Monday, January 05, 2015

waiting in vain?

Sometimes life is just a waiting game. I've been waiting, for a week or so now, to get paid by my two side jobs, KMA and the Golden Goose. The reason for my impatience is that the windfall, this pay period, is W3 million, W2 million of which will go straight to the apartment fund (bringing the kitty up to W3 million—just W7 million to go before I can move), and the final million of which will become disposable income that I plan to squander, partly, on a trip down to Yeosu in mid-January. Around that same time, I'll get my regular W2.5 million net pay from the university.

Another reason for my impatience is that, while neither establishment is technically behind-time in paying me later than promised, both establishments did say that I would be paid before the end of 2014. That didn't happen, so I'm a bit antsy. With KMA, it's possible that the pay might come within the next week or so (KMA has two paydays per month). With the Golden Goose, which promised a W2 million payout instead of the usual W1 million (my boss at that job says he's tired of filling out the paperwork every month, so he'd rather pay in W2-mil chunks, every other month, instead of W1-mil chunks*), pay can technically arrive either January 7 or January 14, 1-2 weeks after the end of the latest pay period, which ended on December 31st (yes, I worked on New Year's Eve).

So I wait. Both places have broken their promise of early pay, but neither is technically late with payment as of this date. If I've got nothing more in the bank by next week, though, I'm going to start to get pissed off.



*My status at the Golden Goose is a bit strange. I'm currently a non-contract worker with something like a freelancer's status, but because I come in at 9AM every Wednesday, I have regular office hours, which isn't what you'd normally expect of a freelancer. This state of affairs makes things a bit strange for the Goose's finance office, which can't quite put me on salary, as I'm not a full-time employee there. So far, the awkward solution has been for my boss to fill out paperwork, every four weeks, requesting that I be paid. This is an archaic, inefficient method, but it seems to be the only way to do things at the Golden Goose. The finance department, for its part, is lazy and doesn't like dealing with this monthly paperwork, so it often drags its feet when it comes to paying me. The boss might promise that I'll be paid by a certain date, but it's the finance office that has the final say on when I get my money. This is why my boss, exasperated by the paperwork obligation, would rather pay me in W2-mil installments. Mathematically, it still comes out to W1 million every four weeks, but for the boss, there will be less paperwork to do over the course of the year.


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