Korean Won

You don't get paid until the after a month of teaching in Korea, so it's a good idea to bring some money with you. I just recently went to order some Euros for my Ireland trip, so I headed back to the same bank to order the Won. You would think that someone who works at a bank would have a fair bit of knowledge of different currencies, or at least know of them. The girl that I dealt with, while very nice, hadn't a clue. To be honest, I don't think she even knew South Korea existed.

When I first asked to order some Korean Won she stared at me and there was a long, slightly awkward pause, and then she said "I don't think we can order that"..... Umm what? Of course you can. So I try to question her as nicely as possible until she goes and asks her supervisor. It just happened that her supervisor was close so I could hear the conversation and you could tell that her supervisor thought she was an idiot.

The teller comes back and then says that she can order it. So she is typing away on the computer and goes "hmmm, see even the computer can't find it". Then she admits that she has no idea how to spell it. I didn't want to make her feel even more stupid so I kept my mouth shut and watch her type the following in to her computer    C  O  R  E  A  N      O  N  E. Then she says that google can't even find it. Finally she asked me if I knew how to spell it and that's where I was able to correct her and said "I think you spell it KOREAN WON. Sure enough it pops up no problem. Sometimes it blows my mind how little people know about the world.

So my Won came in for $600 CDN I got $611,000 Won. When I went to pick it up the man who helped me this time had a heck of a time counting out the money for me. He actually said "there are just so many zeros, I'm getting confused", this was in regards to the $50,000 bill. Really? You work in a bank and you're having problems adding 50,000 together?

All around this experience was hilarious and made me realize I give people far too much credit in regards to their profession.