maybe so door to door sales & religious promotors will skip your apt?? Perhaps we should just start calling folks in those types of service jobs, hangooken>? Hey Carrie, what up, the hangooken will tell us when the train leaves. Or hurry up & tell the hankooken what you want for dinner...
Is it possible the reason they write 외국인 on our receipts is because we don't usually ask for 현금영수준?
It seems especially odd if they write it on the copy they give back to you as in Brian's photo. It's as though you're going to get some 'special' treatment if you ask for a refund on your cheese sticks.
This is over two years old, but recently I posted it to my Facebook page, so I'll add for any new readers that an explanation.
I assume this was done so the person behind the counter could figure out who got what food among the few customers sitting in the lobby. "Fast food" usually isn't "fast" in areas outside of Seoul, and when visiting Lotteria (pictured) or McDonald's in Gwangju or Suncheon I routinely had to wait while they cooked the meet and dropped the fries to order.
Anyway, just to preempt some of the comments from readers of The Grand Narrative's recent post, I'm not terribly offended and it's not the worst thing to ever happen to me. It's just an odd default term considering the people working the counter usually just announce the order to the crowed in order to connect people with food. There's no reason not to just announce "Bulgogi Burger set," or whatever, unless the person assumed I wouldn't understand the announcement. A good posibility, in spite of me having ordered in Korean.
The dry cleaner in my neighborhood used to write "short foreigner" on my tags and "tall foreigner" on my friend's tags. One day I pointed out the tag and told him, "Your Korean customers have names, and your foreign customers do, too. My name is xxx." After that, he started writing my name on the tags.
8 comments:
Haha, at our last apartment someone had actually penciled that in on our door...
mongdori: same with me and my last apartment. That apartment had been rented out by my old boss and had been occupied by various foreigners for years.
Beside the door not only was foreigner penciled in Hangeul but also Hanja!
God knows why.
maybe so door to door sales & religious promotors will skip your apt?? Perhaps we should just start calling folks in those types of service jobs, hangooken>? Hey Carrie, what up, the hangooken will tell us when the train leaves. Or hurry up & tell the hankooken what you want for dinner...
Yes, that's a hot button of mine. I have it written on everything Ive ever had dry-cleaned.
On a related note, I had a friend called Wayne whose name in Hangul was written: 외인. Handy!
Word verfication: Prend (-uh!)
Is it possible the reason they write 외국인 on our receipts is because we don't usually ask for 현금영수준?
It seems especially odd if they write it on the copy they give back to you as in Brian's photo. It's as though you're going to get some 'special' treatment if you ask for a refund on your cheese sticks.
This is over two years old, but recently I posted it to my Facebook page, so I'll add for any new readers that an explanation.
I assume this was done so the person behind the counter could figure out who got what food among the few customers sitting in the lobby. "Fast food" usually isn't "fast" in areas outside of Seoul, and when visiting Lotteria (pictured) or McDonald's in Gwangju or Suncheon I routinely had to wait while they cooked the meet and dropped the fries to order.
Anyway, just to preempt some of the comments from readers of The Grand Narrative's recent post, I'm not terribly offended and it's not the worst thing to ever happen to me. It's just an odd default term considering the people working the counter usually just announce the order to the crowed in order to connect people with food. There's no reason not to just announce "Bulgogi Burger set," or whatever, unless the person assumed I wouldn't understand the announcement. A good posibility, in spite of me having ordered in Korean.
For more discussion, see the following posts on this site:
* So were they American or Armenian?
* Us versus them
The dry cleaner in my neighborhood used to write "short foreigner" on my tags and "tall foreigner" on my friend's tags. One day I pointed out the tag and told him, "Your Korean customers have names, and your foreign customers do, too. My name is xxx." After that, he started writing my name on the tags.
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