That’s kinda lame of you to do.
Teaching March 1st. 2008, 12:10amAfter my call for some consideration in the planning of my schedule, I got some notice today that all of my requests were denied. I was kind of annoyed with the changes until I heard what my coworkers were going to have to deal with in the next term.
I had made some requests to change around my schedule. If I was allowed to pick up a class for a time I had a break, or drop a class earlier in the day, my schedule would be pretty good. I’m still contractually obligated to come in an hour before class starts, but that’s fine as long as I have some podcasts, some copies to run off, and some material to prepare.
Looking at the schedule, everyone has an hour one day or another that would be better shared with another teacher. If we could manage our own class schedules, we could make optimized times that would let us do more without working our fingers to the bone. Instead our director has scheduled us without any regard to time. Only I have a “late hour” clause in my contract that keeps me from being forced to stick around all day when I’m finished with classes.
The problem has been compounded by the change in times of our classes. They’ve been moved back by a half hour. For me this just means I go to work 30 minutes later and come home 30 minutes later than I used to. It’s not great, but it’s nothing that serious. I’m the only part timer left. My coworkers used to arrive an hour early for work like I did, but my director informed them today that they would be back to the full time schedule this next term.
Full time employees, like my foreign coworker, are given a set of hours they must be present at the school, regardless of class times. With these changes of later classes, the teachers will be arriving a full two hours before the first class starts. No one needs to be there that early. There is nothing to do with the hour beyond some light typing. Keeping someone there a full two hours to honor a contract is beyond annoying and stupidly petty. Is anyone going to work hard while being forced to waste excessive amounts of their time?
The really aggravating part is that the parts of the contract that benefit the employee, like a mandatory break time during a day over seven hours, aren’t being honored for full time employees. The part time employee that doesn’t want a break has a two hour break, and the full time employee that would like a break to ease the pain of staying all day gets none. That’s MORONIC.
It would be so easy to change this situation to make it suit everyone better, but instead the director is being stubborn about it. Why would you piss off all your employees in this manner?
Today, when the director offered to smooth things over by with a cheap delivery dinner, I turned her down. I told her I’m leaving to eat with my wife, as I’m finished with my teaching time and get to go home. I’m not going to stick around and feel some camaraderie that only exists because you try to keep people there far longer than you should. The only time I would have had to eat would have been the five minutes she gives me between classes to get ready for my next hour. When would I be able to eat? While I was running off copies?
These are the warning signs. I can see the boat is sinking. The school has a high turn over rate. Judging by my coworkers faces when they got the news today, it’s pretty obvious as to why. No one wants to work at a job where you feel unappreciated and treated so callously when the fixes are trivial and in most cases free to the employer. It’s time to start thinking about new pastures and figuring out if this is the right time to look for other opportunities.
Korean directors all need SERIOUS personnel management reeducation.
3 Responses to “That’s kinda lame of you to do.”
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March 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am
At my hagwon my first year I worked from 3 to 11. Teaching didn’t begin until 5:30, but we had to be there at 3. The thing is, at 3:50 or 4:00, everybody—teachers, supervisors, managers—broke for an hour-long dinner break. We couldn’t just come in at 5 and skip dinner because then we’d miss our prep time. Of course there were some days when that prep time was put to proper use . . . making worksheets, designing textbooks, and other stuff. But my desk-neighbor and I downloaded a Nintendo emulator onto our computer and that’s how we passed our office hours. The Korean coworkers opted to update their cyworld pages during this time. Absolutely ridiculous. And, whenever somebody decided we needed to have a meeting, they always scheduled it for 1 or 2 and wanted us to come in even earlier, even though we routinely spent 2.5 hours doing nothing (or eating). My hagwon was pretty uppity and ambitious, but I guess was just as ridiculous as the rest of them.
March 1st, 2008 at 8:40 am
Oh man, that schedule is so much worse. 2 hours of prep time, PLUS meetings? That’s almost funny, but I know it’s true.
Korean managers equate long hours with productivity. “They won’t do 0% of their work since they are so bored, so it’s more productive than NOT having them in the office, right?”
I manage to get everything I need to do in half an hour. With a two hour break, I’d end up doing less, because I plan to bring movies on my D2, play video games or read books.
I HATE when managers assume no one has something better to do with their time but work.
March 1st, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Again, it’s looking like my final months at the Evil-Hagwon-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named. I seriously hope you are looking for other opportunities. You’re a much better and more experienced teacher than they deserve.
It’s going to get worse the longer you stay. There’s that March slam and then the April re-boot, where they change everything around just when you get into a routine and have fixed the problems they caused in March.