The end of the new job

After a couple of weeks in Sanbon/gunpo, my employer secured a sweet apartment in Uiwang. It's pronounced eu wi wong, but I always liked calling it wee wang because I'm mature like that. The new place was the best apartment I've had in Korea. It was a relatively new officetel with a loft, a gs25 on the first floor and a great view.

Work was going ok. Some of the paper work was getting annoying, though. It's a bit frustrating to correct multiple choice quizzes with no possible correct answers.

One tuesday morning, I went to the nearest hospital to get an insulin refill. They gave me a bill for 400,000 won. They told me that I didn't have insurance. I called my boss and asked him what the deal was and he told me my old location never transferred over my visa and he can't provide health insurance until that was taken care of. I called my old institute to ask why I didn't have health insurance when I have a pay statement which said that 50,000 was deducted for it. They pretended they didn't know who I was.

After a while, my visa was finally transferred and I had health insurance. I was able to get a refund from the hospital.

After I left the hospital, I went to work and was called into the office. My new boss was "very upset" I didn't tell him I was diabetic. He gave me two weeks notice because he "didn't feel comfortable employing someone with health problems."

Two weeks later, my replacement arrived from the US. This was his first time teaching in Korea, and this was right after the new immigration policies went into effect.

So, somehow, this person was found, hired and had all of his paperwork and consulate interviews taken care of in under two weeks. I later talked to him, because I was a bit suspicious and found out that he was hired a month before he came over.

So, I was in fact hired just so that I could cover for a month while they waited for a teacher who could work for significantly less pay arrived.

On my last day, I was paid for my month at the hagwon. It was 600k less than I was expecting. I was told that the entire vacation was unpaid. As I mentioned earlier, the new vacation plan was 4 weeks vacation, 2 unpaid, 2 paid. So, If we had two weeks off in May, our paychecks would be 75%, not 50%. My vacation was the last week in April and the first week in May, so because my April pay was 75%, I expected my May pay to be 100%.

I talked to the old school and they said, "Oh, no. The whole vacation is unpaid." I asked them why it said 10 days paid vacation, and they told me it was for sick days despite the fact that there were sick days on a different page. I talked to a couple of teachers at my old gig, and they were pissed too. One of them threatened to quit if she didn't receive her contractual vacation pay, and she was successful. I decided to let it go because I was quite tired of dealing with all of the lying and bs.

I also made another poor choice. I was so sick of dealing with people who constantly lied, cheated and were unable to pay me. So, I decided to go back to my first job. I figured it was a stressful job, but I could always count on getting paid on time and in full. I called up my old boss who was thrilled to hear from me. Apparently, they had a relatively new employee they hated and wanted to fire. I would be taking his schedule which was an afternoon/evening elementary/middle school schedule. I was pretty happy, because while I love the kindergarten kids, most of the stress and bullshit from my first year came from doing all of the extra work for the kindergarten program. He offered me a new contract with a generous salary, so I agreed.