Irish teacher Katie Mulrennan had been teaching English around the globe for years, in Oxford, Dubai, and Seoul, when she was rejected for a position by a South Korean teaching agency. Why? Because she was Irish, and therefore, a stinking drunk.

“I am sorry to inform you that my client does not hire Irish people due to the alcoholism nature of your kind,” the email, provided to the BBC, read. (It is unclear whether they also rejected her for being a potato-eater and a Papist.)

Mulrennan, who says she found the posting on Craigslist and had never met the recruiter in person, eventually saw the humor in it:

“Usually when you apply for a job and they don’t want you, they don’t send a reply,” she said. “Or they tell you they would prefer someone from North America, because some schools prefer the accent. “But this reply was a first. When I got the email, it was so abrupt and short. I actually laughed when I read it initially. “But then I wanted to write back a really angry response. “In the end I took a deep breath and sent back a reply, that was a little bit sarcastic as I couldn’t believe the email I had received. But I haven’t heard anything back since.”

Ironically, Euromonitor reports that South Korea consumes the most alcohol per person in the world, knocking back more than five times the amount of alcohol per week than the Irish.

According to the World Health Organization, 13.51% of Koreans can be considered alcoholics –ranked just below Russia and Lithuania — which is a lot compared to 6.03% of the Irish.

[BBC]

[Image via Shutterstock]

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