When we opened the door to the assigned meeting room, several cameras and about a dozen production staff greeted us.
"Spark, welcome!"
"Hello, we’re Spark! Please take good care of us!"
"Wow, rookies really do have a different kind of spirit."
The PD smiled brightly and pointed to the empty seats at the conference table.
We sat in a row on the side facing the cameras.
The content of "Challenge! Life Experience" is simple.
The day before filming, the cast meets the production team and is told what work they’ll be doing the next day.
And the very next day, you’re thrown straight onto the site. That was the whole format.
When a specific skill was required, there were cases where we took a class prepared in advance by production the day before.
≫ Yeonji’s face when she heard we had to take a skin-scuba lesson
startled hamster T_T T_T T_T T_T
└ Since they said skin-scuba, I thought it was an aquarium part-time job, but it was actual diving... ;;
└ Life Experience is really ruthless...
Otherwise, you just crash through it purely with stamina, grit, and nerve.
Honestly, as long as it’s not parcel-sorting and loading, I don’t mind. If it’s only me, fine; but it’d be a problem if those punks got hurt.
While I was turning over this and that in my head, the formal greetings with the PD wrapped up smoothly.
Then the main business began.
"First, you all know what kind of program we are... right?"
"Yes!"
"Good. But there’s one problem."
From the start? That’s inconvenient.
Seeing the members flustered, the PD spoke with a serious face.
"Because the legal working hours for minors are seven hours, the younger ones will clock out first, and our oldest will have to close up among yourselves."
It really was a big problem. My heart was already pounding at the thought of running around till sweat pooled in my soles.
After dropping only me and Choi Jeho into a pit of darkness, the PD asked a question.
"Has anyone here worked a part-time job?"
"I only did a few gigs as a shopping-mall clothing model."
Choi Jeho said it. The punk did a pretty stylish part-time.
The rest, given their age, all just shook their heads.
As for me, I do have part-time experience... but if it came to having to prove it later, that’d be troublesome, so I decided to keep quiet.
Seeing us, the PD nodded and exclaimed.
"Tomorrow, the place Spark will work is the holy land of part-time jobs: a cafe!"
"A cafe?"
For a shooting location, it was a fairly mainstream part-time.
Cafe work is hard. There are lots of menu items, and so many difficult customers.
But considering the special nature of a program that once even had a famous actor remove a beehive, I didn’t think they’d nicely put a six-member group into a single cafe.
‘Is it a cafe with a long waiting line? Or a station-area cafe, or a large-scale cafe? Are we at the timing for a big chain’s seasonal drink drop right now?’
I roughly narrowed candidates in my head.
Unlike me, the guys sitting next to me were making a racket about wanting to try on cafe uniforms and how they liked barista roles in dramas.
"You can’t leave out cafes when it comes to part-time jobs. Because it’s a workspace with a high ratio of part-time laborers, you could say it’s a work site close to our everyday life!"
With that, the PD opened a sketchbook.
"This afternoon, after you receive training from a professional barista, you’ll run a one-day free beverage giveaway event tomorrow in Gangnam!"
"Gangnam?!"
"Why, Iwol?"
The moment I checked the spot marked in red on the map, I doubted my eyes.
Gangnam.
To endure from open to close at a cafe in Gangnam!
I got dizzy. I felt like I might faint any minute.
"What’s wrong, Iwol?"
"Are you worried there’ll be too many customers? Still, it seems a bit away from the station."
At Park Juu’s question, Kang Giyeon looked at the map and answered for him.
"It’s Gangnam. You think there won’t be a single cafe on the way from the station to here? The flow will disperse just fine."
Choi Jeho added a {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} word.
Instead of listening closely to them, when I looked up, the PD and staff were wearing sly smiles.
Right, it’s not exactly right next to the station.
But...
"PD, could you show me the map again?"
I took the map from the PD.
My uneasy intuition was not wrong.
Within two blocks of the red-marked point, everything was high-rise buildings.
"Guys, we’re in trouble..."
I muttered it like a last will. My vision went dark.
Office workers at lunchtime are very busy.
Some companies have such good benefits that lunch is an hour and a half to two hours, or they say you can just go eat when you want.
But most companies without a cafeteria set lunch from 12:00 to 1:00.
To use that one hour efficiently, there can’t be any wasted steps.
Decide on the lunch menu from 11:00 in advance. If you’re going to a restaurant with a long line, dash out the moment it turns noon.
Drinks are to-go. Reserve restaurants that take reservations starting the prior week, and place orders ahead in cafes that have an app.
As if there were a manual, office workers moved like a knife. And the places so many office workers headed after eating split into three for the most part.
Smoke, go for a walk...
"...or go to a cafe."
The place marked on the map was precisely a zone dense with companies.
Even I, who hardly drinks coffee, knew: any cafe near offices is packed in the morning and at lunch.
On top of that, a free beverage giveaway event for filming.
We were doomed. We would probably be shaken until coffee grounds came out of our pores.
‘Maybe they tried to balance it with free giveaways since it’s hard to call it an extreme environment...’
All of that is a lame excuse. Even I would drink anything but lye if it’s free; let alone office workers’ essential potion.
"Why have you been staring into space since a while ago?"
Jeong Seongbin asked. In his hand was a smoothie he’d spent half the day making today.
I replayed in my head the performances the members had shown throughout the day.
Then I looked at Jeong Seongbin and answered.
"I’ve been thinking about how we can finish sales successfully tomorrow."
"Challenge! Life Experience" had recently been going through a bit of a plateau.
The reason was simple. As the rumor spread that the program was grueling, casting became difficult.
The show’s main content was to re-spotlight hard and exhausting but necessary jobs.
Naturally, the tasks the production prepared were fairly high-intensity.
As with many variety writers, the Life Experience writers likewise had to devote a lot of time to outreach.
High-intensity job → but one still easy enough that a celebrity could do it → but still hard enough that viewers will think, "That person is suffering." → ...
As this dilemma repeated, ideas were drying up, and guests were in short supply.
At such a time, the main PD decided to take another look at items that had been rejected for various reasons.
Cafe part-time work was also one of the items rejected ages ago.
The reasons for rejection were diverse.
Too common; not perceived as being as hard as other items...
So the production attached options to raise the difficulty. They even considered timing it to a big chain’s seasonal drink release—they were serious to that degree. But an internal opinion said not to meddle with nationwide events, so they eventually dropped that.
Once the item was set, the cast became a problem again.
It was fine to raise the difficulty, but from the background research it was obvious that one or two people wouldn’t be enough hands.
At times like these, idols are the go-to. Many members, and the newer they are, the less they avoid jobs whether easy or hard.
However, everything in the world has two sides.
There was a reason Life Experience, desperate for cast, still rarely called rookie idols.
≫ C*S is seriously so frustrating
Isn’t it too much to fail to memorize table numbers all day?
Even I could memorize them just watching the edited broadcast
I almost changed the channel
Koreans can’t stand frustration.
Viewers, while enjoying watching cast flustered doing unfamiliar work, also wanted the cast to handle the work at a professional level.
You could tell from the high views of videos on various platforms titled "Compilation.zip of cast who conquered Life Experience."
And—not everyone, but—most idols debuting these days were not only very young in age.
Because they’d been trainees aiming to debut from a very young age, they, so to speak, had no sense for work.
People who work well are loved anywhere. Life Experience needed celebrities like that.
So the production first reached out to a large agency’s rookie boy group, Parte, who had debuted not long ago. In broadcasting, there was still the trust that "the big companies at least educate them properly!"
In conclusion, the offer was declined.
For a moment, the Life Experience producers forgot this: one reason big agencies are "good" is that they prevent their own celebrities from going on programs with such awful cost-performance.
While the writers were clutching their heads like that—
"If a rookie group is okay, how about this group?"
Someone mentioned Spark in a meeting for the first time.
"They’re similar in debut timing to Parte, and there are a lot of comments on SNS and in communities that they’re sharp and on the ball."
At the same time, a short video came up on the conference-room projector. The title was "An idol whose sense for work is suspiciously brilliant."
When it played, the fair-skinned pretty youth from the thumbnail filled the screen.
"Juu, cleaning goes from top to bottom."
"I uploaded the guide to the shared folder, so please check it yourselves. If it says you don’t have permission, tell me."
Over a few short but clear cuts, captions explaining the situation went by.
Writing press releases directly; showing how to put functions into a web spreadsheet; doing greasy dishwashing cleanly; and so on.
Since we got turned down by Parte anyway, might as well go for it!
With that mindset, the Life Experience team sent a booking inquiry to UA.
And that afternoon, they received a reply that we were available anytime.
"If we keep one existing cafe employee as a supporter, with that many hands there won’t be a meltdown."
Thinking through even the what-ifs, the main PD prepared the shoot.
At the brief meeting the day before filming, there was a little worry.
They were all tall and handsome, yet most still had a babyish look on their faces. Only the youth from the video radiated the air of someone who’d been through the wars, making him the only one to rely on.
After this long series of ups and downs, on a warm day in May, the door to "Challenge! One-Day Cafe" opened.
