by text message (on the phone). It didn't happen to me, but right then I knew where the line was.

[pest1]

[eamo]

[nautilus]