As you may or may not know, most schools in Korea will give their foreign teachers an apartment to stay in during the course of their tenure. For us, this is a very good thing, considering that it is very difficult for a foreigner to get an apartment by themselves and even harder to find an apartment building that feels comfortable enough with their English to let foreign teachers live there. So the school foots the bill for the monthly rent, leaving the teachers with the utilities--water, gas, electricity, building maintenance, TV and internet. For most places, this comes down to about $100 for the month (and yes, I am including all of the above mentioned utilities). Pretty sweet deal, ne?
Most school neglect to mention to the teachers that if anything breaks in the apartment while they are living there, the teachers will have to pay the costs of repairs out of pocket. The teachers, most of whom are so wide-eyed and enamored by the aforementioned "sweet deal" that they don't consider such things, are shocked to find that they are expected to pay to fix the decrepit old hunk of junk that serves as an air conditioner, or that window screens that have been full of holes since long before they arrived are another one of their responsibilities.
Imagine my chagrin, therefore, when I come to find that my decrepit piece of air conditioner was slowly building a lake on my little porch. While this did give me fond memories of the Lake Newton from my childhood, I was more than a little anxious about the idea of having someone come to the apartment and fix the problem. More accurately, I was more than a little anxious about paying for someone to come to the apartment and fix the problem. But since you can't really live in Korea without air conditioner for another two or so months, I eventually sucked it up and had the school arrange for a service guy to come out.
The AC guy came out on a Saturday morning the day after we called him to come. He took off his shoes at the door and came in to tinker with the unit. He found the leak, fixed it in less than two minutes, and then stayed half an hour to help me clean up the massive puddle on the porch. When he was done, he charge me $10, wished me a happy day, and left.
Now compare that to your last AC repair experience. Is your mind blown? Mine still is....
