customer service

So we went to the bank the other day to get some traveler's checks to send back to the US to put in our old accounts (to pay random American bills that we have). We had an hour break between classes, so we thought: no problem, we can walk around downtown for a little bit after we get our checks. sweet. wrong. We went to the bank and were sent to the same woman who had opened our accounts for us. So we gave her our little piece of paper that said traveler's checks in Korean and told her we wanted those in US dollars. So she runs around and does all kinds of paperwork (this took about 15 minutes, I would say), and I see her getting ready to come back over to our area with just straight up cash. So we start saying no in both English and Korean, and the dude who runs the joint and has an awful combover came over and tried to communicate with us by writing stuff down. So we explained that we wanted traveler's checks and even let him talk to Megan from the school over the phone. No problem. So getting the actual correct traveler's checks took about 15 minutes, too. But Julie, you say, that's only half of the hour you had as a break. Where did the rest of it go? Well, I'll tell you. This was the most frustrating hour of interaction here thus far, and it's not like I don't do shit by myself all the time. The language barrier was not the problem, the misunderstanding was not the problem. My problem was that while Jamie and I were standing there trying to get stuff figured out, this woman helping us took at least 3 phone calls to help other people, completely halting what she was doing to cater to these phantom people on the phone. I would guesstimate that one of those calls took about 13 minutes (guesstimate, again). Evidently there was some problem with this person's account, so I saw her jotting down all of these numbers and then yelling back and forth with the other tellers who were busy interacting with actual people. So yeah, this happened too much for my liking. Like, did this bank (or all of Korea, if that's the case) not understand that you deal with real people standing in front of you over people on the phone? Hell, had I known this, I would have had Megan call it in so I could just go pick it up. As it was, I had to call Megan back anyway to have her tell them in Korean that it was okay for jamie to bring my traveler's checks back to me. I had to take a cab back cause we were late to teach our class. So then I had to start both mine and Jamie's classes together. Frustrating. So, here's some advice. Try not to bank in Korea.

Ate Dakgalbi last night on dakgalbi street. mmm. The waitress had dumped all of the stuff into the pan in front of us, and she had included a healthy dose of these really aromatic leaves that I didn't like (to eat, anyway--the smell like air freshener), so when she turned around we started picking them out really quickly and hiding them under the lettuce leaves (that we actually eat ) in the little basket in front of us. A few minutes later, a different waitress came over with a big plate of the leaves, and before I had a chance to explain it to her, she dumped them all back in. So I just started shaking my head and picking them out. Then she understood and we both apologized to each other a lot. I showed her the pile of the other leaves, hiding out. She wasn't amused, she just felt bad.