For this cultural post, I decided to try and text my boss in Korean. I have worked at a korean cafe and bakery for the summer and winter breaks for the past couple of years, but all of my bosses were older than me. This difference in age made me a little nervous at first, but after the first couple of months of working there, I started to relax a bit. It also really helped that there is a kind of “take care of younger employees” culture at a lot of Korean restaurants and cafes near where I live. I know that this culture is not always the case, and that it can even be the opposite a lot of times in the workplace in Korea and in Korean owned businesses. All of the other employees are extremely nice and after working there for a couple years, they have become a kind of family to me. While I am still unable to use a completely informal form of speaking to them, I am not as absolutely formal in speaking with them like I used to be before. I also noticed that it is common for younger people to type with typos on purpose. This is somewhat similar to the abbreviations and slang used for texting in English (e.g. lol, omg). However, a lot of times they are not typos that have typos, they are just typos for the sake of having a typo. Apparently, having perfect spelling and grammar can give the impression of being boring or too strict, and that having one or two typos can give a nicer impression. These typos are also used for the purpose of cuteness. While one or two typos does not mean that you’re trying really hard to be cute in the sense that cuteness is interpreted here in the US, it is just another way of saying that typos give a softer impression through text.
In this text conversation, I was pretty much asking my boss if I could work during the upcoming winter break, but I said hello with a typo to soften the impression it would give. My boss replied that she would look at the schedule and let me know, but asked if I could work on the 24th. She also included a common typo people make of writing 잇어 instead of 있어. I replied that I was not sure if I could work the 24th but I could probably work the morning shift which we call 오픈 which is just the phonetic spelling of open (meaning opening shift). She replied that she needed someone for the closing shift not the opening shift and included this letter ㅜ as a sad face emoji. In Korean, people will use this letter or the ㅠ letter as a simple sad face because it kind of looks like tears. I then said I’m sorry but I can’t do the closing shift that day and included two sad face emojis. She said okie haha let me check the schedule first (to see if I could work) and I’ll let you know. I replied okay~ thank you, with another intentional typo on the okay.
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