I was out at dinner with teams "D" and "C," along with the campus bosses, after work the other night. One of those obligatory "let's all get drunk and pontificate and expiate ourselves at each other" that drives the Korean business environment, English-language schools included.
And I began feeling really angry. It was mostly at a certain brand-new coworker. Speaking English, so I was comprehending... I would probably have felt the same sort of anger at the others, but they were mostly sticking to speaking Korean, and that made the pontifications inpenetrable, though still self-evidently pontifications, nevertheless.
The internal mantra that kept me quiet and inscrutable throughout the social experience was: "If I've nothing good to say, I will say nothing." But the speech-to-new-coworker that I kept reformulating through most of the second half of the evening was something along these lines:
You've only been at LBridge for less than a week. What the hell do you know? I've had more than 30 bosses in my life, including work in fortune 500 companies, non-profits, factories and union work, the US Army, mom-and-pop businesses, and more. And beyond any doubt, our campus manager, this person whom you sycophantically are right now praising up, down and sideways, is the absolute worst manager I've ever had.
This job has other redeeming features, including the super-smart children, as well as Sarah's amazingly competent (if not always user-friendly) efforts at keeping a well-structured curriculum. Please don't misunderstand me -- our boss is not a bad person! His heart may even be in the right place, although he seems to me to be stunningly superficial and unreflective, like the worst caricatures of G.W. Bush.
But as far as basic management skills are concerned... as far as "caring for and mentoring" one's employees is concerned... as far as showing consistency and business acumen is concerned... well, forget it. It ain't there. And don't try to say that I'm applying "western" standards. I had several Korean bosses before the current one, and although all of them annoyed me at one point or another, I would never have declared any of them to be fundamentally incompetent.
That was the "angry" speech. I never said it. All's the better. But since then, I've also spent time composing another, much less scrutable statement. I've managed to avoid uttering that one, too, but I relish playing it out in my head -- if only because I would love to see the gears turning in this new person's head as my intended meaning becomes clear:
In North American mainstream culture, respect is something that is earned, and that can be lost, too. In Korean traditional business culture, respect is due to one's superior regardless of merit. I am trapped between cultures.
But I've managed to just stay quiet. Except, now, this totally says-it-all internet post. Hah. So far, no one at my current job has shown any ability whatsoever to use the outside-of-Korea internets to find things out about me or anything else in the entire universe. A lack of curiosity? A lack of ability? Korea manages to remain insular despite 100% internet connectivity, through a combination of walled-garden-variety internet portals and simple linguistic and cultural naivety.
And do I really give a damn, at this point, if they find these, my rantings? Seems that I don't.
