Swings and Roundabouts
Posted by Andrew | Filed under General, Gripes, Living in Korea, Uncategorized
So here’s the thing… the Air Force had their interview session at the end of last month, and decided not to re-sign me, and to some extent, I am actually sympathetic to their POV. However, that meant that I had to start looking for something new (which has evolved into a continuous process over the years; it merely becomes more intense at certain points).
As part of this, I approached my previous employer on the off-chance that they might reconsider and take me on (bearing in mind that they always seem to have some kind of retention problem). My old manager seems to want me back also, and she said that she would try to find some arrangement with the senior management…
Fast-forward to today, and I had already set up a couple of online conflabs with recruiters (one in the morning, one in the afternoon). The first was a pre-interview discussion with the recruiter before going to see a place in Daegu tomorrow afternoon (and I am going to do that, so off to bed early-ish tonight), and wouldn’t you believe it, Skype settings were out and we had to use the cell phone instead… the second was with another recruiter discussing what I was looking for, optimally, by which time I had sorted the sound out on Skype, but he didn’t have a camera…
Anyway, as this meant another brief jaunt to Daegu, I let my previous manager know about it. She in turn took this as a cue to contact Head Office in Gangnam re the “Andrew Situation” and apparently, the latter think that I should go to Seomyeon (literally around the corner from my old employer, YBM) in Busan for training at the end of the month before resuming duties in March.
Ahhh, but there will be a fly in the ointment: there was much bad feeling between myself and the upper echelons last time, firstly because I already had accommodation, was happy with it and did not like the size or state of what they were offering me, refused to move out and expected them to pay for it; and they did… because, of course, it was actually part of their contract. Secondly, however, they surveyed me regarding the perceived efficacy of their “training”, and I gave them rather low scores; I gather that they were not pleased… whatever.
This time, of course, the situation is very different. The accommodation offered by the Air Force last year was basically a single high-schooler’s room with a (very small and rather shitty) ensuite bathroom; I arrived with little less than a house full of furniture and a pile of books and other stuff to follow, and there was no way that it would all fit in, even though it might otherwise have been possible. Why? Essentially because each room was allocated fixed furniture (i.e. was intended to be permanently resident there until replaced) and this had to stay in the room. However, I had – only a short time before – purchased both a new (large) desk and a very new bed; and I was not prepared to part with any of my stuff, so I had to find a place in town. Luckily the Air Force has its own coaches, and one of these does regular rounds each day ferrying people to and from the town with a set route. That part wasn’t too bad, but it did cost me ₩400,000/month plus utilities. Hint: the AF doesn’t offer any financial assistance for external accommodation…
Now if I go back to Daegu, I will have the same problem again if I go back to my old employer; Chris, the Canadian who came up from Seomyeon to take my place, finishes his contract soon and you can bet he doesn’t have any of his own furniture. At the same time, another possible job in the centre of town would require me to find a new (unfurnished ) place thereabouts, which is unlikely to be as cheap (!) as its predecessor there. This situation arose because (in the course of my travels around the country) accommodation would alternately be unfurnished (and therefore a right pain) and then furnished, then unfurnished, etc., until I decided that I had to be obstinate and insist upon places being unfurnished to avoid forever having to buy stuff and then get rid of it, again and again, despite the fact that it was new because the next place did not have sufficient space.
This all got real old, real fast…
I hate to refuse an offered job which is actually what I want, but because of everything that has gone before, I am likely to blow a gasket tomorrow. It was because of all of this shit that I learned to say “no” in Korea; and so there is also a Plan D in the back of my mind which involves a D-10 visa and staying put in Jinju for a couple of extra months. Just sayin’…
The final point of attrition is this: this same company released me early last year (they said that I had agreed to it, but I hadn’t), so I lost my final month’s salary payment, my severance pay, had to pay another month’s rent and utilities on the old apartment because I couldn’t move out immediately, had to lay down five million deposit on the new place plus the first month’s rent on the new place, and of course, all of this went down at the most expensive time of year for moving, which cost me another 1.3 million… oh, and I also had to pay for my operation in the University Hospital… do the math (as they say). In addition, as they have proven quite incapable of recruiting sufficient students for a quorum for both their weekday and weekend courses, for five of the ten months I was actually working there, I only received half salary (as payments depend on lessons, right).
What kind of mood would you be in at this point?
There is a whole set of issues relating to the employment of foreigners to teach English here. Long-term readers (all two of you) will recall my previous remarks, long, long ago, of my co-worker whose (American) friend decided to leave because every employer here seemed to expect new employers to be twenty-something graduates with two suitcases and a drink problem, yada yada yada, and that is certainly demonstrated as fact by experience, but another is that many outfits consider bean-counting to be good business practice rather than efficient operation and profitability, resulting in the kind of race to the bottom more characteristic of the average App Store. That means that very often, the foreign teacher is accommodated in something rather reminiscent of an English shoe box, and if you are the kind of person who likes to study, learn by tinkering with shit and collect books and things, it’s not conducive to comfortable life. That’s the issue.
So tomorrow may be fraught. Frankly, I am not in the mood to do anything remotely involving “negotiation” and you can bet your last <insert financial units of choice here> that the management of the company have decided what they want, and that’s not what I want.
Watch this space…
The Next Day…
What a surprise! It seems that the company is now solvent and confident enough to offer the full assistance to the employee to help pay for their independent accommodation; the only snag being that the previous incumbent will still be there until he leaves, and therefore my manager will have to help me find a new place (and it will have to be unfurnished, of course…). This is because… he has to familiarise me with the materials, which have been simplified (and one probably altered completely). I will then have to go to the company’s offices in Busan, where he used to work (and come to think of it, so did I, but… different company) for some pertinent training.
Before all of that transpired, there was the appointment at the adult hagwon that had been arranged by a recruiter the previous day. I had located the place in a side road close to the Banwoldang subway station and went in but, oh dear… clearly a good place, but wanting me to do things that I don’t have either experience or interest in. Debate, IELTS, movies, no thank you, and I said so. Apparently they were expecting me to just walk in and sign up; but I didn’t, not least because I had to go to the other place possibly also to discuss signing up. Embarrassing; but this has been a regular occurrence with recruiter-mediated interviews over the last few years.
Something odd has happened in the recruitment process in Korea… I’ve been having more joy sometimes doing the whole thing myself. I kid you not. Increasingly I am being told about possible positions but being oversold in some way… I had already been thinking that despite efforts on my part to avoid it, people looking at my resume were seeing things that weren’t there, as if reading between the lines and filling in the white space with what they were looking for. This will never work, because it means they are making assumptions without discussing things properly with me beforehand, possibly also misrepresenting me to the customer, and wasting everyone’s time. Might I also suggest that the recruiter should have been asking about whether I had anything else under consideration (which I did).
So now I have to pack everything up again and get ready to go back to where I have been before… but hey, look on the bright side: you get the full salary and they give you a monthly wedge for your digs, and with that kind of remuneration, you can afford somewhere decent, even in Daegu.
Edited February 9th, 2019
