Usher

"You make me wanna leave the one I'm with, start a new relationship, with you. This is what you do."

- Usher

    

 I still remember that video. West Side Story dance fighting at it's best. Sadly I did not meet Usher, instead I was an usher. For my hagwon's mathematics presentation for prospective Korean parents. A perfect Friday night.

The past month or so our hagwon has been desperately trying to sign up more students. The quintessential problem with our school and many others, it drives me crazy to waste time and effort trying to make more money than better students. I have solicited outside the hagwon handing out packets of tissues with our school's logo, called our students at home so their parents could see them speaking English to us, and last week we canceled classes with current students to attend a math seminar completely in Korean.

But the Thomas Try Out I would gladly take back over any other was having to usher one of these events. The event was held in a rented out 6th floor room. It had maybe 21 tables with 7 seats at each, nice table cloths, snacks and bottled water atop each. Typical Holiday Inn presentation room type stuff. When you came up the elevator and exited there was the table with sign-in sheet and information packets. Then there were your friendly white-faced Americans, ready to escort you on an evening of awkwardness.

Stephanie and I were asked to usher the prospective clients into a seat. They had no assigned seats thus making our job pointless from the start. I stood in front of them, hands behind my back, sweat coming through my t-shirt, gesturing to a table somewhere in the middle of the pack. They would always walk a few steps than go in the opposite direction, farther from the stage or right up front. I would walk back to my spot by the elevator and pray for death.

When most of the expected attendance never came, my duties were altered to include intrusive and light conversation with our seated guests. I would talk to them for a minute or so, until we both established how clueless we were as to what the other was saying. If their English was very limited I would suggest they have some of the complimentary refreshments on the table that they were already eating anyway. I was never happier to see the presentation start so I could sit down and put myself out of my misery.

Then of course we had to sit through an hour and a half of revolutionary changes to the Korean Public school math exams. We stayed 30 minutes longer than we were initially supposed to and almost missed a previous engagement with some friends that night. It was uncomfortable and pointless and I would've rather gotten dance-punched by Usher than ever do it again.


Usher, check