just gets better and better

[Originally posted on August 24, 2017, at 9:05PM.]

It's not enough that our company's CEO wants to make us all suffer through a mandatory dinner: my immediate boss has plans, in September, to have us do an overnight "MT"-style* event out on the property of his hapkido master. This is the kiss of death, as far as I'm concerned, and I've told the boss as much, so I've made no secret of my aversion.

Now I have two mandatory events to look forward to, which is depressing. I plan on handling both in similar ways: for the first event, I aim to leave after an hour, maybe pretending to seek out the restroom or something. Since that event—the CEO's dinner—will take place about 20 km away from my apartment, I'm simply going to walk back to my apartment from there. It's a decent four-hour trek, so I'll get home by about 1AM. As for the second event, my immediate boss's planned overnighter, I'll likely walk out of that one, too. I think it's going to be much farther away from my apartment, so I might need almost two days to walk the whole route. Or: I can plot a route to the nearest place of public transportation and hop on some vehicle there—a bus, a train, whatever. The boss won't be happy and might think what I've done is an insult, but it's insulting to force people to do things they haven't chosen to do—an aspect of Korean culture that I despise. You might argue that, by choosing to work for a Korean company, I've also chosen to attend these events, but I call bullshit on that. I put a lot of work into this company, routinely going above and beyond the call of duty. If the company can't appreciate my efforts and still wants to coerce me, then fuck the company.

I doubt it'll come to this, but if my job ends up on the line because I refuse to play the company's reindeer games, I'm fully prepared to walk away. If this is a company that insists on coercing its employees, then it's not as if I'm "walking away from a good thing." No: I'd be walking away from a very bad thing. Besides, what am I losing in terms of interpersonal relationships? I have nothing but a professional relationship with my boss and coworkers; we're not buddies, pals, or friends. And we sure as hell aren't family—that's the sort of delusion that Korean managers are under when they do these MT events: they think they're cultivating some sort of familial esprit de corps. I'm not buying it, and as I noted in another post, many Korean employees don't buy that bullshit, either.

Back in 2015, when the company dicked me over in terms of my salary (offering me, at the very last minute, W3.5 million instead of the promised W4.0 million), I wasn't in a position to walk because I hadn't yet acquired my F-4 visa. I now have that visa, which makes me a free agent. I can forge my own future in South Korea; I have options that I didn't have before. So, yeah: I'm not worried about how all of this might end, and if I do end up leaving, there won't be any sentimentality to make the departure difficult. As Koreans like to say in parting: "Geu dongan gamsahamnida." For that duration, thank you.

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*Don't worry if you're a native speaker of English but have no idea what an "MT" is. This is Konglish: a Korean locution masquerading as something English-esque. "MT" stands for "membership training" and is a big part of corporate life in Korea. It means different things for different companies, but the basic idea is that the employees go on outings—maybe to a retreat in the mountains or somewhere else—where they engage in a series of group activities designed to break the ice and/or develop team spirit. Think: games, singing, chanting peppy company slogans, drinking, hiking in teams, etc. If you're a group-oriented extrovert, and that sounds fun to you, then God bless you. To me, that sounds like a nightmare. Why would I do supposedly "fun," hive-mind-y things with people who aren't even my friends?