Where all the...

... foreigners are expected to be astonishingly, irredeemably, heartbreakingly stupid.

Returned to the bank today to restore the check to my account. Forty-five minutes later, victory of a sort!* The teller called Avalon again, (at least this time I was right there, and it wasn't a huge and unpleasant surprise) and spent somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes in back-and-forth with one of the Korean teachers in the elementary campus (not even in my own office anymore, this privacy thing is really a winner) and with me. Most of it was them trying to convince me I really didn't want to put the check back in. Some minutes were spent talking to other bank people, and a great many were spent frowning at the screen and tapping away, as though some magical key combination would make me leave. (I can't really blame her, though. After the whole check thing and the ATM incident, I imagine they have flagged me at that bank. There will come a day when they will bar the doors if they see me coming).

The interpreter started by telling me the woman was sure I could send the check. I explained that the post office woman had not agreed. Was I sure? Well, she had definitely refused to send it and written down the words, "banned item" for me, just to be clear, so yes. Pretty sure. Did I know the interpreter had an American husband to whom she had sent money successfully through the post before? No, and congratulations to you both, but I was still sure I did not want to continue carrying around a functional cashier's check, redeemable at Citibank. I wanted the money back in my account. I understand accounts, I understand money that stays in them. This was truly All I Wanted. I was warned  that there would be a pretty serious penalty for undoing the check. Was I totally sure I didn't want to go back to the post office and try again? In the end, I got to pay $22 to unwrite the thing.

From the exchange, it eventually came out that it is not illegal to post a money order. It is illegal to send a check through the mail without an envelope. I spent ten minutes getting told by the post office that my check was a banned item, and a further forty-five minutes today undoing it, because the post-office lady thought I was showing it to her with the intent of sending it through the mail without an envelope.


Really? Really, Korea?

*This is the traditional call of triumph in the perennially Pyrrhic war of the Individual versus The Established Bureaucracy. It is optimally accompanied by the also-traditional Three Big Finger Twirls.