Carrot Chronicles

The Genesis

I have never been fired in my life. Well... I've been "fired" twice, but once it was from the CLE and once from a hagwon in Korea. I put the word "fired" in quotes because the CLE is a carnival in Thunder Bay. It stands for the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition. The dude I worked for had stolen some money from the owners, as carnies sometimes do, and he needed someone to pin it on. I wanted the job for one reason: the shirt. While wearing a CLE shirt you get unlimited rides. So I got lotsa rides that day but I got fired for stealing money. I was totally innocent of course. Back then I was living the cleanest life I've ever lived, going to church and everything. I just laughed in the guy's face when he accused me. I knew exactly what he was doing.

I'm not sure which fake business deserves less credit for propriety, a carnival or a hagwon. The hagwon from which I was "fired" was owned by a couple and I had been accused of lying to my students by the wife of the couple so called her a fucking bitch. The accusation of lying was as legitimate as the one about theft although it came at a time when I wasn't living very cleanly. The next day they let me go, but I had basically quit that one the second the (accurate) words "fucking bitch" escaped my mouth. She was a psycho.

So for the third time I'm being "fired" and those quotes may be best placed around that word in this instance. The place I am working now, Carrot Global, is on par or worse than a hagwon or a carnival. That'll give you an idear of how wrongful this dismissal is. I want you to know from the beginning of this story of woe that, once again, I've been working illegally. I just can't seem to find my way to an honest employer in the ESL industry. Carrot Global is who employed me. They have many parts to their business. One is teaching kids (hagwon) and one is teaching executives in businesses. I have an E2 visa. I think to teach at a business you need an E1 visa. I had a student try to get me hired on at Samsung LOOOONG ago and this was the problem even back then. I have had an E1 visa once. It was when I was working at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies as an adjunct professor. At the time, I guess you could just call a person an adjunct professor instead of a teacher and - BAM! - E1 visa! But now, if I'm not mistaken, you need a master's degree. While I was working at HUFS, they changed a rule and decided to hire only master's teachers because, as anybody knows, a master's holder in dog grooming is so much better at teaching English than a holder of a B.A. in English Literature! Needless to say, the immigration laws, rules, habits, behavior, and the ways ESL companies get around them are as fluid as the stuff that shoots onto your windshield and doesn't even freeze in the winter.

The Exodus

You need to accept a few things when you are forced to work illegally. One is that in situations like these, the employer can do almost anything to you and you have little to no legal recourse. Of course they don't want to go overboard because the worker can report the company, but the workers never report the companies. This is because the worker gets punished, most likely deported and banned from working in Korea for a while. The company gets a puny fine and a wink wink nudge nudge warning never to do it again. Right from the get-go it started with Carrot, or as I affectionately call them, fucking Carrot.

After being promised several interviews and having them cancelled last minute costing me train and bus fare, Carrot got me placed at SKhynix in Icheon. The boss there, Andrew Choi, (I don't even know his real name - Choi Jong Hyun - I just checked the business card he gave me on the first day I met him), had had a big fight with a guy who worked here. Michael was his name, his real name. From all accounts he was a bit flaky but I'm sure now he was probably more justified in his actions than I was lead to believe by Andrew, whose side of the story was the only one I heard. He said Michael was fighting with security guards and yelling and screaming. Whatever. They needed someone to replace him and I was their guy. So I was put into the highly incapable hands of a Carrot office worker named Chris. Again with the nickname. Chris is Korean too. I don't know why they all have these nicknames. Maybe they feel better about all the shit they do if it's at least semi-anonymous. I can't say.

Anyhoo, Chris interviewed me like this: "I don't really know what they want me to do here I was just told that I should interview you. You basically have the job if you're not a weirdo." I'm paraphrasing, but something to that effect. Another example of the stellar organization, made up of the stellar employees, that Carrot is. So for weeks Chris fumbled and bumbled through the process of getting my paperwork and immigration done. I had to go out of the country to get my visa and there were a few times it could easily have been done before I started working for Hynix, but Chris managed to mismanage things so that I started working there before I had my visa. This was even MORE illegal than working without the E1 visa. For over a month I was working with only a visitor's visa.

Now I'm not sure it was totally Chris' fault. Andrew is notoriously mistrusting (notice I didn't say DISTRUSTING) of the teachers. It's entirely possible that he wanted to get me working and see how I worked out before formally committing to me. Of course I worked out well. The students liked me so I eventually got my E2 visa and became a little more legal over a month after I had started teaching. Unfortunately, this delay might have been the cause of my eventual doom. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

The first day I met Andrew was the key to this whole mess. He met me at the Carrot head office in Seoul. He, Chris and I tried for a couple of hours, and failed, to get me a decent phone, but with only a visitor's visa, that's impossible. Andrew ended up getting me one in his name that eventually I changed to mine. Just one of the problems they caused by not getting me set up for work in a timely manner. You'll quickly get the idea that another one of Andrew's quirks, aside from mistrust and lack of respect for the teachers, is doing exactly everything at the last minute. That makes things disorganized and slipshod - has anyone worked for an ESL business that ISN'T like this?

After not getting me a phone, we got into Andrew's car and went to the SKhynix campus in Icheon. It's a huge, well protected campus. Security at every entrance and things like laptops, hard drives and zip drives are not allowed. Of course I wasn't told this so before we could get into our building and get me into my lodgings (a dorm room shared with two other teachers) I had to go through my bags and take out anything like that. Andrew kept the hard drives with my whole teaching life on them, in the back of his scorching hot car all day long. When he met me outside the dorms and handed me the hard drives he nearly burnt my hand with them. Luckily they weren't damaged.

The important part of that day was the drive. On the way Andrew informed me that the contract said that I could be given up to 30 hours but I wouldn't work that many. I'd start at a leisurely amount and then in my second month I'd be teaching night classes. Three hours a night Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  But he assured me that I still wouldn't be over 30 hours AND I'd be paid extra for the night classes. Since my contract included the wrong working address and the wrong residence (so that immigration would think I was working for their hagwon in Seoul, not the Hynix campus in Icheon) I didn't pay any attention to it. I took Andrew's word that he'd do what he said. I know what you're thinking: They're lying to the government, why wouldn't they lie to you? This is another disadvantage to working illegally you will find.

Song of Song's

The first problem I had, and Andrew still hasn't recovered from, was when I got back from my visa run. One of the "office managers" named Song (again Korean with an inexplicable nickname) was anxious to prove her worth. They do this by seeing how many hours and how much money they can suck out of the workers. They're not teachers, they're workers. Because I worked morning and night, there was no way to take my two-day visa run trip to Japan without cancelling a class or two. I rescheduled some but missed some night classes. So when I got back Song tells me that I will need to teach two make-up classes, one on a Tuesday this month and one on a Tuesday next month. Well THIS month had only one Tuesday left and it was the next day. So I had to go into my Monday night class and tell my students that one of their make-up classes would be THE NEXT NIGHT. These are people working some of the most sought after jobs in the country. They have far more important things to do than make-up ESL lessons. On 24 hour's notice! I knew I'd be lucky to get any students for this class. So I asked the head teacher and one of my roommates, Lance if I shouldn't just fudge the attendance and mark everybody present. He gave me a sort of on the fence answer. When I went to class ONE student was there. I taught him, but when I got to my computer to record the night's attendance, I had a feeling this would be one of the MANY instances in my experience in Korea where lying was the best course of action. I said before that I'm not living as cleanly as I once was. Korea has been a big reason for that.

However, despite my better judgement and all I had learned about Korea, I told the truth and marked only one student present. The entire next day Song was all about throwing me under the bus for her last minute scheduling of the make-up classes. "You really CAN'T let that happen again, Dave!" "You just can't HAVE that kind of attendance!" "I really MUST impress upon you... blabbedy blabbedy blab." Finally she took me into another room and repeated and REPEATED this shit and even told me that one of my students said that I had said they didn't have to come to class. That was just not true. I said I would be there and I would teach but I'd understand if they had made other plans. I said to Song it isn't my job to chase my students around like they're in kindergarten. I asked why she was so incredibly concerned about my attendance. I then put it together. She gets paid according to my attendance. I said that and she denied it but not very believably. Finally, against my better judgement and Korean training, I told some MORE truth! GASP! I told her that I shouldn't have been teaching those make-up classes in the first place. It was Carrot's choice to postpone my visa run several times. If they had done it when they should have, before I started work, I wouldn't have had to miss classes. Furthermore, it was HER last minute scheduling of the make-up classes that caused this. I had warned her about this when she'd told me. And the manner in which she told me, "one Tuesday this month" instead of TOMORROW, made it pretty clear that she KNEW this was last minute scheduling and a shitty thing to do to a teacher.

Sometimes experience and social skills can be advantageous in the ESL racket. The people doing the hiring all want these things. But when you get into a situation like this, for the umpteenth time, when somebody is lying to you and you KNOW it, not only do you know it but it pisses you off that she thinks such a simple lie is too clever to be detected by you, you really have to work hard to control your anger. I was working so hard my mouth was like the Gobi Desert! Every word I said smacked, popped and whistled. I wasn't just being lied to by Song so she could blame her mistake on me, I was being lied to all over again by every scumbag I've dealt with all the way back to that psycho hagwon bitch and the thieving Tilt-a-Whirl operator from my youth. Song noticed this and it scared her. She probably knew it would have been nothing for me to pick her skinny ass up and throw her out the window. Problem solved! *Dave dusts hands and quietly returns to work

But that wasn't what happened, was it? Like a kindergarten tattle-tale she ran to Andrew. I don't know if she turned on the water works or not, but Andrew instantly got up like a father protecting his innocent daughter and told me he needed to talk to me in private. The same room as it turned out. On the way to the room I said, "If this is anything to do with what Song and I just talked about, I have nothing more to say about it." But he didn't heed my warning. They never do. I should have said, "I'm going to strafe you with a barrage of honesty here the uncut purity of which you have probably never dealt with in your life. I will not be held responsible for any damage to your personal or public fortress of deception. You are hereby forewarned!" But who's kidding who? You are ALWAYS held responsible. So I told Andrew exactly what I had told Song. And he has held it against me ever since.

The Book of the Job

After the three months of night classes were over, the month of November was really nice. I think I was working a leisurely 17 or 18 hours. Andrew added a class or two to some of our schedules and it became a very serviceable line of his to say when adding new classes, "The contract DOES say we can give you up to 30 hours." I always thought there was an implied wink and understanding between us that that was crap. Like he'd said in the car. And true to his word, without the night classes, I'd been around 20 or 21 hours the whole time. Then came the textbook writing. Almost exactly a year ago to this day I was wondering if I would be able to complete the one-year contract I had signed. I was only 4 or 5 months into my contract when December rolled around. December 15th was the last day of classes at Hynix and nobody was sure whether or not we'd get another year of work. See Carrot had to agree to terms with Hynix and, as I told you, that, like everything, had been left to the last minute. This is something I had asked Andrew about before I had started working. I had a university in Busan offer me a job then the funding got pulled at the last minute. Seems to be a theme. huh. Anyway, he had told me we'd find out in October probably. If not, for SURE November. Well, here it was December and nobody knew. As far as I knew...

SO this Busan university had said that if things were splitsville with me and Carrot at the halfway point, let them know and we'd try to work things out. So I needed to know from Carrot if I should take them up on that offer or if I would continue to work the same job. Just the paperwork of changing jobs is deterrent enough to leave the job you have in Korea. So I wanted to stay with Carrot/Hynix if I could. I knew there was a possibility of being asked to write lessons for the new textbook, but I figured they'd need a new contract before they wrote a new text. No?

No. Before we knew if we'd get a new contract Andrew dumped on me the prospect of writing the new book with a couple of other teachers. It was less than a week before classes ended. He said it was going to be 8 hours a day at the Carrot offices in Seoul. When I started to protest I swear to God he said, "The contract says we can give you up to 8 hours a day." NO IT DOESN'T! As I said the contract said up to 30 hours a week. 8 hours a day 5 days a week was overtime. Andrew knew it but he was tryin to screw me (and possibly the other two guys) out of the extra money. But this time it was on the phone. I STILL had the Gobi Desert smacking and crackling, but I may have sounded more in control. And I didn't even mention that the 40 hour weeks were against my contract AND against our agreement.

Andrew, however, didn't sound in control. He was yelling at me for the Song incident saying how I was a trouble maker and how it seemed like I was just complaining again. He said, "Do you want to keep working here? You sound like you want to quit." I said I wanted to keep working but I didn't want the 2 hour commute both ways. I even gave him a very legitimate medical reason why I couldn't make the commute. I had recently gone to the doctor for high blood sugar and frequent emergency urination. So frequent that a 2-hour subway trip could have been, shall we say more than a little uncomfortable for me? But he didn't care. I also had my own computer that I preferred to the ones Carrot supplied and for several other reasons, it would just be easier for everybody if we could make the lessons from home.  We had just received confirmation that I would be allowed to remain in the dorms over the Christmas/New Year break so that wouldn't be a problem. He said at the beginning of our hour-long phone call that he'd need to ask his supervisor with yet another nickname - Patrick. By the end of the phone call he was yelling about how he'd told me a hundred times that Patrick said that we couldn't write the lessons from home. I knew he was lying but I summoned all my strength and said, "Oh. Well I guess that's that. I misunderstood. I thought you said you hadn't asked him yet." And the call ended.

Andrew had said it MIGHT have been possible to get a place for me in Seoul but he wasn't sure. Last minute again. Otherwise I'd have to commute two hours in the morning and two hours at night to sit for 8 hours in front of a computer in the Carrot office. The alternative, he said, was that I don't work at all and get paid nothing for that time.

Well the lodging never came (if he ever had any REAL possibility of giving me lodging in Seoul or not) so as the week went on, I chose the obvious bluff and said to Andrew in the office on the last day of work, "Okay, I'll take the time off but I'll need you to give me a letter of release so I can work at a camp during that time." I legitimately HAD found a children's English camp that was interested in hiring me. I get camp work really easily. Andrew just ignored me when I said that to him. Probably a good thing otherwise his head might have exploded.

The next day I got a call from some girl in the Carrot office. Another nickname. This one I forget. Probably Grace. Grace said that for legal reasons it was impossible for Carrot to allow me to NOT work and they'd need me to do the lessons. I am pretty sure Andrew was at the office listening in on the phone call. I said, "Oh that's interesting because Andrew told me that was an option. Are you saying Andrew is making offers to me that he is unauthorized to make?" She was obviously startled but pretended that went unnoticed of course. Andrew wasn't breaking the law, I was. So Grace said we needed to work out an arrangement so I could do the lessons. I should have held Carrot over the coals then but I was too nice. I said to "Grace" that we needed to stop pretending Carrot gave a shit about the law. We both know my working there was breaking the law and Carrot had no problem with that. The reason Andrew wants me to work in the office is because Andrew doesn't trust me to work at home. But I had written Andrew a sample lesson right after hanging up the phone after our hour-long argument entitled "15 Myths About Working From Home Being Inefficient." It had only taken me about half an hour. I said to Grace that I showed Andrew how efficient I could be from home so he really has no reason to mistrust me. Notice I didn't say DISTRUST.

She sounded as though this was the first time she'd heard about this. She told me that was a good idea. Working from home would be fine. I said, "Oh good! There is the problem of my now needing to cancel with the camp people, but since Andrew will be willing to make this concession and allow us to work from home, I'll cancel with the camp people. See how easy this stuff is when we're all honest and reasonable?" I was surprisingly calm on the phone. Probably because we were being honest, except for her initial attempt at pretending Carrot was concerned about the law. No snaps, crackles or pops in my talking. And I got a few messages in to Andrew in case he was listening, which I know he was.

The writing of the text went off without a hitch. Lance told me they were expecting about 4 lessons a day out of each of us. I wrote 7 a day. Maybe not all primo lessons but no mistakes and all of them were used in the book. Some have been complimented by my fellow teachers and their executives. Yes, we eventually DID get a new one-year contract and we were asked to make all four textbooks, so that's 80 lessons, whereas I was lead to believe we'd only be writing the first textbook, 20 lessons. The most hilarious part about the whole thing - "15 Myths About Working From Home Being Inefficient" was included in the second text of the new year.

Lamentations

The other two lesson writers did well and told me they appreciated being able to write from home. I'm sure they too were more productive because of it. Even Andrew probably received accolades from his bosses on such a forward thinking and successful idea they assumed came from such a backward-ass person as himself. But the 15 rounds I had to fight with him to get this very positive result went unappreciated by Andrew. In fact it made him hate me even more.

It was a new year. 2019. Not far into 2019 Lance quit making me the longest serving teacher in the place. In just over a year, I think about 10 teachers had either quit or been fired. And when I talked to some of the ones who left, and some of the teachers who had talked to some of the others, there was one common complaint: Andrew. Now it wouldn't be right to just say he was the cause of everybody leaving, so I'll try to give you some idea of the things he did that caused such a revolving door of good teacher after good teacher leaving this very good position in the ESL market.

subsection: Numbers

Carrot may not pay the best of these big business ESL providers, in fact they may pay the worst. I've seen some with the starting wage of 4 million won a month. This is for a contract of 30 hours a week. It includes an apartment if you are an E2 visa holder and may include one if you aren't. This is $3,372.00 US at current exchange rates. $4,470.00 CDN. WOW! Is our dollar THAT low now? Good God Canada! What the frig? No wonder I'm over here!

The contract I got started at 3.2 million Korean won, which is $2,698.00 US or $3,575.00 CDN. Not bad at all! When I finished my first year here, I signed on for another 6 months to the end of this current contract between Hynix and Carrot. I signed for a little more, 3.4 million, but I didn't get any severance pay, so it worked out to a little less. Who pays LESS for your second contract?

That's another bonus. A one-year contract here includes severance pay equal to your average month's pay. If you're Canadian, you build up pension at the same rate. But if you have a boss that doesn't want to pay you severance and won't tell you that until you ask him, then he waits a day or two to make his bargaining position stronger THEN says that, no, by law severance doesn't need to be paid unless it's a full year contract. And if you're an F visa holder, they can pretty much do what they want.

You get Korean holidays and 10 days of vacation, (which the boss may ACTUALLY tell you to teach make-up classes for (I'm not kidding!)), but you end up having a lot of classes cancelled because these executives are really busy! Most of my students were very nice and cancelled with fair warning too so I got a lot of extra unexpected time off. Especially for a guy like me, who is the same age as most of them, these execs are actually easy to get along with.

The best part was that my contract, I THOUGHT, was going to be 21 hours or less. So The numbers are hard to beat in Korea. Unless you have a supervisor who wants to mess with them.

Lamentations II

So how do they mess with the numbers? One big way is scheduling. If they don't like you, they will give you a nightmare schedule. They know that will only last until you privately work out other arrangements with your students... ahhh but they DOOO enjoy creative scheduling here! Every day but Monday I've had a 7:30 class virtually my whole time here. Monday is a day when teachers who don't live here are busing in from their hometowns (and workers too) so since buses don't run that early, the 7:30 classes are not offered on Mondays. Having said that, I've been offered 7:30 Monday classes MANY times by the "office managers" around here. I'm sure they just do what Andrew tells them to do. It's really strange how they seem to forget from time to time that we keep that slot open for people who go home, or travel out of town for the weekend. huh. Odd.

Then there have been several attempts to suggest or even demand I teach a Saturday class. I have always refused because it is my right to, but you know you're losing points every time you do that.

Then there's the regular scheduling. It COULD be SOOOO easy, but they made it hard! There are some teachers who live here. I'm one. We should have the morning schedules. The teachers who don't live nearby and need to commute should have the afternoon schedules. The best times for all the executives seem to be early morning and late afternoon. It's a no brainer for a good scheduler. But for someone who wants to make inconvenient schedules, it's also a no brainer. Splits every day! Morning classes and evening classes separated by long periods of not really being off work.

Believe it or not, when I started here, Andrew had a rule that any time between classes must be spent on campus. Not necessarily in the office, but not in your room... in the dorm... a five minute walk away... where your bed is and where you can take off your socks and pants and relax. He had a time clock folks! When I called him "backward-ass" I was not kidding. A timeclock where workers actually punch in and out of the office!

We have badges that we need to scan every time we go in or out of any of the campus gates. The teachers all worried that somebody would read the record of your badge scans and find that you were not on campus but actually using YOUR time to do something YOU wanted to do! I put an end to that fast. I started going to my dorm for long breaks between classes. I didn't care if I got caught. I'm sure this became known very early on by everyone, including Andrew, but I also got my stuff from China, where I lived before working here, including my computer, and I often made lessons during my time in my room. I mentioned at meetings a few times that all good teachers do lots of work at home. Any good educational institute needs to account for that. I was certain there was going to be a huge argument about this, but, by the grace of God, the internet was disallowed by security in the Carrot office. This made it so that nobody could easily do actual work in the office and Andrew relented. This is another battle the teachers won that made things better for us, but just pissed Andrew off.

Proverbs

My Mom had one famous proverb that she must have told all of her kids a thousand times. "Never give one without the other." My Mom did a pretty darn good job of treating all of us kids equally. There were exceptions, mostly with Jenn because she was the only girl, like curfew for example, but other than that, my Mother kept things fair. And that kept us happy. Well that might be a strong word. It kept us from killing each other. In keeping with the Biblical theme Joseph was the favourite of Jacob and Jacob gave Joseph a coat of many colours. This created resentment amongst his brethren and they didst throw him in a pit and waited for some human traffickers to happen by. And, lo, they didst betide. Whenst they didst, his loving brothers soldst Joseph for 20 pieces of silver. Anon they covered his coat of many colours with goat's blood and shewed it to Jacob telling their father that Joseph hadst been slaineth by wild beasts... ests.

Cheaper than Jesus I guess. He was betrayed by Judas for THIRTY pieces of silver. But how much was that? What could it buy? Well according to Bible scholars, that depends on what you mean by pieces of silver. There were many kinds of money in those days. If you just melted them down, even 30 of the highest valued silver coins of the day would only be worth a couple hundred bucks. But at the time 30 pieces of silver, being what Jesus was worth, was an amount that was scoffed at by unbelievers. The phrase has been used euphemistically to mean almost worthless ever since. So 20 is, I suppose, less than worthless.

So what could a boss do to make his workers bicker, fight, or treat each other as less than worthless? Just treat them differently. Play favourites. Give every one of them a different contract. Give them all different schedules and vastly varying hours and pay. Checks right across the board here! Strangely enough, and to Andrew's horror, this actually turned the workers against him rather than against each other.

Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Treat others as you want to be treated. I hope he doesn't mind but I'll use the example one of the most recent guys fired here, Jay. It's NOT a Korean person, but an actual Jay. Well James I guess so on we go with the nicknames. Let's see if the reasons Jay was fired were trespasses he committed against Andrew that he couldn't forgive while at the same time committing the very same trespasses against others.

I taught one of Jay's students since September. He tells me Jay used to be really late for classes. Like how late everyone finds out about whether or not there is a new contract here. Like how late my visa was obtained, which staggered my phone plan, housing, visa and contract in the most inconvenient of ways. Also caused the problems with Song and the Andrew to the rescue incident. Like how teachers of the night courses found out over half way through them that there would be a final test given by Carrot and a little about what was on it. (because Carrot hadn't decided those things until over half way through the course) Like how I was told the reason I was not getting my contract renewed 6 months after that thing had happened. Woulda been nice to have an extra 6 months to look for another job! No, it appears in this way Andrew expects the teachers to do unto Carrot what Carrot  doesn't doeth unto them.

The story goes that Jay, when he missed classes, would even ignore texts and phone calls from his students. Sorta like Andrew ignored requests in person AND by texts and phone calls for the meeting about dividing Jay's classes between the teachers. And when I didn't have a phone how furious he'd get at my not being able to keep in touch with him! "Why haven't you checked your messages or your emails?" he asked? Yet when he said my contract ended on the 31st of December (because he obviously wanted me to write lessons again this year between the 15th and 31st when there ARE no classes here) it took him three days and intervention from HR to have a look at his copy of my contract and realize he was wrong. Like when he said he couldn't re-hire me because my visa expired before the end of my contract, which he pretended he thought was the 31st, it took him those same three days to look at his copy of my alien card (that HE had acquired from Immigration for me) before admitting that my visa doesn't expire till February, leaving us PLENTY of time to sign a new deal. Like it took him all that time to then change his mind and give another flimsy excuse for firing me. No, he doesn't do things promptly the way he would have us teachers do them.

There's a quote, maybe not a proverb, attributed to Herbert Hoover but I doubt he's the first to say it: "Children are our most valuable resource." I remember talking to another teacher here about how Andrew doesn't trust the teachers, how he thinks we're all cheating on our attendance, conspiring with the executives to take classes off and who knows what! He actually accused other teachers of those things to me when I first came here. One of the reason why he wanted us where he could see us I suppose. There was a girl from the head office who came to the campus to fill in for a short time and I was talking to her about this. Not long after, she was in the staffroom arguing with Andrew on the phone and said that he treated us like children. In a yell loud enough for the whole staffroom to hear, Andrew screamed, "BECAUSE YOU ARE CHILDREN!!" Now, if he thought like Herbert Hoover, I guess that wouldn't have been bad. But Andrew gives no respect to children. The only thing I've ever heard him say about his own daughter is that she's a "nightmare." Now I can forgive that because I have known plenty of students and kids that I actually loved that I might say the same thing about jokingly. But how joking was he when he said these things?

The one thing he doesn't understand is that here, the teachers are LITERALLY the most valuable resource. They ARE the product. And it is not always good to have your product changing all the time. The executives and HR at Hynix have made it very clear that they really don't like the constant teacher turnover. They want long term teachers. The word is that several others besides me are going to be let go. There will be 6 new native female teachers hired. There are going to be some angry executives who don't want their current teachers replaced by young fembots who do whatever Andrew wants them to do. He's shooting himself in the foot by treating us with the lack of respect some people show to children not realizing that we are his most valuable resource. As far as I know a new contract has not yet been agreed upon. If Hynix finds out about these plans, Carrot, or Andrew might not fit into the Hynix plans. I told him this when I yelled at him on the phone. But he just thinks I'm complaining.

Judges

So what was the "reason" given for my third "sorta" firing and why do I say it's even less legitimate than the false accusations against me made by the carnie and the crazy lady? I ask you, my dear readers, to sit as judges and see if you find me wanting as did my current employer.

I promise this will be the last silly nickname. Abby, the sixth or seventh office manager whose worked here, (they come and go too, probably for the same reason), asked if I wouldn't mind teaching a class last period Tuesday. One of Jay's classes. Or I should say ANOTHER one. I've been teaching one of his classes twice a week since September. Back then I was the only guy who got one. That's when Jay was ALMOST fired. He was dropped to part time and changed from monthly to hourly salary. This cut his salary in half. Now something I know that Andrew probably doesn't know I know is that the extra money went straight into his pocket. At the time I thought Jay had been fired and ALL the teachers were going to get extra classes so I said at a meeting that we will need to talk about this meaning he'd better spread some of that money around. We're not all going to teach extra classes while he collects the money for it. Especially if we're doing it on short notice and saving Carrot's million-dollar contract and possibly Andrew's ass. But at the time he said Jay wasn't fired and I was the only one who got one of his classes. To teach for free while Andrew collected all the money. The only reason I took it was because I was at 19 hours at the time and that put me up to 21, our verbally agreed upon maximum. You can imagine how thrilled I was when Jay was ACTUALLY fired and Abby offered me another one of his classes. To teach for free while Andrew collected all the money.

Imagine how thrilled I was now when by no coincidence it was offered to me at the WORST possible time in my schedule. Imagine how even MORE thrilled I was when I remembered that the first class of Jay's, back in September, had been offered to me at the same time. Now you're getting it.

I was told both times that there is no possible way the student could study at any other time. Well, my first student I got from Jay, Yoo Min So, (no nickname) told me he had never told them that. He actually didn't even like that time. The time offered was last class on Tuesday, 3:30-4:30. He wanted morning classes. So I schedule his classes at times more convenient for both of us.

The new class was offered to me on Tuesday from 4-5. That isn't even teaching hours! We're supposed to be finished at 4:30! I finish at 10:30 on Tuesdays. I've made my schedule like that so I can write lessons during Tuesday afternoons. Lessons that my students request, lessons my students say they like best and lessons that I know fit into their personal interests. I tailor these lessons to my students levels, needs and interests. The book doesn't do that. This is why I get very high evaluations. Even 100% evaluations!

So I call up Abby and ask if this is really the only slot in the schedule I could teach the class. She says yes. I know she was probably lying because by the end of the phone call she agreed to call the executive and ask for a different time. She didn't. She also didn't give me his number so I could do that. She just gave the class to someone else. Easier. Then she probably lied to Andrew and said I refused it. Easier.

What actually happened was I explained to her that this put me above my agreed upon 21 hours. Of course she brought out Andrew's serviceable 30-hour maximum line of bullshit and I explained to her why that was a line of bullshit. She probably didn't know that. She's new and I doubt Andrew would tell her anything like that. I then said that I would need, and the other teachers deserve, some extra money for teaching Jay's classes. Why is Andrew not offering any? She said she didn't know so I suggested a meeting. She refused. She doesn't have the authority to do that UNLESS Andrew told her to refuse a meeting. Because at the last meeting when Jay was almost fired, some of the teachers agreed that we would need a meeting to discuss this if it happened. Andrew knew this. Abby was at the meeting and SHE knew this. That's why it was refused. A few times during the call.

But even when I found out I wouldn't get any extra money for the new class, I didn't refuse it. I just said that I would like it in a different slot in my schedule. I offered to call the student myself and arrange something. That was refused. She ended the call by saying she'd call the student to arrange an alternate time. She didn't. I didn't want a 6 hour open space between classes on Tuesday. Who the hell wants something like that? Tuesday morning, sure. Another day, sure. But 6 hours after my last class on Tuesday? TWO classes offered at that time? That's just not a coincidence!

What do you think? Am I being a bad employee? Am I causing trouble like Andrew says? Before you make your judgment, there's one last thing for you to ponder. If it was so hard for Andrew to have a meeting about giving the teachers extra money, like they fucking should have been, for these extra classes, then why was it so easy for him to call a meeting the very next Monday? It was an evening meeting. For dinner. A sort of thank you dinner for the teachers who had helped by taking Jay's classes.  But it was a secret meeting. Some of the teachers weren't invited. Me for example. The teacher who had already taught more of Jays hours than anybody will. I was excluded from the meeting and Andrew told the people who went to keep it a secret from me. He proceeded to get drunk at the dinner party in a very professional manner.

Revelation

This, I'm sure, will come as no revelation to you: I am getting shafted here. This is nothing short of wrongful dismissal and if I had a legal leg to stand on, I'd probably try to do something about it. But I don't because I was illegally hired. Oh, I'm sorry, one final nickname: I called Lizzy at Carrot HR and she has already made up her mind that Andrew can do no wrong. She calls him her "buddy" and got a bit giggly thinking about him. There's no use pounding THAT pavement. Even if I give a letter to the owner about this he'll probably say, "He was hired illegally anyway. We're free and clear. Cut him loose." Easy.

I suppose I can hope that my students will complain and maybe Hynix will change English providers or maybe tell Carrot to replace Andrew, but that'd be a Christmas miracle. I've taught at a few schools before where the people in charge did shitty, shitty things to their teachers but kept right on working there while good teacher after good teacher came and went. HUFS and Chonnam University are two that come to mind.

I AM currently trying to find some legal work here. Put out two application packages yesterday. It's such a monumental task to do all the immigration and paperwork, but I guess I'll have to do it again. My revelation should probably be to just get a legal job, but if required to do illegal things like academic fraud, fudging the attendance, lying, cheating, stealing, just say, "HELL YES! Or JONG MAL NEH!" Whatever the Korean equivalent would be. A bit depressing.

However, in keeping with the Biblical theme here, I put up my Christmas lights, wrapped my Christmas presents, even watched a Christmas movie. I think that helped me to get into the Christmas spirit and if not totally let this go, at LEAST get excited about the Christmas season that I will now have off instead of being forced to write lessons for Carrot at a tremendously cut rate. I might teach a kids camp in the new year and get a university job starting in March. If that's the case (and it IS the goal) then I'll have Feb. off too. Which is nice. So I got that goin' for me...