My Coworkers In Korea

Working with your co-workers in Korea is tricky business.  They're good and gracious people, but with divergent expectations arising from our differing cultural backgrounds combined with the language barrier, opportunities for misunderstandings abound.  There are some interactions I've had with my coworkers in the past that still completely baffle me.  But, I consider myself fortunate that I work at a good school, which has dealth with three other Guest English Teachers (GETs) before me.

This week, the co-worker I share a desk in the teacher's office told me that I should say goodbye to her every day and that it hurt her that I didn't say goodbye to her when I left for home in the evenings.  Normally, I might have laughed at such a comment, but I could tell from her tone and her expression that she was quite serious.  Aside from the fact that saying goodbye isn't something really all that seriously in the US, I spend most of my time in the classroom, as I don't have a computer in the office and so I can't get much work done there.  So, I've only had a handful of conversations with this co-workers, so it never would have occured to me that she might be offended by my not saying goodbye to her each evening.  Furthermore, I make it a point to say hello to everyone the first time I see them everyday, as this is something I was told by my predecessor was important.  The thing is, as a GET, the terms of my contract are set by the government and is different from that of my coworkers, and so my workday ends an hour earlier that of the other teachers.  This is often a point of enmity between the GET and their coworkers.  In fact, I had to point out this in the terms of my contract to my head Co-Teacher when she tried to keep me until 5:30 pm.  For this reason, I often hesitated to say goodbye to people on my way out (except for my boss, the Vice Principal) as I felt like I was "rubbing it in" that I got to leave early.  Most of my coworkers also probably don't realize that I do a lot of class prep at home, as I use Keynote on my Mac to create my presentations.

So, another lesson learned the hard way.  I felt bad about hurting this co-worker's feelings, as it surely was not my intent.  Despite minor faux pas like these, I'm on good terms with pretty much everyone in the office, I think.  In any case, I'm finally buying a laptop this weekend so I can work in the teacher's office and wont have to do any work from home anymore.  Even though its a little silly for me to buy more own laptop that will be used mostly for work, I think it will be a worthwhile investment.