::A Geek in Korea::

My Director’s taken to the warpath about the meal’s provided by the school. She posted a notification last week alerting the staff that anyone that ordered food that doesn’t get eaten will be forced to reimburse the school. Everyone sort of scoffed at that idea, because if you paid for the meal you didn’t eat, you should just opt out of the program entirely and just eat outside the school every day. That’s more expensive and annoying, but at least you aren’t paying for food you aren’t eating.

My director cornered my foreign coworker today and asked him, “Do you know who skipped their meal yesterday?! One of the lunch box meals went uneaten! Who was it?!” Of course my coworker didn’t know. All the teachers on the teaching staff have better things to do with their time than keep track of who has eaten their meals.

He passed on the message to me as a bit of a warning, “Yes, she’s actually serious about enforcing that little rule she made.” For my foreign coworker’s part, he’s opted out of several days of the program where he doesn’t have a break during his schedule, and instead he goes home immediately after work to cook for himself instead of being forced to stay at work a few extra hours like the Director asked. This is entirely reasonable, in my opinion.

I had eaten my meal yesterday, so I wasn’t in any danger from the Director. During my lunch break, several other teachers, and one of the secretaries eat with me. I mentioned the dire warning from our coworker to them. One of the Korean teachers fessed up to skipping the meal. She said she didn’t eat at work, and that she hadn’t told the director to cancel the meal earlier. She had wasted the food! I don’t know if she had done this to force the issue, or it had slipped her mind.

We all talked about how the whole “pay for uneaten, sometimes crappy food” thing was turning into a bit of an issue with the teaching staff. The Korean coworkers all said that it was giving them a very negative impression about the Director. “I thought she was a generous woman, but I think she’s kind of cheap the more I know her. This gives me a lot of stess. I feel like I must work even when I’m eating my dinner. It’s so ridiculous.”

I just laughed. I’m the only person that’s worked at the school more than a year on the staff. “I know, she gets like this when she’s paranoid about money. I think the Director is just worried about the school and is venting.”

Anyway, I eat more quickly than the others because I only eat a few of the side dishes. While I was organizing myself for my next set of classes, it turns out the director went into the lunch room and demanded that the teacher who skipped her meal pay up. Everyone was arguing in a “Are you serious?” sort of manner. I don’t know if the conversation I had when the teacher admitted she didn’t eat was watched by the Director, or if the Director reviewed all the footage of us eating lunch to figure out who had skipped.

I found out later that the Korean teachers all wanted to unload on the Director for the stress about lunch, but the director dominated the conversation and put forth a very good argument in Korean. One of the teachers told me, “I had many things I wanted to say, but she is a VERY good Korean speaker.” They agreed they’d pay up, but the Korean teachers were laughing about it later in a “Can you believe this?” sort of way.

We found out how much the meals cost at least. 3,500 won is how much we have to pay . If I went out for a coffee and donut as a snack I’d probably spend more. But, if I did go out for a coffee and a donut and skipped my meal, I’d be pretty pissed off I’d have to pay for a meal I didn’t eat. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It was kind of fun to be in on the gossip for once though.