One at a Time

February 27th, 2021

The last past month has been a life-changing experience for me. No, I didn’t go through a eureka moment about life nor was I under any mental stimulants to experience this life-change. The experience arose from two main sources: assisting in the launch of my mom’s business, and working/managing employees with 20~35 years of experience behind them.

The Business Launch

Although I worked at a startup before and wore a wide range of colloquial “hats”, this was different. I was the employee, manager, customer support, salesman, tech support, and marketer. Preparing for the business launch was hard (wow, big surprise). The situation, we were in, was particularly challenging due to the fact that we had to not only prepare for a first class launch but also file for government approval with series of required documents, which had to be created.

There were a series of conflicts and issues that seemed beyond repair at some points. A part of our business plan was to create a dynamic course timetable such that we could fulfil the wide range of people’s schedules. However, to our surprise, this was not already in place in the existing education centres. This led to a bunch of issues with the government regulators trying to deny our perfectly legal (and explicitly allowed in the regulations) presumably because it increases the complexity of verifying the timetables for approvals. We received a threat from the government official in charge to start an inspection into us (although I am not so sure what they are going to inspect in a 1-month old business, haha). This alone was bewildering for me as the regulation explicitly states that mixtures of classes are allowed, yet our district officer wanted to deny our claims and rather threatened us. So, what can we do against the almighty government officer? Not much. Instead of arguing with the officer who cannot comprehend elementary school level Korean, we called up another district officer in the same position and checked with them. When we asked if the aforementioned class mixtures are allowed, we received a quick “yes, of course”. When we filed our timetable approval, we were not noticed any issues. Lessons learnt. The so-called “government officers” are humans too and they are not the absolute source of truth as they may have ulterior motives.

The business launch so far is heading in a great direction. The first round of class completed filled up the original maximum and more due to the COVID-19 deregulation notice on the first day of class. I felt a new sensation of achievement when some students signed up for the class from talking with me. Perhaps I could justify this as something any salesman can do, however, this was different; this was not an act of persuasion that was required by someone or some force such as employment rather was something beyond the materialistic callings. The indescribable sensation of the first sale resides in me and I hope I remember this first sale and the mindsets I had then.

Wisdom triumphs Time (yet, time doesn’t correlate with wisdom)

I foremost thank the colleagues that I worked with, albeit for a short month, for I have learnt lessons that I could not have learnt by paying for any courses at a university or elsewhere.

This is a story of two colleagues that I worked with: KH and CH. KH and CH were sources of values that I am inspired to value and also despise. KH retired from the embassy economics department stationed in Korea after working for 35 years. CH has a PhD in philosophy and worked in various workplaces with ~20 years of experience in total. KH, despite his age, is active and seems to be always engaged in the work he is doing. CH, despite his relatively younger age, is inactive and puts his arms behind this back and simply watch what others are doing. KH, when taught something new, is quick to try what was learned to make it his. CH, when taught something new, seems to be out of it and does not do anything unless directly told to. KH tells stories that contain informational content that is meaningful and talks more about the world as a whole. CH tells exaggerated stories that are fun and talks about him as the world. KH surprises me with the level of attention to detail. CH surprises me in manners I will not describe here.

Although it is not fair to compare CH to KH for I had higher expectations from CH in the first place, I clearly learnt what it means to be a great colleague and a mediocre one. The aura of wisdom and behaviours shown by KH taught me that I have a lot to learn. The lessons taught by KH seems more important as I am concluding my day-to-day work with my mom’s business to start working as a marketer upcoming Monday. For I have learned from a wise man, I shall portray the best behaviours I have learned in the new workplace while maintaining qualities that I hold.