My Alba Work Story: Finishing work in the mornings
I began alba work at McDonalds as a part-time night worker with high hourly pay.    
My walk to work, with its same street and same sights that I quickly tired of, always took place at night. With my hair still not dry after showering, I walked down a Sinchon alley lined with flashing neon signs. Unlike me, with my hastily thrown-on jacket, McDonalds uniform pants, and bare face, people of a similar age to me that were spiffed up in every way seemed to be drunk and enjoying themselves. At the time - four years ago - I was an alba worker at McDonalds working from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. 
 
# I see an ad for night alba at McDonalds
 
At 26, I’ve now had many alba jobs over the last ten years. I started at an age when I had to pay for reference books and singing room visits with money called “an allowance”. As someone who couldn’t get a regular allowance, I signed the parental permission slip in my second year of high school without telling my mom and went to earn money. Having worked at a bar, a clothes store, an Internet café, a fancy restaurant, a pizza place, a call center, a department store, and other places, I can say that my favorites were corporate chains. In my experience, that’s the only type of alba employer that promptly issues paychecks and reliably pays extra - as it should - for weekend, holiday, and nighttime work. And that’s only when it’s a branch managed directly by the company, not a franchise.
 
And they’ve been the only places that have kindly recognized my alba experiences as work experience. To be honest, no white-collar employers have so far given me credit for my high school diploma or my numerous alba jobs. So naturally, even if it’s just an alba job, I prefer directly-managed branches of corporate chains. It has been stressful and annoying when, at small independent businesses, I haven’t been paid on time and knew that the owner didn’t have the money to do so, or I’ve had to go to the Ministry of Labor red-faced after the job finished and report the employer so that I could receive all the paychecks they owed me.
 
About five years ago, in the autumn of my twenty-first year, I was about to begin living on my own in the Sinchon district of Seoul. I had to earn money so that I could enjoy my university life, which was getting off to a late start. After I had been studying for a year and fall was turning into winter, I was doing alba work four to five times per week in order to pay for the next semester’s tuition and living costs. It was three or four shifts at a bar, and then on the weekends I worked at the customer service desk of a department store. 
 
Then, when I suddenly noticed the ad for alba openings at McDonalds, I thought, “Here’s an alba environment that can give me a new kind of satisfaction.” I was bewitched by this strange ad that promised a discount on conversation classes at a nearby English institute, eventual chances for promotion, close relationships with coworkers, the special atmosphere of the Sinchon branch, etc. At that time, the work seemed not like mere alba but alba that offered benefits and would improve my welfare. And since the ad was for the night shift, I thought there wouldn’t be many customers, so the work would be easy.
 
What most drew me, though, was the high hourly pay. It was 1.5 times the minimum wage. I thought that this would allow me to cut the days I worked from 4-5 times a week down to 2-3 times a week, making me less tired. This plan even made me glad that the school break was approaching. Of course, at that time it was still the semester, so I sometimes had to go to school the next day, but the thought that I wouldn’t be afraid to work nights when the break came made me look forward to it. Naturally, none of this worked out like I planned, but I did begin my time on the McDonalds night shift with expectations that it would be different from my other alba jobs.
 
# Working from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.
 
I was the only female alba worker on the night shift. When a female manager was on duty, the number of women climbed to two, but otherwise I never saw a female worker at night. When I would cross the kitchen, greeting the “crew” (that’s what McDonalds calls its workers) that were working, and enter the “crew room”, the oppa that worked with me would be changing their clothes, sitting at the table watching videos on their phone, and giggling.
 
I lived in Sinchon, so I could walk to the restaurant in 15 minutes, but the oppa came from farther away. Most had been brought along, by transferred managers who liked them, from other branches. Strangely, they had all worked at McDonalds for more than two years. Some of them were university students or had day jobs in addition to this one, while the motorcycle delivery oppa were older men who had three jobs.  The reason that there were a lot of men on the night shift was that they had to clean the restaurant and move heavy food items for the next day. The reason that I was necessary was because they needed a female worker to work at the counter.
 
Male crew members could just change their clothes and put on a hat, but I had to put on a hair net, and I put on lipstick to hide my otherwise-makeup-free face. It was annoying, but a fairly mild demand compared to other jobs in the service industry. The oppa would say, “Put on some makeup!”, but even if I did, it was erased only too easily by sweat and grease. After I finished these preparations, we would talk generally about who would take a break when that day, and then go out into the kitchen.
In contrast to my expectation that the work would be easy, Sinchon’s McDonald’s was full of customers at night.    
 
In order to let the crew that worked before us get home quickly, I always arrived about 20 minutes early and helped them finish up. Our branch had a lot of university students who had classes in the morning, and I wanted to make their lives easier. Also during the shift change, if there was a sales event or a new menu item, I would have to be told about it and practice on the cash register. When expressions that had turned dour from fatigue at the end of the shift would light up on seeing me, it made me happy. My workday started with joy that someone else could go home and with words of thanks for coming out quickly.
 
Sinchon is in full swing at 10 p.m. There are people who come to McDonalds to satisfy their hunger after drinking and people who get a burger to go on their way home after finishing the day late. There were so many customers that I would wonder, “How can this many people eat burgers?” Things would usually calm down when the subway stopped running for the night – except on the weekends. Then, crew members who had been scheduled to finish at 11 p.m. sometimes had to stay on until 2 a.m. (because the number of customers was too large for me to handle alone).
 
Anyway, my main tasks weren’t just taking customers’ orders and calling out, “Your food is ready” like the day workers do. They were things that were necessary for business to run smoothly in the mornings and afternoons. I cleaned and filled things - I would clean the deep fryer that made our French fries, disinfect the soda dispenser, clean the coffee machine and ice cream machine, or fill up empty sauce dispensers. 
 
I moved heavy things, cleaned, tidied, and then cleaned grease-smeared things some more, and waited for morning. It was simple work, and there was an order to it. Like an assembly line at a factory, once this task was finished that one had to be done, and then the next thing. I could feel the end of the shift getting a little bit nearer as I finished each part, and it made me happy.
 
But that joy didn’t come easily. McDonalds’ food is full of grease, so there is grease everywhere. The floor, the ceiling, the trays, the deep fryer, the belts the burgers travel on, etc. It’s so bad that McDonalds has a special cleaning fluid to remove it. It is toxic to even sniff this fluid. I would move the deep fryer full of grease into the sink, and release the cleaner into the hot water. I tried to keep my hands from coming into contact with the water, but it was unavoidable, and I would get blisters or even mysterious red spots on them.
 
When I was first learning how to do this work, the crew member training me said, “This cleaner is very strong, so don’t get it on your hands. All of the cleaning fluids we use are exclusive to McDonalds’, and they’re totally different from the soapy stuff we use.” I also used different types (I think there were four or five) of nameless cleaners to wipe down the tables and the beverage dispensers. And the trays, and the floors.
 
# Many alba workers’ meal, the burger
 
Night alba work didn’t make me as tired as I’d expected. Actually, there was no time to be tired. The work was definitely enough to make me tired, as it involved lifting heavy things and continuous movement, but there was no time to be sleepy. The anxiety of having to finish my work quickly, and impatience to finish it, made me work diligently. That was the only way I could greet the morning sun with a light heart. 
 
But among all this, the hardest part was – of course – dealing with customers.  In addition to those who always came at the same time, there were those who drunkenly demanded food we didn’t sell and, once, a foreigner who stumbled in and then spent two hours talking to himself before leaving.
 
One interesting thing was that the regular customers were mostly night alba workers like me. Once I realized they were regulars, we began to chat a little, and that’s how I learned what they did. One of them was the owner of a fried chicken restaurant that I often went to. When he first saw me at McDonalds, he said I looked familiar, so I said, “I often go to XX restaurant. You’re the owner, right?” He said he hadn’t recognized me in my uniform, and greeted me. I eventually learned that all sorts of night workers - him, the alba workers at the ox bone soup place behind the McDonalds and even at the chicken feet restaurant next door to it – ate burgers. This cheap and quickly-prepared food was both snack and meal to alba workers.
 
A chart of the menu items offered for free to McDonalds workers, divided by job type and shift length.    
When I think about it, I also had no choice but to eat a burger once a day while working at McDonalds. They called it a “crew meal”, and provided it instead of Korean food. We could have it during our break times, which we didn’t always get, when the restaurant wasn’t busy and before we began selling the morning menu items. (From 4 a.m., McDonalds begins “McMorning” and sells breakfast sandwiches like the McMuffin instead of burgers.) When I had finished most of my tasks (or when I couldn’t) I would go into the crew room with a burger, fries, and a drink, and eat my lunch-like breakfast.
 
I would eat a different type of burger every day, but it was no use – they were all the same. They were both tasty and gross. I would eat one for 30 minutes while watching a boring entertainment show that had been downloaded to the crew room computer. Since then, I’ve been the best consumer of hamburgers, able to explain and judge the taste of any of them. I’ve continued eating them regularly since quitting, even though I didn’t before I started working there. Since I had been totally envious of the drunk customers that would come in, I now seek out McDonalds habitually when I drink. 
 
# Letting go of the reliable routine and high pay of night alba 
 
It’s hard to clearly explain the reason why I quit my night alba job at McDonalds. In order to endure that work, I had to get along well with the rest of the crew, and in order to do that, I had to go for a drink with them every morning after finishing. They would always say it would just be a meal, but there was always alcohol. The “close relationships” that the job ad had promised were made after the sun came up and we finished work. I was tired and wanted to go home and rest, or had to go straight to school, but instead I soothed my fatigue with alcohol. I wouldn’t say that I liked drinking with my coworkers, but that we all considered it compensation for a difficult workday. We consoled each other with alcohol while others were just beginning their day. The mess that this habit made of my day forced me to quit McDonalds before I had even been there six months.   
 
Now that I think about it, I was quite lonely then. I was always working, but my bank account was always empty, and so I could never meet up with friends. When I wanted to make plans to see them, I would think first not of the faces of those I wanted to see, but of my bank balance, and the thought of going to work the next day made me tired. Even though I lived in Sinchon, near the “Street of Youth”, I couldn’t have any real fun. I don’t remember Sinchon’s warm, bright days as much as I do its debauched and alcohol-soaked nights - and I was so sorry for myself for missing out on even the latter that I would drink in the mornings to try to forget the daytime that I was missing out on.
 
But when I quit, it was difficult to readjust my internal clock. I tried to go to bed early but would lay there wide awake - and then fall asleep around dawn and dream about fighting with customers who wanted burgers. I still worried that my manager would call me in for an emergency shift.
 
In the end, I had no choice but to keep doing night alba, working for short times at different place like Lotteria [another fast food restaurant] or bars. I ended up choosing night over day, and after living like that for a while, I quit school, too. To make a living, I haven’t been able to let go of the living pattern and pay rate of nighttime alba, the work I thought I would do for just a short time. My struggle to greet the morning with a sound mind is also ongoing.
 
Who named Sinchon’s main street the “Street of Youth”? In my memories, there was no youth in Sinchon, just dark and depressing nights. Even now when I go there, I am overwhelmed with memories of those days. Even now, Sinchon’s streets at night have flashing street signs and alba workers who toil below them, young people throwing up in alleys and fast, cheap burgers that fill their empty stomachs. And the McDonalds workers who make those burgers are standing there instead of me.
[Translated by Marilyn Hook]
 
* Original article: http://ildaro.com/7898 Published June 7, 2017
 
◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).