As an outlander here, when something goes wrong you also often get: ‘dumb foreigner doesn’t know how to use it’. Here’s an example. A few years ago my new apartment’s underfloor heating only worked along a one-foot strip next to the wall. This, clearly, to me, meant that the thermostat and boiler were working as hot water was being pumped into the underfloor pipes, and to me the problem was a blockage in said pipes. I informed my school. They sent my co-teacher around to show me how to use the thermostat. I told him my theory of the blocked pipes. He sent his boss around to show me how to use the thermostat. I said ‘blocked pipes’. She in turn sent the landlady round to show the stupid foreigner how to use the thermostat, and once again I said ‘blocked pipes’. One month later this dumb foreigner finally convinced everyone to send a plumber to unblock the pipes. Problem solved. Sometimes Koreans are so amazed that anyone else from anywhere else can do anything. It’s very strange. A friend once said to me that in China they have a saying, “If you tell a Korean there are 12 other people in the world they will be surprised.” I know what that saying means.
Workmen. Recently, my washing machine, which belongs to my rented apartment, ceased to function. The landlord came around, with his wife, and they spent a solid thirty minutes fiddling with buttons and dials and eventually concurred that it was in need of a repairman. The company, LG, called me later that day to tell me he’d be here, in a week. This is unusual for Korea, a country where things are often done so quickly you think you’ve time-travelled, but a week it was. He came, fixed the machine, and left. I used the machine, and flooded the room where it sits because he hadn’t put the drainage hose back into the drain behind the machine. An easy task that took me 5 seconds – just push it in – but why a professional washing machine repairman hadn’t done this I do not know. And this, I find, is a common work practice here, that is – speed over accuracy, not checking your work when you’re done, not getting it right, because time is more important than everything else, including getting the job done properly, and I have several examples of this.
Years ago I decided to buy a bicycle. Not an expensive one, just a cheap entry-level mountain bike to potter around on. I used a local bike shop to support him, rather than a large chain. I went in, picked one, and the middle- aged male owner started flapping away at lightning speed, ripping off cardboard, and adjusting handlebars etc. All the while I was thinking ‘I’ll happily come back tomorrow fella’ but no, he rushed this and rushed that, took my money, and I cycled away but a few minutes later. I got about 100 yards along the street and the back end of the bike started wobbling around, and on closer inspection, he hadn’t tightened the two wheel nuts on the back wheel. I rolled it back to the shop and pointed this out, and he was so, so embarrassed that I felt bad for him. His embarrassment could have easily been avoided however, if he’d taken one minute of time to check the fundamentals.
That’s not the end. Maybe two years later, and after many hours and miles on the bike, I started to notice a bit of ‘play’ in the back wheel – just a little ‘give’ – and estimated that the bearing had worn out. I took it to the shop and he agreed, and proceeded to take the back wheel out, and smash the bearing out with a large hammer, right there on the concrete floor, with sparks flying this way and that. He also spent half the time looking at me and smiling as if to say ‘look how quickly I’m doing this.’ Again, I would have happily come back the next day. He fitted the new bearing, refitted the back wheel, and I got 100 yards up the road and it started wobbling again. Same guy, same bike, same problem. He hadn’t tightened the back wheel nuts.
I went to get my phone repaired a few years ago, as the screen had developed lines that ran its length. I took the bus to the Samsung repair centre in downtown Seoul. On the bus back, I noticed, to my horror, that they hadn’t replaced the volume control switch on the side of the phone, and where the switch should be was just a rectangular hole. I couldn’t go back till the following day and on entering they recognised me, ushered me to a table with coffee etc and fixed my volume switch without asking. I have earphones with a volume control so I hadn’t noticed immediately, plus the switch is inside my folding case and partially hidden, but why didn’t they check before giving me it back the previous day?
I bought a new (to me) car several years ago which had a central locking fault. I took it back to the garage to get fixed, which they did. On driving away I noticed that the repairman had left a small panel off the inside of the door where the door mirror is. He’d just left it off, I was looking at bare metal. I drove the car back and pointed it out – and he was angry with me for returning! He did fix it – he’d left it inside the door – but the whole time he was cussing and swearing and angry, and when finished told me never to come back – after his mistake! Very odd. Koreans have a weird relationship with anger. They notoriously anger very easily and often use anger in a strange way, just like this here.
The crowning glory of my experiences with Korean workmen though, is this. One day I was sitting at my computer and the internet went off. That’s pretty unusual here – you don’t get much downtime. I looked down at my feet and the dog had chewed through the cable. I phoned and a guy came out the next day. My dog goes crazy at strangers sometimes, especially at home, so I ushered the dog into the next room while the guy fixed the internet. This involved him fitting a new modem at no charge to me, as he said the old ones weren’t used any longer. I said fine and went back to chaperoning the dog. He came through and said he was finished. I went into the living room to see that he’d run the new cable straight across from the window to my desk, at waist height – diagonally across, cutting off a full quarter of the room. He said ‘the dog can’t chew it if it’s like that.’. I said the dog would also not chew it if you ran it along the ceiling (as my current internet cable is). He just shrugged and left. To ‘fix’ the problem I had to slide the desk to the corner of the room so that the cable sat flush to the wall. And, as before, that’s not the end.
A couple of days later I’m sitting on the internet, and I noticed that I was on wifi only, which was odd, because I was sure I had a cable running from my router to my laptop. I looked, and he’d removed MY cable, and used it to fit his new modem and left me on wifi only. This whole thing is, without doubt, the most inept, incompetent and downright stupid undertaking of any task I’ve ever had anyone do at my behest.
Most of the work you get done here is fine. I have a car, the same one as above, and many’s the time I’ve taken it to the garage to have it fixed with no problems, but as I said at the top, and just like the driving and politeness, the minority that get it wrong are too many and too often, often enough that I have stories.
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