"Forced to Pay 500,000 Won for Team Lunches in a Week"... Company Culture Drives New Employee to Quit, Sparks Outcry

One Person Pays for All Team Lunches Each Week
Team Leader Outraged After Refusal: "I'll Have Lunch Separately from Now On"

A story about a new employee at a small and medium-sized enterprise in Korea deciding to quit after just one week due to the company’s unusual lunch expense settlement system has become a hot topic online.

Office workers moving to have lunch in Myeongdong, Jung-gu. Not directly related to the specific content of the article. Photo by Jinhyung Kang

On June 19, KNN introduced the story of Mr. A, a new recruit at an SME, which was recently posted on an online community.

Mr. A wrote, “I usually eat a simple lunch or sometimes skip it altogether, but I joined my six or seven teammates for lunch to fit in with the team atmosphere.”

He explained, “Over the week, we had various dishes like Chinese food and Galbitang, and each time, the team leader paid for the meal, so I naturally assumed he was using the corporate card.”

However, he said he only learned about the company’s lunch expense system when the team leader asked, “Who’s going to pay next week?” The team operated under a so-called “solo relay” system, where each week one person would pay for all team members’ lunches for the entire week.

Mr. A confessed, “If you estimate the meal cost per person at about 10,000 won, for six to seven people, each meal comes to 60,000 to 70,000 won. If one person pays for everyone’s lunches for a week, it’s around 500,000 won, which was a heavy burden for me.”

Feeling overwhelmed by this arrangement, Mr. A told his colleagues, “I’ll settle this week’s lunch expenses, but I didn’t know this was how it was run. I’m sorry. Starting next week, I’ll eat separately.”

The team leader got angry, saying, “If you pay for one week, you get treated for the rest of the month, so what’s the problem?” Hurt by this, Mr. A decided to hand in his resignation after only one week on the job.

Once the story became known, netizens criticized the company culture as being virtually forced. They commented, “Regardless of the amount, it can be a big burden for someone who usually has a simple meal,” “No one should be forced to join if they don’t want to,” and “It’s hard to understand a culture where you end up spending hundreds of thousands of won on lunch when you’re supposed to be making money at work.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.