Hoeshik and Enkai

Japanese enkai and Korean hoeshik are work drinking parties.  A bunch of co-workers go out periodically and get wasted together.  It’s supposed to foster unity among staff. 

In the U.S., my personal and professional lives were two separate worlds.  My colleagues were simply the people I worked with 7:30-3:30 or whenever it was that I left school.  I could count one hand how many were considered friends that I might spend time with outside of work and have fingers left over.  “Familiarity breeds contempt,” Ms. James, an English teacher at the high school I’d taught at as a first year teacher, had said.  She was referring to relationships between students and teachers, but it also applies to those with co-workers.  

I remember attending a Christmas party for the television station where I’d done my senior internship.  It was open bar.  I was so embarrassed by the antics of my drunk co-workers.  A male stripper had also been hired as a special surprise for one of the female colleagues who was leaving the company soon.  I was mortified by that spectacle too.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if the guy had been a good dancer, but gyrating his skinny g-stringed ass to crappy music on a boom box was so unsexy and cringe-inducing.  That did it for me.  I didn’t want to witness co-workers getting drunk.   

My first job in Korea was at a church-affiliated hakwon chain, so their gatherings were strictly food----no alcohol.  However, that lost its appeal when I realized that since it was all paid for by the director, he saw it fit to hold us hostage and sermonize us at length about I don’t know what.  The Korean teachers thought it was a good tradeoff.  I would’ve preferred to eat something I cooked.  One time I got brave enough to excuse myself, jump on a bus and go back home. They were shocked I hadn’t stayed and shocked I had already figured out the bus system (I’d only been in the country for three months at the point).

Korean Job Two:  I was working at an English village with mostly Westerners, so their parties were a mix of food and drink.  Although many were recent uni grads, and too enthusiastic about getting plastered, those outings weren’t so bad as long as nobody touched me.  (One white South African thought he could take liberties after he’d had a few beers.)  In fact, one co-worker would often buy me soft drinks and say to everyone “Monica is so cool, she doesn’t drink, but she can still hang out with us, and doesn’t act like she’s better than us like the rest of those snobbish Christians.”

He was referring to the international school that was renting a building on campus (where I would later work).  It was run by an American fundamentalist ‘Christian’ couple who acted like they were too good to socialize with the heathens on campus.  Better a sincere heathen than an insincere Bible-thumper, I say.

The international school’s get-togethers were all about food, since the staff didn’t drink (publicly, anyway).  The meals were paid for out of some school fund.  Those dinners became joyless, however, as the administrators’ toxicity became more evident.  As Proverbs 17:1 says, “Better to eat a dry crust of bread in peace than a feast in a house full of trouble.”    

Japanese drink parties, unlike Korean ones, are not paid for by the boss.  Everyone shells out a set price for the pleasure of unlimited alcohol, meat and accompanying side dishes.  I turned down invitations the first seven months, but then came the year-end enkai and our principal’s retirement party.  I thought they were one event.  No, they were two events a few days apart.  Each costing about ¥6500.  Never ones to miss an opportunity for the ceremonial, the event was kicked off with speeches and toasts.  People were friendly and tried to include me in everything, but I couldn’t help thinking that I had paid 60 bucks for a large salad and unlimited soda.  In other words, I was subsidizing my co-workers meat and alcohol.  That was not the business.