Corporate Training - Korean Style

My boss is always telling me I need to learn Korean corporate culture, so when I told HR to take their week long "training" session and shove it up their Kimchi pots, he did not approve. He told me it was a requirement, and seemed to honestly believe I would learn something.

Well day one down, and I have indeed learned something: my company training is even more ludicrous than I had imagined, which is a considerable feat considering my expectations.

We began the day with an introduction by some jackass President of the Human Resources Centre. This guy was preceded by a 5 minute powerpoint that simply faded between slides of him shaking hands with people that he thought made him look important. During the show the PA blasted "Can you feel the love tonight" by Elton John...this chump runs a glorified chearleading camp, so i guess he needs all the love he can get.

after lunch we were told to come dressed in excercise gear. we showed up in shorts - this is not what the organizers had in mind. shorts are not allowed. what they meant by "excercise" clothing was unclear even to themselves, because the Kims do not excercise.

anyway an exception was made and we proceeded to spend the next four hours playing some classic corporate team building games. these included jumping rope and a timed volleyball bumping competition. all well and good, except that the whole thing was held in a fucking boardroom. not 20 feet away from us was the most lush garden and soccer field that i have ever seen in this country, and we played volleyball under flourescent lights in a fucking boardroom. When I suggested that we have our sporting excercise outside, I was given the prototypical korean laughing refusal.


Hahaha - why would we do that - hahaha - there is grass out there, and no microphones. Koreans are apparently afraid of grass, and do not generally sit on it unless there is a blanket present.

Once the games were over we had some rather sub par cafeteria dinner before returning to our special teams for group work. It was 7pm, and we'd been doing this stupid shit for almost 12 hours. During group work we were meant to spend 2 hours discussing what made the company special, and then sharing things that made our own country special. By 9pm i was about ready to drop kick somebody through the plate glass windows.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I get to sit through 8 hours of presentations on Corporate Values - and then a group "collage". yeehaw

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