Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Davew125]

This blew me away today, i knew my boss was a penny pincher but this is ridiculous!!

in my hagwon for certain lessons you need to play a tape or a CD. When i arrived 7 months ago i wasnt given a tape player as there wasnt enough to go around (!!!), but two months ago someone left and i was given theirs - a tatty, battered, well used cassette player which promptly broke mid-lesson two weeks later. My Hagwon is now expecting me to foot the bill to get it fixed!!! Its only 12000 won, but i think that just highlights how tight they're being. and its the principle anyway....I refused to hand over any money but im sure they'll try and deduct it from my salary.

just wondering if anyone else has any stories of their experiences with Scrooge McHagwonowner......

[Hyeon Een]

Wow that is cheap. The only possible way I could imagine this situation coming about is you saying "[....] ~broke" and them assuming you broke it on purpose and charging you the $12 it costs to get a new one. A crazy cheap-ass misunderstanding problem. I think your boss is probably a cheap idiot.

I'd like to hear more super-cheap-bosses/admin stories though. They amuse me no end.

If the OP doesn't mind perhaps people could expand it to combination super-extravagant + super-cheap combo deals. (Such as a boss blowing 3m yesterday on a 회식 then not paying the staff because of the 'IMF' which happened in 1997 or something)

[traxxe]

A recent hire at my place had no dishes but the contract stated they would be provided.

They told him to go get some at the Emart and they would pay him back. He bought two forks, two mugs, two spoons and two plates all on sale.

They only would reimburse him for one of each. Cost, 5,000 won. So he got 2500 won back.

If he had bought one of each, the cheapest single non-set they had. The cost would have been more than buying two piece sets on sale.

[traxxe]

When I got my Alien Registration Card... they also charged me 2000 won for expedited handling. They took it out of my check.

I never asked for it to be expedited. They needed it for their purposes but billed me for it.

****

In my apartment there is mold. The mold gave me a respirtory infection. I got a note from the doctor (after giving him a picture of the mold) stating the mold was a health hazzard (it was everywhere) and needed to be removed.

The owner replied by wanting me to be sent to a doctor she trusted. She asked if I would consent to go. I said yes. She got me a taxi and sent an employee with me. She then made the employee sit in on the exam. The doctor said I had a respitory infection that was severe. I showed her the mold, she said it was likely the cause and wrote a note saying such.

The employee calls my boss. The boss says they will fix the mold (they never did) and then informs the employee she sent that she will only pay for the cab ride to the doctorl. Not the subway or ride back or the 3000 won co-payment to see the doctor she wanted me to see. She makes the employee she sent with me pay her own way home too.

[Hyeon Een]

[bassexpander]

Just cheap in general:

Our uni built us all nice new offices. They're really great, but they have ONE FREAKIN' OUTLET in each of the offices, which are 9 pyung in size.

We have extension cords running all over the place.

Pretty bad.

[Fresh Prince]

One hokwon spent all their money on a "school play," meant to impress the parents. They rented out an auditorium, paid for a DJ, spent tons of money on decorations, recording equipment, sent out letters to the community, etc. They spent way to much money so they couldn't afford the basics needed to keep the school running. For the rest of the month and part of the month after that, there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms. I ended up going out and buying some out of my own pocket after seeing the looks on the poor students' faces.

It was in the middle of the winter and freezing but the director wouldn't allow us to turn up the heat past a certain point, which was way too low. Everyone wore winter jackets including gloves at times, inside but it was still so cold that I turned on the heat anyway. The students would all clap and smile when I turned on the heat but when I left the class, the Korean teachers would dutifully turn off the heat and freeze for the rest of the day (most of them ended up getting sick). The director had a personal portable gas heater, on all the time.

The pipe leading from the sink to the drain in the floor, of the only bathroom in the school broke one day, halfway through the contract. The school didn't want to spend the money to fix it, so they just removed the sink from the bathroom. From then on until the end of the contract, there was no sink in the bathroom. If somone wanted to wash their hands, they had to go outside. The problem with that is, the students weren't allowed to go outside, and most were too short to even reach the sink outside.

There was a spigot on the floor of the bathroom though, so the students could use that. It was the spigot that the sink would have been hooked up to. When turned on, the water would flow at high speed all over the bathroom floor (wet bathroom-requiring the use of rubber slippers). The students would come back to class soaking wet because the flood of water would have soaked through the rubber slippers. They all had wet socks from that day on, for the rest of the year.

During this time, the school paid for a new phone to be installed for the students use, so that they wouldn't use the phone in the office to call their parents. They also bought new computers because the franchise inspector came one day and told them that they wouldn't allow them to keep the franchise name without a minimum of computers. The franchise inspector didn't care about the lack of a sink in the bathroom though.

[Riddzy]

A friend of mine a couple of years ago loved to tell me stories about her cheap boss.

Once she got a phone bill for, say, 8,060won. She gave the boss 8,000won. Every day for two weeks, the boss asked her for the 60 won. My friend kept "forgetting" to give it to her. Eventually the boss gave up and said she'd take it out of her next paycheck.

Then they went to McDonald's for a school trip. My friend and the two other foreign teachers were given a happy meal. No, not each: to share between the three of them. The boss had brought along a knife with her to divvy up the hamburger. They speculated that she always kept this knife for such occasions.

[Atavistic]

[mj roach]

there was this one teacher, eh...

irate beause the hakwan wouldn't reimburse him for the cost of a pen an a plastic folder

[matthews_world]

We had to herd cows on our family farm when I grew up but they weren't cheap.

[cbclark4]

[MantisBot]

That actually made me whimper...

Damn puns.

[ryouga013]

WARNING: MEGAPOST

There has never been toilet paper regularly placed in the stalls of the bathroom. There is no toilet paper dispenser.

Sinks? in the bathroom? hahaha that's an urban legend, like hagwons that pay bills on time. Our hagwon has a sink, it located up the stairs from the bathrooms, past the secretary desk, through a 50cm corridor and around the back of the top of the toilets. It does have two temperatures though. cold and ice.
---
Ok, so I ducked a recruiter over. The person who then hired me said that money they would have paid to the recruiter would be used for things like a welcoming party, things the kids needed, a new portable tape player, and things like 회식 dining out as a group etc. hahaha that money was pocketed, as to be expected by anyone with have a brain in their head (I was desperate when i took the job). Oh how he opened his bungalo out for the excuses to pour:

-Welcoming party for me: Tried to say that it was customary for the newbie to pay for their own party, and to make sure to set aside 200,000W to be able to pay for it, they had expensive tastes
-Welcoming party, take 2: not only was the party postponed 3months because he was too lazy to plan it, he planned it on the day I specifically told him not to a month earlier when i had plans to take a vacation outside of the country.
-Welcoming party take 3: It takes "part 3" because not only was it the welcoming party for me, it was the farewell party for one of the K teachers, end of the session party (as well as the session before that, it was kind of glazed over before that). So, given that it was supposed to be for two of us, we thought we'd have at least a little say in something... hahaha.... no ice cream for us in August, that's not their style... instead, let's go to a dive bar and only get soju, because they wouldn't pay for other things..
-
Kid's things needed: like TP that was never bought, and his excuse for not spending money on them "I buy everything, like copy paper for the teachers and wipe board markers. you think the teachers or the kids buy those?"
-
A few months later he brought one from home when the other players were dying and we we sometimes needed to each have one at the same time.
-
Dining out: Since that 3-in-1 dining out from before, we have not eaten out. A two new Korean teachers have come, one already gone and the other still hasn't seen a promised welcome.

-----

Director wouldn't pay the full price he's charging the parents for their books so when a new kid comes in mid session he will tell you 5minutes into the class "oh yeah, he's new, you needed to make copies for him/her" (of a teacher's book that is already a previous student's book)

No CDs for us... that would cost an additional 3,000W... even if he had plans to copy them anyways... good ol' tapes!...

Shared teacher books. There are three teachers using the same book. it's all good because they aren't teaching at the exact same time, right? PS: all the teachers are at various places in the books so those lovely tapes mentioned above must be cued at sometime, usually in class...

Quotes to live by

*Don't use the fans in the classroom, if you use them now the kids will get used to them before they really need them
*It's not 30degrees, you don't need the AC on (29C, 89% humidity that day)
*There aren't teachers in the office for more than 5minutes, we shouldn't use the AC here
*The kid's don't need the heaters, they have their jackets (and then he goes back to his big gas heater in his room)
*(first night in Korea, stocking the apartment) hey, don't worry, go crazy, get anything you want, it's on me (I got it deducted from my first paycheck... the store owner had it on a tab for the boss and then the owner started to ask me where the money was 6 weeks later)

-----

director's tips for saving money:

Have your girlfriend cal you, that way she can flip the bill
(I don't have a cell phone and house to cell calls are freaking expensive)

You need to diet anyways, just get one gimbap and drinks lots of water.

you get free lunch at the kindergarten downstairs, stuff yourself

[Cerriowen]

I got told off by my new school because I'd bought my own furnature, so they had to remove the crap they always give teachers. Actually first, they just left everything in the apartment, and put my stuff on top of it, and so when I showed up, there wasn't even walking space. I had to argue with them for an hour to get them to remove it.

The walls were covered with mold. The toilet leaked out on to the floor. The heat and hot water didn't work. The door doesn't close and lock properly...

I've been in this apartment since October, and they just got the heat fixed this week. The door still doesn't lock properly.

My boss said to me "You know, you've caused a lot of problems for us... You complain so much about your apartment."

**I should also mention that this isn't the apartment they moved me in to when I first arrived. First they had a semi-decent apartment, but then 2 months later the contract was up, so they moved me in to this piece of crap.