An interesting difference between American and Korean culture occurs in the service sector. Americans really like things made exactly the way they want. We add and subtract ingredients from our orders: I’ll have a Big Mac, no pickles. We now have services offered with a dizzying array of options, many not even on the menu, just known through word-of-mouth: You’re ordering a grande bone-dry cappucino, and I will have a double tall Americano, one Splenda, with room for cream. And put a half inch of cold water in last, because it comes out pretty hot. Orders like this are not uncommon in coffee shops, and it doesn’t stop there. Everything is fully customizable, from the computer we’re ordering off the internet, to the wheels we’re putting on our car (I picked the Alcionas with the machined black finish, dude!), to kind of pillow you want to sleep on some hotels (even moderately priced business hotels now offer you a couple options, while the Westin has eight or nine options, some exotic). Without having done specific research, I have a feeling that this makes Americans feel special, in a small way. This is exactly what I like, exactly the way I like it, and that means it is just for me. It is an expression of my individualism. Starbucks built an empire on this concept. Things haven’t always been this way. Computers used to only come in pre-configured packages (in the 1980′s and early 1990′s), and originally, you could have any color Ford you wanted, as long as you wanted black.
Now contrast America’s “customization culture” with Korea. In the service sector, companies spend a lot of effort to determine what configuration of options will appeal to the largest number of people, and that’s what they offer. If they are successful, it will be reflected in sales. Not to say you can’t ask for a combination pizza without onions, but there doesn’t seem to be an expectation in Korea that you can have everything exactly the way you want it. For example, I went to Mr. Pizza once and noticed that while there were a lot of different kinds of pizzas available, none of them listed the toppings, on the English or Korean menus. So I asked our waitress what came on the New York Special. She didn’t know and had to ask the kitchen. She came back with the answer, but when I asked her what came on the El Paso Special, she had to go back to the kitchen again. It was expected that one would like the description (“a mixture of chicken and southwestern flavors”) and order based on that alone. I went to Quiznos with a Korean friend once, and he was amused watching me tell the waitress that I wanted a particular sandwich with light mayo, light lettuce, and no Italian dressing. She appeared quite put upon by all the requests. “In Korea, we feel like what is on the menu is what we serve. Until the sandwich is in your hands, its really none of your business,” he explained. “She’s probably thinking ‘If you don’t like what’s on the sandwich, why don’t you order a different one you like better?’”
We see this in the USA in some places too. I was in Little Italy in New York once, at the Ferrara Bakery, and asked if they had any connole with Genovese-style filling. “This is Ferrara’s,” I was told brusquely. [Read: "This is the way we make it, and we've forgotten more about Italian baked goods than you'll ever know, so just buy the damn connole, or take a walk, ya mamaluke."] A friend sent a slice of pizza back in Queens once because he thought it was terrible, and the cook came out and yelled at him. However, generally most service sector businesses are “all about the options.”
So Americans used to “having it their way” may find it somewhat of an adjustment when Korean service sector employees don’t intuitively grasp that. On the other hand, Koreans visiting America are sometimes overwhelmed by the options available. I have a friend who is a Korean Air Force officer, and he spent a year on a training rotation at an Air Force Base in Texas. His wife (also Korean) told me she was afraid to go into Starbucks. “I’d go in, and listen to the Americans ordering, and while I could understand every word they were saying, I had no idea what those words meant when strung together in that way. I’d ask for a cappucino, and the barista would ask me if I wanted it regular, wet, dry, or bone-dry. Did I want it in a to-go cup or a for-here mug? Would I like to try an espresso brownie with it? There were sometimes more options I can’t remember. I just want a cappucino!” This reminds me a little of the scene in Moscow on the Hudson when Vladimir, a recently-immigrated Soviet-era Russian in NYC goes to a supermarket to buy coffee for the first time, and when he finds half an aisle devoted to dozens and dozens of brands and varieties, hyperventilates and ends up in the hospital (remember, this was a man used to standing in line and taking whatever was handed him when he got to the front: “Do you have size 11 shoes?” “No, only size 8.” “Great, I’ll take 3 pairs.”). So on the other side of the coin from Americans who are used to lots of options, we have Koreans who aren’t. They rely on the company to put forth its best effort, and either that’s good enough for them, or they shop somewhere else.
Recently Mr. Pizza has come out with a “Build your own pizza” option, which looks just like a standard American custom pizza menu: a base price (depending on crust type and size), plus a certain amount for each topping. One upside is that double cheese doesn’t count as two toppings like it does some places stateside. I’m also seeing evidence of a move toward more customization/options in other businesses as well. I’m NOT saying this is a good thing (or a bad thing), but it is notable that it is happening. Is this specifically because Korean customers are letting businesses know they want more options? Or is it because foreign chain businesses that offer lots of options are doing well, and the domestic competition is getting wise to it? I have no idea.
Originally published March 2, 2009 at Jumping the Asymptote.
08/04/2009 at 10:59 am Permalink
I always have reverse culture shock when I visit America and get asked a million questions about how I want my food.
08/04/2009 at 11:03 am Permalink
Hey nice thought provoking piece. Good post. The biggest problem I usually have is ordering coffee at dunkin donuts. They generally water down the coffee. (sometimes they put about an inch or two of water over the top) I’m always certain to tell them not to do that. I also go to Dunkin enough that the employees know my girlfreind and me so they know not to do that. (There are only six dds in Jinju)
This post is a good reminder on how not to get stressed out or angry when something like this does happen. As for starbucks though, I think that a 5,000 won cup of coffee should at least be made the way the customer wants it. Hell there are restaraunts in Korea were 5,000 can buy you 7 side dishes, a bowl of soup, and a bowl of rice with and egg on top. Is it so much to ask that a 5,000 won cappuccino doesn’t have syrup and added automatically?
08/04/2009 at 5:13 pm Permalink
It’s funny you would write this at this time. I was just in McDonald’s a couple of days ago on my way home from the bar and I wanted to eat some burgers. It was too late (early?) and my only options were from the breakfast menu.
There is a bacon/egg/cheese McMuffin and a sausage/egg/cheese McMuffin, so I asked for a sausage/egg/cheese McMuffin with Bacon and was looked at with horror. After about 10 minutes of arguing, saying all they had to do was add bacon, I was told this order was “impossible”. When I asked why, I was told because it’s not on the menu. After a some more time passed, they finally relented arguing with the drunk foreigner and gave my a sausage/egg/cheese McMuffin with bacon added for an extra charge of 500 won, which is what I suggested to them in the first place. So much effort so so simple a request that was “impossible” because it wasn’t listed on the menu. How bloody hard is it to add bacon?
It’s almost akin to a Korean being unable to express the way they feel beyond “I’m fine thank you, and you?” while they’re puking their guts out from drinking too much.
09/04/2009 at 6:58 am Permalink
When my son came out for a visit we went into a little Korean-run icecream palor. He wanted a chocolate shake but the only two shakes on the menu that day were strawberry and kiwi. The chocolate icecream was right there, the chocolate syrup used for sundaes was right there, but NO chocolate shake was available. Why? Because it was not one of the options for the day….. stunning. Simply stunning.
09/04/2009 at 10:08 am Permalink
Kathryn, why is that stunning? This isn’t the West. As a Korean employee, I’m likely trying to carry out the wishes of my boss the best way I can. Everyone from my culture knows that what’s on the menu is what’s on offer. If someone wants a chocolate shake, they’ll go somewhere that has one. If I make one special for you, then someone else may want a chocolate shake, and then someone might want a raspberry shake, and we don’t have the ingredients for that. Or as an owner, maybe I don’t want customers coming into my shop telling me what to serve.
It was stunning to you because you came in with Western expectations. I’d be willing to be dollars to doughnuts that it wasn’t stunning to any Koreans. Not to say this doesn’t happen to me too, where I ask for something which appears easy enough to grant, but am refused. I guess what’s different is that I’m never stunned by that, as I half expect it.
09/04/2009 at 3:14 pm Permalink
how odd, I find that most Korean stores will bend over backwards to accomodate changes ~ provided you come in with a clear explanation of what you want, and let them know before they really get going. Yeah, sometimes people don’t have quite what you want, or they just don’t feel like preparing something off menu, but that happens . . . well, everywhere where you try and order an item not on the menu.
09/04/2009 at 8:57 pm Permalink
When I went into the local Pizza Hut several months back, I discovered they had revamped their menus, and the new menu now no longer included plain pepperoni pizza (at a pizza place, can you believe it?).
when I ordered one I was told they didn’t make them or offer them any more. “Oh,” says I, “okay, bye” and started walking for the door. Took them all of 10 seconds to put pepperoni pizza back on the menu for me, so I wouldn’t walk out the door to the Pizza Myoungga down the street.
Shop owners will change the menu if they wish to keep customers.
10/04/2009 at 6:33 am Permalink
Willem, it was stunning because the place was an ice cream palor. All they sold was ice cream. Sundaes, shakes, cones…… ice cream.
My son and I didn’t make a fuss. We didn’t stomp our dainty feet and belittle anyone. We simply thanked her and walked out.
It was stunning, nonetheless….
10/04/2009 at 8:34 am Permalink
I have trouble with the special order thing here in Korea because I have allergies: I hate being the jerk who’s putting up a fuss about getting the order wrong, but if I eat the cheese on top of the spaghetti, I’ll get sick, you know?
I’m also always ready to just walk out of a place: if they don’t want to give me what I ask for, I guess somebody else wants my money more than they do.
The thing that bothers me more than unwillingness to adapt the menu is restaurants that will turn me away if I’m by myself. It’s happened a bunch of times in Jongno, basically because they can make more money if they seat two at a table. I’d even happily share a table with a stranger, but being turned away is a slap in the face to me.
10/04/2009 at 8:44 am Permalink
Speaking of allergies, do Koreans not have any? I only ask because it seems no one ever believe me when I say I can’t eat something or something will kill me if I eat it. The only reason I can come up with for such thinking is that Koreans have never before encountered life-threatening allergies. Surely, they can’t otherwise want me dead?
10/04/2009 at 11:27 am Permalink
FDA, I think you just need to find the Korean word for the allergies that you might have, and then when you say that they will understand, if not then you need new friends. Robosayo, In some places it is understood that the food is for two people, and frankly that can be understandable given the type of restaraunt and the Korean abhorrence to eating alone. Now a situation where I could forgive a restaraunt would be an example like a han jeong shik place in Jeolla-do. In a place like that 15,000 won can buy you 2 full courses with about 3 main dishes and 30 side dishes. So the expectation that a person eating alone might not be able to eat all of that food and the restaraunt would end up throwing a lot away.
I can’t think of a time when I have been denied service but what hat annoyed me slightly have been times when the service has been so good that it became intrusive. I rember ordering some 돌솥 비빔밥 one time and I started to sample the individual vegitables at the top. Appearantly I couldn’t get any satisfaction out of the dish if I ate it that way, so the girl working there stired it for me. With that type of service I felt bad that she couldn’t accept any tips. Another time I was having 돼지 국밥 and the owner of that place was quite insistant that I add the salty little shrimp things. This kind of goes along with the idea that not only is their no choice sometimes in what their is to eat, but some times there are proper procedures that must be followed (and sometimes there are especially if you eat 영양돌솥 밥 one time I ate that without taking the rice out of the stone bowl and the bowl got too cold to cook the 누룽지). But also I think with western food there are proper procedures. I remember a Korean guy I knew, back in the states, who liked to eat peanut butter, jelly, ham and cheese sandwiches. When i confronted him on the issue he said, “What it’s American style.”
10/04/2009 at 12:31 pm Permalink
Interesting point about the “right and wrong” things to combine on a sandwich, 3gyup.
I also don’t mind being turned away if the food being ordered comes in mass quantity, though I’d appreciate it if they’d at least allow me the option of ordering the double portion (if it’s really THAT impossible to do a single portion) and then packing the rest away to take home for later.
But I’ve also been turned away from restaurants solely because they wanted to have more people at a table, even though the foods they served were individual portions.
Sometimes I take great glee in eating foods “the wrong way” and have also told ajummas to leave me along “I can do it myself” when I’m making my budaejigae the way I darn well please.
The eating alone thing is funny to me: eating alone is one of my favorite, relaxing things to do; it’s a calming ritual I’ve enjoyed for years, but the openly pitying faces and noises my Korean friends make when tell them I ate alone, even to the extent (as one conversation class told me) of asking “How can you eat/go to a movie alone? The people around you will feel uncomfortable seeing you eat alone, and you’ll wreck their eating/watching experience” was…surprising to me, with my high-individualism-rated culture.
10/04/2009 at 1:12 pm Permalink
Don’t get me wrong. I love eating alone too. I work in a middle school. Down the road from my middle school is a pristine little lake that is at the foot of a mountain. During lunch times, a kimbab picnic there can be the perfect getaway from the crowd and noise of the school cafeteria. But I also worked in at a national university in an English dormitory, and would frequently get asked where I was going, and if I was going out to eat, why was I going alone.
And yeah that sucks getting turned away from an individual portion place. Maybe they wanted two people there to drink a whole bunch of soju, or they were just racist.
11/04/2009 at 9:37 pm Permalink
Good post and discussion. This is a topic I’ve thought about but not yet seen discussed online.
I have to say that Willem’s comment to Kathryn came across as patronizing.
I’m an American, and have been in Seoul for six years. I like the Korean way better. For example, my American brother-in-law’s Starbucks order back home is embarrassing. His order comes across as a test of a barista. He’s proud of how complicated it is. Just drink the damn coffee.
I am a stickler for two things in Korea:
* Don’t be putting any syrup in my iced latte, young lady.
One can almost predict the kind of place where this is going to happen: any old-school coffee shop.
* Don’t be giving me dirty looks when I ask for butter for my muffin.
Yes, you two girls behind the counter at the Holly’s down the street, I’m talking to you. On the other hand, I don’t need a whole pat of butter, either, as was given to me by the kind but somewhat sad ajumma at the local coffee place (not a chain, but somewhat Western style).
13/04/2009 at 1:12 am Permalink
From what I have heard long-term residents of Japan say, 20 years ago it was much the same as in Korea today. I heard a story nearly identical to Kathryn’s. And as a vegan, while I’ve mostly had good experiences with special orders, a few bad ones do still sick in my craw.
Anyway, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article a while back about how US companies came around to offering so much choice — and why it doesn’t work for every product.
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html
13/04/2009 at 8:35 am Permalink
There appears to be no expectation of service in Korea – no one has been taught that the customer is king. It also appears to ask a Korean to think is also beyond them. On the menu equates to the wonderful education system – rote is everything … thinking is not.
13/04/2009 at 8:36 am Permalink
Saw an add in a US newspaper for an Accent $ 7,995.00 – wonder what the price in Korea is.
13/04/2009 at 7:19 pm Permalink
I tend to enjoy Korean food… except when I’m by myself. After being shunned or ignored when walking in by myself at most Korean restaurants (Gimbap places being the only real exception – at a couple thousand won per roll you need volume like nobody’s business), I’ve reserved going Korean for those times when I’m with friends, on a date, etc.
Yes, in 95% of cases the restaurant will know their food better than the customer will. For those people, the restaurant is allowed to presume the ‘standard’ / ‘default’ choices for an entree. For the remaining 5% – the foodies of the world, those with allergies, or those from Seoul Eats / Fat Man Seoul – you have the right to change what you deem necessary, and to walk out without paying if that seems too ‘difficult’ for the place.
13/04/2009 at 9:58 pm Permalink
We’ve got a lot of options in the ‘States now, but you don’t have to go to far back to find the ‘if it’s not on the menu, you can’t have it’ mentality. Look at the famous toast scene from Five Easy Pieces. From the wikipedia article:
The movie’s most famous scene takes place in a roadside restaurant where Bobby tries to get a waitress (Lorna Thayer) to bring him a side order of toast with his breakfast, which is not on the menu. Despite appeals to logic and common sense, the waitress adamantly sticks to the rules of the restaurant, so Bobby orders “a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce.” and to hold the chicken. When the waitress asks “You want me to hold the chicken, huh?”, he tells the waitress “I want you to hold it between your knees.”
Granted, this is a movie, but there you go.
17/04/2009 at 3:45 pm Permalink
It’s not just that “westerners like choices butKoreans don’t,” but rather some structural differences in how food is traditionally prepared, and how the Korean restaurant industry works. Most Korean restaurants specialize in a small number of dishes, with an equally small range of customizable options. If you want samgyetang, you go to a samgyetang restaurant. If you want ddeokpokki, you go to a bunshik place. But you wouldn’t go to a galbi restaurant and ask if they could set you up with a bowl of maeuntang, because if you’d wanted maeuntang in the first place you should have gone someplace that served it. The almost complete segregation of different types of food meant that instead of asking an order to be altered, you have to plan ahead as to which type of cuisine you want.
Furthermore, many foods in Korea are difficult or unprofitable to make in small batches, and frequently take significant time to prepare. If you need kosher kimchi, you can’t just order it at any restaurant, and if you’re vegetarian it’s unlikely that a restaurant will be able to prepare a single non-meat entree without you contacting them ahead of time. That’s not to say that they couldn’t serve a bowl of bibimbap without the meat and egg, but that they’re unaccustomed to even thinking about it. Some of this translated over into other styles of restaurant service as non-Korean food popularized.
That said, even in the western world there’s only significant customization among certain kinds of places; primarily those that specialize in to-go food. Starbucks, for example, customizes everything but has also had to undertake specific corporate and cultural practices to make it possible for both customers and staff to achieve this level of choice. Fast food restauraunts and sandwich shops also provide significant customization, but primarily at the cost of food quality – precooked or raw items are assembled, rather than cooked in the more meaningful sense of the word, allowing the cooks to quickly and easily make adjustments. Regular restaurants can often, but not always, adjust some dishes prior to their arrival at the table. Also, since Korean restaurants generally serve a small amount of ALL available side dishes to each diner, it eliminates the need to chose among them as you would if you didn’t care for a side at a western restaurant.
17/04/2009 at 4:47 pm Permalink
I think you’re talking about traditional Korean restaurants, right? Not Mr. Pizza, which is also a Korean restaurant.
I completely agree. This is the famous SNL Belushi/Ackroyd Cheeseburger skit.
Also in agreement. And I think this illustrates my point: Koreans aren’t used to the level of customization and choices that Westerners prefer, and this has been affected (or possibly effected) by Korean restaurant menus. I think it didn’t just translate into other styles of restaurant service, but the way individual Koreans feel about choices. The woman in my example was terrified of Starbucks, and I could see how cultural experiences in her “only ddeokbokki” restaurant could set her up for that.
I’d disagree with you “can often but not always adjust some” dishes. I’d say “almost always will adjust any dish.” If I go into a Dennys and ask for a Denver omelet hold the mushrooms, it comes without mushrooms. If I go to a white tablecloth joint, they’ll bend over backwards to give me what I want. I ordered a filet-mignon once and decided I wanted it bacon-wrapped, which wasn’t on the menu, and they did that for me. The only times that I can think of when I can’t customize is when something is pre-made, like spaghetti sauce. If it has mushroom bits in it, I’ll have to live with them or order a different kind of sauce.
So I guess the big question is: Does the Korean food industry’s lack of choices cause Koreans to not need them, or does the not needing choices make the food industry the way it is? I think its a little from column A and a little from column B (i.e. I think the two covary).