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So, my wife and I live in a new apartment complex on the outskirts of Seoul. It naturally has one of those community centers through which the complex is managed.

Since arriving, I have been stunned at the complete lack of planning about anything.

First, there were the offices that were set up in the communal area that started off with one type of occupant, and then a month later they were switched around, and then again. The maintenance centre has had three offices so far. Why do they change?...Good question.

Then, the recycling. They have little recycling centers all around the complex, yet it is obvious that no-one made any type of estimate how big they would have to be to accommodate the recycling of the occupants. Within a week, rubbish was piled up all the time, big piles of boxes a complete eyesore, it was a mess. Finally, they figured something was not working, and now we are not allowed to bring out recycling except for a 16 hour window from Wed night to Thursday morning. The recycling posts sit there, a waste of time.

Next: the gym. It started off at 10,000 won a month for users. A month later, they realised that wasn't enough to cover costs, so it went up to 20,000. Question: who did the cost analysis? Then they replaced the huge shower heads with smaller ones to save water. Question: who decided that huge shower heads were a great idea in the first place? Then they decided that just leaving the door open all the time meant that people could use the gym without paying if they waited for the person on reception to wander off. So they decided to put fingerprint locks on the gym door, made us all register to get in. No lie, two weeks later, the fingerprint locks were no longer in use, the victim of them not working very well and the elderly population hating them.

So then they moved out the ping pong tables from the gym to an office that used to have the maintenance guys (poor guys), because......oh, God I don't know.

Now they have fired all the gym workers and have closed the gym for 'renovations' six months after it opened. But the kicker: instead of sitting down and figuring out how to run it cost-effectively, the management have sent out a survey asking the occupants how much we should pay for the gym - NOT how often would you use it, or maybe how much would you pay maximum. No, they are actually asking us to decide on how to price it, even though we have no damn idea how much it costs to run, how many people use it etc. We actually have to choose between options like "All householders pay 2,000 won" ( way to cause overcrowding) to "Householders pay 5000, users 10,000 won" etc. (there are five options).

Bloody Mickey Mouse outfit.

[Zyzyfer]

Hah!

And I hate to break it to you, but if you can't spin this into some anti-Korea rant like it obviously deserves to be, this thread won't see much mileage. You have to whine about how old Koreans are useless at dealing with technology and how Koreans love living around garbage.

HTH

[liveinkorea316]

It's run by c-rap managers. There are many types of managers. C-rap ones. Ones that penny pinch. Ones that steal your money. Ones that are lazy. Ones that are racist. Ones that accuse you of stuff and harrass you. Ones that turn a blind eye. Corrupt ones.

I'm sure there are plenty of well run apartment complexes around Seoul. I am not supposing the majority of them are...by chance...was your apartment a "good" deal? Would explain the below average management.

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It's on the outskirts with bugger all around it, hence the apparently a good deal - we didn't buy it though, just chonsae and wolsae.

But the management is terrible. Can't wait to see how they balls up the gym.

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