"The Kim-bab Enema" or "How to Screw a Waeguk in Five Steps or Less"

This is the CNU guide to screwing foreign teachers with their pants on:

Step 1: Hire inept, incompetent cronies for top level managerial and accounting positions.

Step 2: Allow said cronies to operate with little or no oversight.

Step 3: Find new and inventive ways to deduct money from foereign teacher's paychecks.

Step 4: Giggle behind hand or shrug shoulders as said foreign teachers rage about lost wages.

Step 5: Do victory shots of soju and bask in the praise of superiors for a job well done.

In the past eight months, every teacher at CNU (with the exception of the newbies who haven't received a paycheck yet) has been hosed by the incredible incompetence of the various CNU administration offices.

At the Chungnam Language Education Center we have an accountant who is so inept I'd be surpised if he could count to ten using both his fingers AND toes. Up until this guy got hired last summer, none of the teachers had a problem with receiving their pay. We got our regular pay and our overtime pay when we were supposed to and in the amount we were owed. Taxes were appropriately filed, and everything was hunky dory. Since this incredible boob was hired, there have been accounting gaffes every single month. I'm not talking minor slip-ups. I'm talking things like paychecks sent to the wrong accounts, paychecks late, paychecks short significant amounts, and severence checks withheld for no other reason than the guy forgot. I could forgive this if it happened in the first, maybe second month only, but these problems are EVERY month. a fine example of this is $700 was deducted from my January paycheck because the account "forgot" to take out taxes from my overtime pay during the 2006 fiscal year. In any other country this guy would've been fired. Hmmm.

Now the CNU housing administration is working on screwing me out of another $400 by saying that I didn't pay my utility bills for both January and February of 2006. "Bullshit!", I replied, and after about an hour of searching through piles of boxes and assorted papers, I found the receipts for the payments and handed them in. Problem solved, eh? Noooooooooooo! Today I find out that a) the administration cannot find the bank records for that time period and thus cannot validate my receipts, and b) the figures they came up with do not correspond to the figures on my receipts (although all my paperwork is in order), so they now want to charge me even more! I'm a patient man, but I swear to God if my March check is a penny short, I'm going to bust some heads.

All of this reminds me of the little surprise waiting for me after I had surgery on my knee last October when I found out that because I'm not a part of the CNU "faculty", the insurance the school provides doesn't cover anything beyond earwax removal.

I could continue this rant, but it's far too early in the semester to start hating Korea (that's usually reserved for the last couple of weeks of each semester). Some people will say that you have to have an open mind. It's a different culture and there is a different way of doing things. This is true of a lot of things here, and I respect that. However, accounting, payroll, and administrative record keeping are pretty standard things regardless of where you live. These guys aren't cooking the books, they're just complete and absolute buffoons who seem to have never mastered second grade math let alone how to use a calculator. It's mind-boggling.

Anyway, other than that, things are just peachy.