Absenteeism
*sigh*....
****SIGH****
Anyway, that kind of is a good description for how I've felt recently. As you can probably tell from the total and utter lack of e-mails and blog updates, I have been completely exhausted. I thought I could do it, but I just can't take it anymore. The school's schedule is just too rough on me, and I have run out of steam.
Basically, I wake up at 5:45 every morning, get ready, go to work, work until 1:00, work on other things in the afternoon, then return to work at 6:00 and work until 9:40, at which point I go home, go to bed, and repeat.
On top of that, I am completely frustrated with the complete lack of sense on the part of the school. Coming back to Korea this year, I thought I was well prepared for the lack of infrastructure, management, time urgency, and common sense, but really, I was fooling myself. You never really get used to it. It seems like every other day, I end up shaking my head over some stupid little detail that could easily be solved in a reasonable way, but that ends up being something ridiculously unreasonable. Bobbi, my coworker, talked before about how everything in life is a matter of economics, and now I can really see how she is totally right. The smartest people in life really can identify what they are trading for what, and make deals that are worth it, but the unhappy people in life don't realize what they are trading for what. Over the last 6 months, I have come to realize that I've been trading all of my free time, my health, and my happiness for a lump of cash, and frankly, that lump is looking much too small these days. So, I decided last month that it needed to change or I was outta here.
Originally, I asked a simple request to my boss - could she work the schedule a bit so that I could have more than 8 hours between my night and morning shifts (so I could get some more sleep at night)... after all, she was able to manage it already for Bobbi, who doesn't work early early mornings. There was obviously some sort of miscommunication going on because my manager (despite speaking nearly perfect English) misconstrued "rearrange" to mean "eliminate". So, the deal I was offered was to have 30% of my hours eliminated and make 45% of my original salary. Now you don't really need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out... unless you use Korean math. Anyway, my response? No thanks.
On top of that, I haven't been too impressed with the way that the school operates... more specifically, how my medical insurance came 4 months after my starting date, how I was asked to work illegally for 2 months without a visa, how the school fakes actual salaries to save money, how it clumps housing into teachers' salaries for some sort of strange reason (I think it has something to do with putting teachers' salaries into a higher tax bracket), how it tries to move teachers from apartment to apartment to save money, how I asked for some sort of change to my schedule because I was miserable all the time and in a month nothing happened, how I was asked to work a month LONGER than the 30-day-notice that I had given to the school as a "favour", and how I was asked to look for my own replacement as a "favour", despite the argument I had to have just to get my visa release letter, which the school has no reason to withhold, and how the school conveniently "didn't know" about the law that states that all employees must get pension, and so on and so forth. There are other reasons as well, but I'm starting to get frothy at the mouth just listing these few.
By the way, my manager just called me a second ago to tell me she had rearranged the time of one of my classes this month so that "I could have a longer break in the middle of the day"... without asking me first which I would prefer... which means that she's probably concealing the real reason for switching the class time and trying to pass it off as her being generous (she told me I should thank her). We'll find out tonight from my student the real reason for changing the class time... This kind of blatantly obvious disguised motive happens all the time - for instance, when the manager of the Indian restaurant downstairs invited everyone at my school to a free lunch (to make the restaurant look full on the day of a news story shoot), and our manager "invited" us all to this lunch while failing to mention that it the restaurant itself that was footing the bill (I alone knew about the real state of affairs because I got the invitation from the manager the night before who told me to pass on the message).
Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm not going to be working at my school anymore from April on. I'm going to find a school with better hours and I'm going to be much much happier. The whole process has been a real learning experience for me, so I'm really glad that I went through it. I think that I'm more able to say "no" to ridiculous requests and point out exactly how the person asking me to do that is being ridiculous. DESPITE circular logic, to boot! :-)
So, I'd like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to everyone out there for being so out-of-touch for the last 5 months. I will be more in touch come April. I promise.
Thanks for reading over my rant.
Before I end this post, let me clarify something... working in Korea is not a bad thing - after all, I came back for a second helping despite these things... but make sure that if you do come to Korea, expect gross illogic, sneaky practices, and just be strong and look out for yourself. With no solid and reliable infrastructure in a country (ANY country), this sort of thing happens. Korea is a beautiful country with great food, great people, and a great culture. It's just that hagwons (private institutes) are not quite up-to-speed in terms of ethical workplace practices, and often tend to fall into deceptive practices. It's something that I'm trying to change a little bit here and there - for instance, the school has agreed to give pension to its employees after I made a big stink about it all. I hope they hold to that and it comes into effect after I'm gone. There are friends who are still there, so they should see its effects.
Well, it's about time I got to work. Yay work.
"...just focus on the goal... focus on the goal... don't look down... don't look down..."
Cheers
****SIGH****
Anyway, that kind of is a good description for how I've felt recently. As you can probably tell from the total and utter lack of e-mails and blog updates, I have been completely exhausted. I thought I could do it, but I just can't take it anymore. The school's schedule is just too rough on me, and I have run out of steam.
Basically, I wake up at 5:45 every morning, get ready, go to work, work until 1:00, work on other things in the afternoon, then return to work at 6:00 and work until 9:40, at which point I go home, go to bed, and repeat.
On top of that, I am completely frustrated with the complete lack of sense on the part of the school. Coming back to Korea this year, I thought I was well prepared for the lack of infrastructure, management, time urgency, and common sense, but really, I was fooling myself. You never really get used to it. It seems like every other day, I end up shaking my head over some stupid little detail that could easily be solved in a reasonable way, but that ends up being something ridiculously unreasonable. Bobbi, my coworker, talked before about how everything in life is a matter of economics, and now I can really see how she is totally right. The smartest people in life really can identify what they are trading for what, and make deals that are worth it, but the unhappy people in life don't realize what they are trading for what. Over the last 6 months, I have come to realize that I've been trading all of my free time, my health, and my happiness for a lump of cash, and frankly, that lump is looking much too small these days. So, I decided last month that it needed to change or I was outta here.
Originally, I asked a simple request to my boss - could she work the schedule a bit so that I could have more than 8 hours between my night and morning shifts (so I could get some more sleep at night)... after all, she was able to manage it already for Bobbi, who doesn't work early early mornings. There was obviously some sort of miscommunication going on because my manager (despite speaking nearly perfect English) misconstrued "rearrange" to mean "eliminate". So, the deal I was offered was to have 30% of my hours eliminated and make 45% of my original salary. Now you don't really need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out... unless you use Korean math. Anyway, my response? No thanks.
On top of that, I haven't been too impressed with the way that the school operates... more specifically, how my medical insurance came 4 months after my starting date, how I was asked to work illegally for 2 months without a visa, how the school fakes actual salaries to save money, how it clumps housing into teachers' salaries for some sort of strange reason (I think it has something to do with putting teachers' salaries into a higher tax bracket), how it tries to move teachers from apartment to apartment to save money, how I asked for some sort of change to my schedule because I was miserable all the time and in a month nothing happened, how I was asked to work a month LONGER than the 30-day-notice that I had given to the school as a "favour", and how I was asked to look for my own replacement as a "favour", despite the argument I had to have just to get my visa release letter, which the school has no reason to withhold, and how the school conveniently "didn't know" about the law that states that all employees must get pension, and so on and so forth. There are other reasons as well, but I'm starting to get frothy at the mouth just listing these few.
By the way, my manager just called me a second ago to tell me she had rearranged the time of one of my classes this month so that "I could have a longer break in the middle of the day"... without asking me first which I would prefer... which means that she's probably concealing the real reason for switching the class time and trying to pass it off as her being generous (she told me I should thank her). We'll find out tonight from my student the real reason for changing the class time... This kind of blatantly obvious disguised motive happens all the time - for instance, when the manager of the Indian restaurant downstairs invited everyone at my school to a free lunch (to make the restaurant look full on the day of a news story shoot), and our manager "invited" us all to this lunch while failing to mention that it the restaurant itself that was footing the bill (I alone knew about the real state of affairs because I got the invitation from the manager the night before who told me to pass on the message).
Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm not going to be working at my school anymore from April on. I'm going to find a school with better hours and I'm going to be much much happier. The whole process has been a real learning experience for me, so I'm really glad that I went through it. I think that I'm more able to say "no" to ridiculous requests and point out exactly how the person asking me to do that is being ridiculous. DESPITE circular logic, to boot! :-)
So, I'd like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to everyone out there for being so out-of-touch for the last 5 months. I will be more in touch come April. I promise.
Thanks for reading over my rant.
Before I end this post, let me clarify something... working in Korea is not a bad thing - after all, I came back for a second helping despite these things... but make sure that if you do come to Korea, expect gross illogic, sneaky practices, and just be strong and look out for yourself. With no solid and reliable infrastructure in a country (ANY country), this sort of thing happens. Korea is a beautiful country with great food, great people, and a great culture. It's just that hagwons (private institutes) are not quite up-to-speed in terms of ethical workplace practices, and often tend to fall into deceptive practices. It's something that I'm trying to change a little bit here and there - for instance, the school has agreed to give pension to its employees after I made a big stink about it all. I hope they hold to that and it comes into effect after I'm gone. There are friends who are still there, so they should see its effects.
Well, it's about time I got to work. Yay work.
"...just focus on the goal... focus on the goal... don't look down... don't look down..."
Cheers
posted by Ben Norris at 12:02 AM
2 Comments:
I'm sorry to hear about these problems, Ben. I hope you will publically post the name of your hagwon at some point in the future, and will also alert any relevant recruiting companies. Please be careful in how you quit: the school is in the wrong, but you're the foreigner subject to immigration. Good luck!
Heya Nathan. Thanks for your comment. I am looking out for myself. I know that I am a foreigner and I get screwed in certain situations... but I know that despite being screwed, the school wouldn't want to be fined the huge sum of money (usually starting at 10,000,000 won) they would have to pay if I reported them to immigration, etc. In some cases, schools that are reported need to shut down for 3 months, which in this business means the death of the hagwon.
At the moment I have no plans of reporting my hagwon because in general I think they are just incompetant and mismanaged, but not necessarily malicious. Besides, they are supposedly changing their pension policy, which means they might actually care... it remains to be seen.
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