Hey, it is the English Podcast listeners, it's Jack here.
And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the A to Z English Podcast is going on hiatus, and hiatus means we're taking a long break.
And we may or may not come back in the future, we're not sure.
Social and I talked about this at length, and we both have other priorities in our lives.
One of my priorities is focusing on my family.
I've been spending a lot of time in the last three years working on the podcast, recording, editing, doing all that stuff, social media, in English corner, in China.
We've done a lot of work on this podcast, and we've had a lot of fun doing it.
And, you know, social and I've become good friends through the podcast.
We didn't know each other before, you know, social join the podcast.
And you know, we just want to give a huge virtual hug to all of you out there, all of our listeners out there in supporters.
And a huge thank you to all of you, because, you know, if you're not listening to the podcast, if you're not downloading the podcast, then we're just talking into a microphone that's going nowhere.
And we know through our download history that we've had hundreds of thousands of listens to our podcast.
And so there are people out there that really are enjoying the podcast, that enjoy the podcast.
And that might be hurt by this news.
And for that, we are truly, truly sorry.
We just are at a point now where we need to focus on other things in our lives.
And you know, spending a lot of time recording, editing, social media, doing English corners, things like that, has just taken a lot of focus away from some of the things that are really important in our lives, especially family.
So I hope that you understand that I know that this may be hurtful to you.
And that is not our intention.
We love our listeners, love and appreciate our listeners.
It's just one of those things in life where it's just time to move on to the next adventure.
And so that's what we're going to do.
We're going to move on to the next adventure.
We're going to do it with our heads held high because we're proud of what we accomplished here on the A to Z English podcast.
I think there's a lot of good content that will live forever on the internet that students of ESL can go to and can help improve their listening skills, learn some new vocabulary and other things like that.
So again, huge thank you, huge virtual hug to all of our listeners out there.
Here are the greatest, the A to Z listeners are the best podcasts, listeners, the best audience in the world.
And we adore and appreciate you.
So thank you so much. And without further ado, let's start the show.
Welcome to the A to Z English podcast.
My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host social and today we're doing another topic talk episode and we're talking about work life balance in maybe the US and Korea, maybe because that's where you're in, well, in your in Mexico as well.
So I'm kind of curious like when you're in Mexico, what is work life balance like there, when you're in the States and then when you're in Korea, what is the work life balance in those three places?
And maybe I'll let you start with like, what about US?
Like what's the work life balance like in US?
I think ironically in a way, even though we're the country that almost guarantees that you're going to get two days off a week, we're the country that guarantees that you're going to get, you're only going to work 40 hours a week or you're getting paid handsome over time, which it means time in a half or any extra hours, even though we're the country in the US that has maybe
the most linear work culture, I would say in certain aspects.
It's it's funny because I think our work like balance sucks.
Yeah. I see. Yeah, I see so many people that like work is their whole life and I've definitely, I've felt this way because whenever you have a job in the US, you're running the whole day.
And there's not like a free moment to breathe or do anything like the whole time that you're working, you just work, work, work, working.
And even after work, you're still answering emails, they're answering calls or thinking about things that happen at work or what you're supposed to improve, etc.
And it's so, so crushing that so many people do their nine to five, which is what we call it, which is really an eight to five nowadays, because you work from 8 a.m.
to 5 p.m. Yep. And then just come home and crash and spend their weekend indoors.
I mean, it's a very depressing lifestyle.
You spend your weekend pretty much, most people spend their weekend indoors watching TV and ordering takeout and they spend their day to day, not really doing any like activities or having an active lifestyle or having any kind of gatherings or anything outside of work because work consumes so much of our life here in the US, I think.
Yeah, I mean, we have this thing called the Protestant Work Ethic.
It's, you know, it's part of our historical makeup.
And the idea is that if you're not working, your, you know, idle hands are the devil's play, play thing, you know, so it's like, if you're not doing something productive at all times, you're up to no good.
You know, it's, it's more like wrong to not be doing something all the time, to not be working.
And so I think America has more workaholics than any country I can think of.
I mean, just absolute, their whole lives are centered around their jobs.
And they put in, you know, 80 hours a week and they do it willingly, you know, it's not like they're complaining about it necessarily.
They just, I don't know, it's part of our culture, you know, we think America's, Americans are lazy and, you know, have a lot of leisure time, but we really don't.
In Western countries, we're probably, we probably work more hours than, than, than most, of the other ones, if not all of them.
Um, yeah, it's, it's very strange.
Um, yeah, let's get less time off, less sick leave.
We have less free time than a medieval peasant used to get.
Yeah. And companies keep showing record profits in the US.
However, you know, people who work for the companies are barely making a living nowadays because the cost of living is so high.
So we're definitely in the whole as a country.
Yeah, yeah. Productivity and wages used to go rise at the same pace in the 1950s and the 1960s and then somewhere in the 70s, wages went flat.
But productivity just kept going up and up and up and so the companies were making more money, but they were sharing less and less of the profits with the workers.
And now we're just at like maybe one of the lowest points in modern history when it comes to the difference between like what a CEO, CEO salary is versus a worker salary, you know, it used to be like a hundred times as much.
Now it's you know, 10,000, 20,000 times.
So you know, what the average worker at the company earns versus the yearly salary and compensation that the CEO receives.
So yeah, we're a country of extremes.
Everything is extreme in our country.
It seems like our healthcare system is extreme, extremely good for those that can afford it, but for a lot of people that can't, that don't have insurance, they get no healthcare.
We have massive gun violence, you know, but no matter how extreme the violence gets, nothing is ever done about it.
It's a strange place, you know, it's a strange, strange country.
Yeah. Yeah. How do you think that stacks up against Korea in terms of work ethic and work?
I think Koreans are also, you know, part of their, their modern history is, is they went from being the poorest country in the world in the 1960s.
They were so poor that they used to receive aid from African countries at that time.
That's wild. And in a generation, they went from the poorest country in the world to one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
And the way they did that was, you know, they had six day work weeks.
It was your identity. It was very much associated with your job.
There was much pride in your job and pride.
The country had a lot of, you know, had a lot of pride in its success.
Its success story is something that they should be proud about.
It was amazing. It's called the Korean Miracle is what they call it.
But there's a lot of leftover from that time period where, you know, Koreans are still putting in a lot of hours in their job every day.
Although it's starting to get better and they're starting to make laws and, and, you know, limitations on what companies can ask of their employees because they also need, they also have one of the lowest, or maybe the lowest birth rate in the OECD, which means, you know, that's a symptom of not having enough time with your family or, you know, just if you work all
day and you come home and fall asleep and go back and work all day and fall asleep, you're not spending any quality time with your family with your spouse.
So they're trying to fix that.
They're trying to remedy that here.
But I would say it's still auto-wack, you know.
Auto-wack means out of balance in Korea, the work, work, I think people still work too much.
But I'm not convinced that Americans don't work just as much, to be honest.
We do it more by choice and here it's more of a cultural norm or an expectation, maybe I should say, that you're going to put in a lot of hours each week in your company.
Another interesting thing about Korea is that I think you get paid half time for working extra hours instead of time and a half like you do in the US, right?
So I think that's changed.
I think now there is, you get more for overtime.
That loss is different now.
Yeah, I don't know if it's time and a half, but I know that it's more than your regular hourly wage.
Yeah. Okay, so that has changed.
Yeah, I would say I worked in both and I would say that it's hard to describe.
They are different, but they're both very hectic.
They're both fast paced work environments.
But I personally found my time in Korea to be a little easier than any job I've ever had in the US.
And I found that a lot of my coworkers, like 5 pm is when we'd be off of work and pretty much everyone by like 450, you know, was standing by the door, waiting for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For all their stuff packed and that's something in the US that if you did that, oh, you would be in some trouble.
But in Korea, a lot of people did that.
Some people came late to work as well.
I think it depends a lot of like what area you're in.
I was in a woods sun, which is a south and it has a little bit more of a relaxed vibe than Seoul probably would.
But I was really shocked by those things because it wasn't at all in alignment with, you know, what I thought.
And also a lot of the things that like we were actually encouraged to wear.
I did work for like an elementary school, but a lot of things that we were like encouraged to wear are not things that you would wear in the US to work that job.
Like leggings or like you're prohibited from wearing leggings.
You have to wear work pants in the US at any job.
Even at a preschool, I've worked at a daycare in the US and I had to wear a black work pants.
And you know, in Korea, they're like, oh, don't bother that.
Just wear some white jinks to work.
And it was absolutely jarring to me that, you know, as seriously, you know, be wearing casual wear.
So, yeah, I would say it was, but another big difference though is like in Korea, is that your boss can just bully you and be like way more hostile to you than what would be acceptable in the US.
And there's not like as much recourse, you know what I mean?
Yeah. I mean, I think that, and that might be the more I could do with your, you know, the school you were working at made me have just had a bad, like a bad apple.
Um, I think, but like when I talk to my other friends, I mean, a lot of people that had bad experience working at hog ones, I think hog ones are famous for being crappy on the whole.
And so I think it's probably different at the university level, you know, maybe, but I, and I think things are changing as well, like I remember when I talk to my Korean friends about like how my boss was, I remember them being like, ooh, like they could get in some trouble if you, if you knew how to navigate things.
But it's hard as well. I mean, one of my friends who's Korean herself, um, was bullied by her boss as well, working at an elementary school.
And, um, even though she knew the system and kind of was able to get a better situation, um, those are still things that commonly happen in the workplace, especially towards women.
I think that men, especially foreign men get like a break because you, you know, not much as expected of you guys.
So, you know, you're showing up and that's already a goal star for you.
I think, you know, I think it's a little different.
Yeah. I think it's, I think it's changing a little bigger companies are, you know, make, are implementing more policies to, to give people flexible time.
You can start when you want, you finish when you want, but you have to work eight hours a day.
Um, they're, they're starting to do that at companies.
The dress code is much more flexible as some of these companies, um, that I've, I've noticed.
Um, and I think maybe, you know, in Korea, sometimes like, you know, people are there, but, you know, they're not necessarily working.
They might be done with their work.
They're just kind of waiting for the clock to, to run out so they can go home.
Yeah. You know, it's, that's a little bit different in the US.
It's like, if you're, if you're done with something, your boss is going to come over and give you a mop and like, it will start mopping then or, you know, do something.
Yeah. If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.
It's like, right, time to lean, time to clean exactly.
That's exactly. And that, that for listeners who don't know, it's literally like, if you're standing at a counter and you're not like standing on both feet, you're just kind of like leaning on one foot and your boss sees that they'll come over and be like, if you have time to lean, you have time to clean and I'll give you something to clean.
Like, yeah, we're so like that in the US is kind of, it's miserable to be out there.
They own you for eight hours, you know, and no matter, you know, they can just work you to the bone.
That, that, you know, sometimes it's like, well, maybe I'm tired.
Maybe I'm tired from standing at my feet for, you know, six hours, making lattes or whatever, you know, for the last six hours.
And I'm tired. And there's just no, you know, and I don't feel that I feel like in Korea, it's starting to turn the tide is shifted or whatever.
It's gone the other way.
And it's starting to, they're starting to kind of get off the backs of the employees and give them some space and give them some autonomy and let them make those, you know, as long as you get your work done, I would, they don't care how you do it.
Yeah, which I think is, I think it's really interesting.
And I think that like millennial owned and maybe younger gen X own companies are like starting to shift in that direction as well in the US, but I think we'd have a long way to go.
And, but I think about work life balance I was interested by in Korea is the fact that people work hard, but they play hard.
Like on the week, it's rare.
Like in the US, we just go home and crash out and we're just dead for like any free time that we have, we're pretty much in a comatose state.
No one wants to go out, no one wants to do anything.
No one has any friends. Like most adults, my age have no friends.
Don't go anywhere or take out all the time incredibly overweight, not part of any like activities or groups.
Just lives kind of a miserable existence.
And in Korea, I would say that's really different.
It's like when, you know, most people, my age in their 20s are parts of, or in 30s, in 40s and 50s are parts of some kind of group, like an exercise group, a hiking group, dance lessons group, something.
Like there's some activity that they do.
They go out and party really hard on the weekends.
They have hobbies, which is just not so much of a thing in the US.
I don't know. What do you think about that, Jack?
Yeah. I think you might be right.
Well, I talk to a lot of people that work at large, the Korean people that work at large corporations.
And they all have hobbies and things that they love to do in their free time.
And they, you know, they work hard, but when work is done, they go on to, you know, spend their leisure time doing the things that they love to do.
And their company is no longer, you know, their number one priority in life.
You know, it's a job. They've got a better perspective on it than we do in America now.
I think in America, it's gone the other way.
It's more of an identity.
It's like, you know, your job is your main thing and then just surviving the rest of the time is all you can do.
You know, just sleep to catch up on the sleep that you missed because you're working so hard.
So I think you might be on to something.
Yeah. And then for Mexico, I would say that it's a little similar to Korea.
We have a six day work week in Mexico.
So most people work six days a week.
Wages are incredibly low.
Affordability is low. People just expect to work six days a week.
Over time, legally, we're only supposed to work eight hours, but over time is a part of most contracts and most people don't get extra compensation for over time.
Most people work 10 to 14 hour days.
On the six day, you usually get a half day.
So you might work like seven hours instead of 14.
Yeah, that sounds good.
It's a hard working life.
And yet, and yet there are a lot of people that I would say people still have hobbies.
People still have friends.
People still have relationships outside of the workplace.
People prioritize going out, even if it's just taking a walk for an ice cream or going to get a drink, like you see people have this active lifestyle outside of work.
And it's important they prioritize their free time and take as much advantage of it as possible.
The US is the only country I know where we just get home and like rot after all.
I don't know what it is. And I would say in Mexico as well that even though you're working those long hours, most jobs, you know, you have time to pull your phone out and answer text message, which is something I saw in Korea as well.
People would just answer their self-unsturing work.
In fact, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not what it used to be here.
They're not lording over you and monitoring every second of your day.
You're given some freedom.
You have your job responsibilities.
If you take care of it, you're fine.
Yeah. Yeah. And in the US, it's not like that.
If they have so much to see a glimpse of your phone, you're in so much trouble.
Yeah. And that's at any job.
You can be a teacher, you know, the only ones where you get some freedom is really when you're in a higher up position.
Like my dad, for example, is a professor at a university.
He gets more leeway, obviously.
Oh, yeah, yeah. But you kind of have to be in a really higher up position to get a little breathing room.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, you nailed it.
Yeah. Well, students, we're really interested to know what is work life balance like in your country.
We would love to hear from you guys.
Make sure to leave us a comment at a to z English podcast dot com.
Shoot us an email. Jack and I really like getting your listener emails at a to z English podcast at gmail.com and join the we chat on what's up group to join the conversation.
If you guys are interested, Jack and I are also running an English corner now.
It's one hour a day from a native Friday.
And we discuss topics just like these with the group of people who are also learning English.
It's really great because we have a lot of fluent speakers there.
And we also have Jack and I are native speakers.
And it's just a really great fun environment where we get to learn from each other's cultures and lives and experiences and discuss things in English.
So if you would be interested in that, make sure to shoot us a message or an email and we'll go back to you guys and give you some more info on that.
And I'll see you guys next time.
Bye bye.
