Korean Job Discussion Forums

[BoholDiver]

I have been thinking recently about shopkeepers in Korea. You know, if I owned a shop, I probably wouldn't have it in my neighbourhood, too close to home. If I went on a drunken bender one night, I could lose all my customers.

I have seen so many times a local shopkeeper do something that, in my opinion at least, makes me not want to patronize their business. Maybe it's careless, maybe Koreans don't care about that. I certainly do. And I would if I owned a business. Not only my behavior, but that of my workers too.

Let me give you a few examples.

1. When I used to live in HBC, I frequented Yongsan Fast Food a few times. Not sure if it's still there. One day I was walking past and the cook was out front having a smoke. Right as I was walking by, he horked a logie and missed me by like 2 inches. Needless to say, I never went there again, even though he apologized.

2. The supermarket downstairs from my building. One customer, who was drinking with the owner, called my wife fat. The owner smiled. We used to be good customers to him.

3. Another supermarket a few blocks from where I live. Sometimes they gets bowls of water and clean the inside. Then they throw the muddy water out on the street. In the winter too, making a sheet of ice right in front of their shop. I have never taken a header on it, but been close many times.

4. A local duck restaurant near my home. Yesterday the owner, an old flabby ajosshi came out of the restaurant, wearing a wifebeater and scratching himself. He then made an even more disgusting logie-horking sound twice and he spit his lung cancer all over the sidewalk.

5. Local medium-sized supermarket has a truck of produce parked out in front of the shop. The young workers are out there, blocking the sidewalk and blowing their cigarette smoke all over the produce. And now you want me to buy that???

Thoughts?

[djsmnc]

Well, at least all the stuff they do is outside the shop and not in!

[pkang0202]

[jvalmer]

The main reason these stores are there is to help you out in a jam when you run out of something. We all know the don't offer the best price, nor service. And late at night you don't want to hike 3 km down the road to the E-mart and search the endless rows of aisles. If I'm in need of something in a hurry, that mean spirited adjumma is where I will go to buy my case of beer.

[BoholDiver]

Pkang, at least don't do it near your school. Judging from your attitude on this board, I wouldn't want you teaching my kids.

Maybe some convenience stores think like this, but local restaurants should care. There are about 4378954897754 restaurants per square km and there's lots of competition.

My comment has no relation to price.

[bossface]

wow, do you wear a hazmat suit and a surgical mask everywhere you go?

guess what? lots of people smoke, and lots of people that unload trucks smoke, and some of that smoke might get on your pesticide-covered produce. if the produce is imported, trust me, the dock workers unloading it will likely smoke like chimneys as well.

[NYC_Gal]

Lots of people used to buy their produce from farmers' markets, where NOBODY smoked. Ah well... When in Korea, scrub your fruit and boil the life out of your veggies.

[sojusucks]

Pleasant customer service doesn't exist in Korea. The smartest thing to do is shop for low prices.

[BoholDiver]

I am not that naive. But you certainly don't have to display bad habits to the whole world.

Some restaurants have a closed kitchen and others, open. I bet open kitchen restaurants take more effort to clean, or at least appear to be clean. Customers matter.

[blackjack]

[Korussian]

[BoholDiver]

Good as compared to how much they're paid.

Korean waitresses make 4000 won an hour, no tips. in Canada (at least) $10 an hour or more, and if you don't tip them, they'll spit in your food.

My thread is not even about customer service persay. It's more about the image.

Imagine yourself as a Korean parent. You are looking for a kindergarten/preschool/hagwon for your child, depending on age. There are 2 in neighbouring buildings.

In front of one building, you see people who look like teachers all having a smoke, horsing around, wearing crappy clothes. In front of the other, you see 2 people that look like teachers having a civil conversation, wearing professional clothes. Any guess who I would sign with?

[coralreefer_1]

I understand what you are saying to some extent. Here is an example of my own.

I just happened to notice this a few weeks ago in an area I frequent. The area is all new with new Lotte apartments and the typical compliment of businesses that surround new apartments. All of the trees that are evenly spaced down the sidewalk are young but tall enough to provide shade) and nice, green and healthy except for one. The one that is brown and dead is the one that was unfortunate enough to be placed in front of what became a seafood restaurant, the type with the fish tanks on the outside.

So everyday, the owner gets new fish and fresh seawater for the tanks, at which he uses a tube to drain the seawater out, to drain all over the soil of that tree before it actually reaches the street and the drain. The water fills the square cut into the sidewalk which houses the soil, and fills it.

It would have been simple to add just another half meter to that tube so that the end could reach the street, but alas, that tree paid with its life because of it.

I think what the OP is touching on is more about how a customer perceives a business rather than how the business/employees perceive appearances to customers. I think in the west, people are a bit more uptight about issues such as have been in the thread so far.(at least from my experiences in the US) Back home I knew people who would not eat at a certain restaurant only because the manager happened to drive a Hummer, of course which is not representative of the quality of food/service/cleanliness, but nevertheless their personal attitudes to this or that affected their choice not to spend their money there.

[Louis VI]

[DorkothyParker]

When I worked at a bank we had to do this "Smoking Cinderella" seminar (gah, corporate...). It was called this because there was a story about a Cinderella (off duty at Disneyland or world) smoking behind a building and was seen by customers.
We had to change out some dead plants and clean the parking lot and a bunch of other stuff to make the branch look nice. Those who smoked had to go to the opposite side of the neighboring building to do so. I have no idea what effect (if any) this had.
I guess it makes sense depending on the business. For us, we were a professional place needing to look professional.
Although,the bank I actually had an account with was a national chain and was EXTREMELY clinical in their cleanliness with the appropriate fake plants and bland "art". I found hating having to go there because I felt prole and made of meat (if that makes sense). I personally don't mind *some* messiness because I think it's more human than an overly sanitized whitewashing.

Also everyone knows the best ethnic food restaurants (in America) are dingy "hole in the walls"