The woes of working

It's been difficult at work lately. Not because of the often undisiplined children, but because of my prick of a boss.

It all started when I first rode my motorbike to work, about a month ago. I proudly walked into work with my helmet tucked under my arm and a smile upon my face and happily greeted the boss's wife, who works at the front desk. Instead of being greeted by the smile that she usually greeted me with, she looked at my helmet and gave me a concerned look. I told her, in my best Konglish, that I had a bike. I went into the teacher's office to get ready for teaching.

The day of teaching went by just like normal. When the day was over, instead of being able to leave like I do everyday, I was summoned into the office.

"What the hell did I do", thought I.

Susan, the Korean manager/teacher who does the translation from the boss to the other Canadian English teacher and myself, was there to translate what my boss and his wife wanted to say. I had told Susan at an earlier point that I was thinking of buying a motorbike. She advised against it; telling me about how dangerous a motorcycle is in Korea because of all of the bad drivers. She told me that she won't even drive a car here, because she's too scared of the road.

"Whoop dee do!", thought I.

"I'm scared of suffocating in a city bus, due to the massive hoards of ajummas (older ladies) and schoolgirls that cram themselves into every bus during the day.", thought I.

So at the meeting, she asked why I had bought a bike after she "told me not to buy one, and I promised not to".

What the dirty fudge!?! I promised no such thing! Maybe she should start learing English instead of the Konglish that she's currently both speaking and teaching.

The rest of the "meeting" consisted of the boss telling Susan, who then told me, why bikes are dangerous.

Maybe I should've told him that it's not the bike that is dangerous, but the crazy drivers like him that make the road dangerous for bikers (as well as everyone else).

At the end of the meeting they told me to sell the bike, then they sent me home.

Starting the next Monday, I started parking my bike a couple of blocks from work and locking my helmet to it.

Out of sight, out of mind; right?

Over the past month, I've been called into the office three out of the past four weeks on account of my boss, at the beginning of this, being "worried about me", and then on account of my "bad teaching" over the past couple of weeks.

Why was my boss "worried about me"? Apparently the bus driver for my hagwon (private school) saw me walking around with a large group of foreigners. I was then given a lecture about spending too much time at the bars and staying out too late.

What the monkey? What business is it of his what I'm doing outside of the school, as long as I'm not doing anything (highly) illegal and/or telling Korean parents that his school is terrible? He's seeming to think that he's my guardian. Yes, he is my sponser, but unless I'm doing something to get kicked out of the country, he should bugger the hell off.

The other thing that he was/is worried about is that I'll injure myself in my bike and I won't be able to come into work. I mentioned to him that more people get hurt playing sports than riding a bike and asked if I should quit playing sports as well. That didn't even register with him.

Should I stop living; doing the things that I like just because there's a chance that I might get hurt? Screw that, I'd rather not live.

The last thing to surface was the "bad teaching" thing. I'm still not sure what I was doing wrong. Nobody ever told me anything specific (other than a horde of contradictory minor things) that I should improve on. What do they want? A super teacher? I've only been teaching for almost three months (two months when all of this stuff started happening) and they should damn well know that this is my first teaching job. My resume was available to them. Where's the love... or the logic?

So on Friday, a bit over a week ago, I was given an ultimatum. I had to improve my teaching (becoming the best teacher ever, which was actually said to me) in a week, or I would be fired.

Naturally, I spend all weekend job hunting for prospective jobs. Luckily, there are plenty of jobs of English teachers around. Many are better paying and require even less hours than I'm already working (less than 30 a week).

If I was fired, my boss would be in breech of both my contract and of Korean law. My contract states that if I'm fired for any reason (aside from breaking a law that would get me deported), I am to be given 20 days notice. Strangely, this contractual stipulation if contrarty to Korean law. Korean law states that, in a fixed contract, that if you are over two months into it and less than six months, that either 30 days notice or 30 days worth of pay is to be given (http://www.efl-law.com/faqans_19.html).

Why is the contract different from Korean law? I really don't think that whoever wrote my contract out was fully aware of the law. Apparently that's a very common thing in this country. Contracts seem to not be worth the paper that they are written on.

There's also another very good reason for my boss to want to get rid of me. The school, which in only a year old, is losing large amounts of money. This is, no doubt, due to the excellent management skills of the office. I did some math and figured that while the school pulls in just over 8,000,000 won a month, they are losing somewhere around 12,000,000 won. If I was gone, they would only be losing under 2,000,000 a month. There's even rumours, told to us by Susan, that the boss is considering getting out of the English school business if there isn't a substantial influx of students by September.

Why the hell did they hire a second foreign English teacher if they were already losing money and thinking of closing down!?!

Every child has to pay 150,000 won a month to attend the hagwon (well, their parents do). There are around 50 students, and there were around 50 students when I started. They might've gained a couple of kids since I arrived three months ago, but nothing substantial. Again, what did they except from a teacher with no experience (me) to be? A super teacher with exceptional advertising skills for which to attract hoards of students with?

Speaking of advertising, in the bi-monthly meeting last Friday before work, it was suggested that when we have our students read, we should have them read as a group. Neither David, the other teacher, or myself could figure out how this would be more effective than having each student read individually. The largest class has only six kids in it, so everyone has many chances to read and to be corrected when they pronounce something drastically wrong. When they are reading as a group, it's impossible to pick out each error and to correct it. To me, this seems to be a very stupid way to have kids read in a small class. It's fine for a vocabulary excercise, but not for paragraph reading. When we gave this opinion in the meeting, we were told that some parents commented about how quiet the school was.

What in the blue hell?

Of course the school is going to be fairly quiet. There are only 50-some children over a period of six hours in it, which a current maximum class size of six!!!

Another reason that was given was that if our classes could be heard speaking English, then people outside would hear and want to send their kids to our school.

So the primary reason for group reading was for advertising (which I can't see working in this manner) and appleasing the parents who pay for their kids to try to learn English (some of the kids seem to have no interest whatsoever in English).

Our opinion on the subject wasn't even considered.

I really wanted to hit my boss at that point.

At any rate, last Friday came and went. I was expecting a meeting of some sort after work; to either be told that I am still working on Monday or to vacate my apartment, but neither happened. The family of the boss came to the school in preparation for a night out. I guess that I'm still working at the same school.

Maybe this was just a scare tactic so that I would magically attract more students?