Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wylde]

its hard to tell when they wanna practice or be friendly.. i let em go for it unless i am just too busy

[just because]

If I'm not in the mood I'll just speak Korean too them and say i don't speak English.
I'll tell them I'm from Spain or Argentina and I have no english, they usually leave me alone after that.

[rapier]

project a strong and slightly unfriendly demeanour. They'll leave you alone.
If you walk around with that cheshire cat smile, that friendly and approachable persona, you'll have to say "how are you" and I'm fine" several hundred times every day for every ajumma and her kiddies.
Don't be a friendly waegook, it doesn't pay.- unless you want to pick up a lot of privates.

[Ilsanman]

I answer them in Korean if I can.

[Homer]

Pretend you are a Russian sailor.

Worked for me on a few occasions....

[captain kirk]

This is a true story.
I just got a job and was in my first few days with the school trying me out while I lived in the teacher's apt; they really needed someone. And I was at one of the neighbourhood pcbangs one night. The place was huge, with many computers, and almost completely empty. I go off the the far corner where nobody is. I was doing something requiring concentration, like posting here, maybe. And three guys come along with a lot of bustle and gawking, parking themselves in the three computers to my right. The guy nearest starts talking to me in English asking where I'm from and so on, the usual questions while the two other guys are looking on, leaning forward in their chairs to see sideways the interaction, their friend practising his English with a live, 'captive' foreigner. Because I've been corralled into the corner. I tell him, bluntly, that I don't want to talk to him now. That I'm doing something and don't want to be interrupted. He persists, and I tell him the same thing again, looking serious and more right at him.
Well it turned out that one or more of these guys were adult students at the hagwon where I had started working. And they told the boss that I had been 'rude' to them. The boss asked me sternly was this true, did I really say to them that I was busy and didn't want to be bothered? At the time another foreign teacher was doing the adult class but when he left and I took over the class a couple guys went missing because they were the 'rejected ones' from the pcbang.