Small Deeds and Great Moments

     "Countless small actions of unknown people lie at the roots of the great moments of history." Howard Zinn

I didn't like the way I left off my first post of the year. It was a bit of a downer. I've been told it's whinging if you complain without offering alternatives, constructive criticism if you do. So I will elaborate on the previous post as intellectually as I can so that I will appear less of a party pooper. I will also do my best to conjure up the indomitable positivity of the late Howard Zinn and suggest some ways that we might make 2020 a good year.

Back in the 1920's and 1930's and for some time later, a couple of guys named Walter Lippmann and John Dewey had one of the slowest arguments ever. They were arguing in book form. Lippman wrote "Public Opinion" in '22, "The Phantom Public" in '25 and Dewey, by way of rebuttal, wrote "The Public and its Problems" in 1927. They were arguing mostly about the role of "the public" in a democracy. A lot of what I wrote in my last post was awfully Lippmannian. But I'd like to be a bit more Deweyish in this post if I might.

Originally, Lippmann wrote that people face severe limitations in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments. Thus, they tend to employ simplistic stereotypes to a reality that is highly complex. The old frog in a well example is used in Korea. When a frog falls into a well early in life, it sees only that well and begins to believe there is nothing else in the world. We tend to personalize our worlds and create our own pseudo-environments. Most need, or prefer, the world summarized for them by the better informed in whom they place, or misplace their trust.

In this way most "public opinion" is formed. In this way also, it is open to manipulation by anyone who understands it well enough. Lippmann had an odd idea of how this should be avoided in American politics. He (correctly) believed that the political elite were of a class incapable of accurately understanding the public. The public being mostly made up of the middle and lower classes. Anybody see that episode of Ellen when she gets Bill Gates to guess grocery prices? Yeah. NO IDEA about regular folks. So anyway, Lippmann proposed a "specialized class" to gather and analyze data, give the data to the decision makers in society and they could use it to help them govern. This, of course (wrongly) assumed that the ruling elite gave a shit.

Still, in his later book, "The Phantom Public," he cited so many erroneous concepts people have of exactly who and what "the public" is comprised of, that he called the public a myth, illusion or phantom. One of these mistaken ideas was that the public could act competently to direct their own affairs and a functioning government is the will of the people. He viewed the vast majority of the public as ignorant "bystanders" who were more interested in their private affairs than those that govern society. "The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant and often meddlesome, because he is trying to navigate the ship from dry land." He believed that there were a few, the "agents," who were members of the ruling class, who were the only ones capable of governing and that they should be subjected to as little interference as possible from the "bystanders."

     "The public must be put in its place... so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd." By "us" in that quote, I presume Lippmann meant the important, intelligent, upper class people, and he included himself among them. His ideal government was a sort of technocracy in which people with the skills, connections and educations to govern, (the rich) ,were better suited and therefore better governors. This was not democracy.

John Dewey believed that democracy, in which the public chose their representatives, was better for an increasingly complex society even though it was flawed and continuously subverted. The way to make it effective, he believed, was constant public vigilance. He advocated almost total control and regulation of government by the public. Otherwise, he said that politics, laws and policy would be just a shadow cast by business over society. Every governmental authority needed to be constantly challenged and justified. If it couldn't be justified, it needed to be dismantled. The Declaration of Independence states that governments are entirely artificial and when they become destructive of basic democratic principles such as equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government. So while you could make the argument that he had a more American idea of the role of the public than did Lippmann, he also had considerably more faith in the public than Lippmann, or than I did in my previous post.

One way in which they agreed was that the public doesn't really have much influence on the "state," until they experience negative consequences of its leadership. They practice most of their vigilance in the face of substantial crises such as government impeding basic democratic principles. Interestingly, Dewey felt that the biggest problem with this type of public representation was distraction. The largest distraction, he felt, was technology. Back in his day, he was referring to movies, cheap reading material, and cars. I wonder if he'd just surrender to Lippmann if he saw the technological distractions of today. But NO! We can't give up on Dewey just yet!

Dewey believed (correctly) that technology could be used to improve communication and make information more readily available so as to increase public interest in politics. Why, I've been using my computer and internet all day to learn all this stuff I'm blogging about. We ALL can! Right? I won't tell you what I did with my computer and internet for the two or three weeks BEFORE today. But it is this unfortunate reality that makes it pretty tough to side with Dewey on this.

Add to it studies like Gilens and Page that showed about 70% of Americans have no influence on public policy. And, not surprisingly, they're the lower and middle classes. In fact, both Gilens and Page agree that if the missing element in their meta-study, the super rich, were represented, that 70 would rise dramatically.

Noam Chomsky, in his documentary "Requiem For The American Dream" said that even during the great depression, which he remembers, there was more hope than he sees today. Class mobility, which was an important part of that American Dream, has all but disappeared. He tells us that James Madison, the father of the American Constitution said that it should be used to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." So like Lippmann, he believed democracy should actually be PREVENTED.

Way back in 1776 when Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations," he wrote about merchants and manufacturers thinking of their own profit, no matter how grievous the impact on England. He called it the "Vile Maxim." All for us and nothing for all (or at least the 99.9%) Back in his day it was merchants and manufacturers, while today it's financial institutions and multinationals, but the Vile Maxim remains. Learning about what happened in the U.S. is a good way to learn about what most likely happened to all the other countries that have similar problems, and a solution that works for the States, will probably work anywhere else. So what happened?

Well, I'm glad I asked that. In the 50's and 60's I hear "the public" was pretty happy in the U.S. and in Canada. I think those were pretty prosperous times for a lot of nations who didn't lose the war. Even for those who DID for crying out loud! The whole world was wonderful! Despite all of his policy, I gotta believe these are the halcyon days to which the right impeachable Donald Trump refers when he says he wants to make America great again. If he only knew how they BECAME great!

One of the things that made those years great was actually the kind of vigilance in government regulation that Dewey advocates. Unions were strong, government agencies regulated, businesses actually PAID their taxes, capital gains and dividends were taxed like workers' wages, banks were dead boring places where money was stored, and America made money by making stuff. People felt like they contributed to society and to their government and culture. Almost everybody loved it! Almost.

In the 70's businesses started to fight back. Captains of industry have never liked democracy. It gives too much power to the people who they don't want to wield it. Namely, the people who aren't them. This had to stop. So what did they do?

1. They shifted the economy away from making stuff to money manipulation. This gave financial institutions a lot more power and big businesses started making more money with their money than with their products. For example, by the 70's General Electric made 50% of its profit by just moving money around. Of course new schemes for this magical money manipulation were needed and less regulation had to be part of the plan.

2. Workers were put in direct competition with the rest of the world including the super oppressed workers like the Chinese. Insecure workers don't ask for raises. They don't unionize or complain. They work overtime for nothing. They do as they're told. Alan Greenspan once commented that greater worker insecurity was the base of his success. These insecure workers were even given a title: the "precariat." The precarious proletariat. I have never felt job security in my life. Have you?

3. The burden of sustaining society had been shifted off the rich. Taxes were lowered, in some cases eliminated, CEO's got big raises, stockholders got big benefits from stock buybacks and other financial trickery, workers got the shaft. In the 50's and 60's, companies used to raise workers' salaries so they'd buy more of the companies' products. In the 70's, stockholders got rich through artificially rising company values. Workers get jack.

4. Regulatory capture was necessary. The 70's was a time of lobbyist explosion. People who persuaded governments and lawmakers to do what they wanted bought government favour and literally got laws made for them. Companies became people because they bought laws that said so. Money became speech because companies bought laws that said so. And representatives of companies were showing up in leadership positions of the agencies that were supposed to regulate them. Limitations on risky new money manipulation were removed. Worst of all, agreements were made so that if the financial institutions went overboard, they'd get bailed out. Banks were loaning money on the PROMISE of government bailout! And there's no such thing as "government" bailout, there is only taxpayer bailout.

5. I call number five Applizing. Because as much of a douchebag as he was, Steve Jobs was one of the best at fabricating consumers. Getting people to make irrational decisions about purchases they couldn't afford of things they didn't need. This provided distraction of the "bewildered herd." They didn't realize how bad things were getting as long as they could get, or hope to get the latest gizmo they coveted.

If you're still not with me and Lippman and you don't think democracy is completely gone, total control is in the hands of the elite and most of us are just ignorant bystanders, Chomsky gives a very good litmus test. It's a test we can do once a year on April 15th, the tax deadline. How do people feel at that time? It should be a day of celebration if our society is a successful democracy. We should be happily funding the programs we have all agreed upon. But, like I said in the last post, it seems more like usury/sodomy. Are you happy at tax time?

Okay, Howard Zinn to the rescue. When asked how he can remain so positive in the face of such great negativity about American democracy, he says, "I have seen enough change to suggest that more change is possible."

While he was alive Zinn lost his job teaching at Spelman College for marching in the civil rights movement during the 50's and 60's. He thought the allies couldn't win WWII, but it happened. He thought the US would never get out of Vietnam, but they did. And he remembers that before the famous protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides, there were small protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides that nobody knows about. He believes we need to EARN our democracy. The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were never enforced... until people forced them to be. In fact the 14th amendment was more useful to hurt democracy. It was intended to protect the rights of freed slaves. But that's the one that was somehow used to get a court ruling that corporations are people.

Zinn was a(n) historian. He wrote a history book that sold more than 2 million copies called "A People's History of the US." He says that incorrect history isn't bad. It can be corrected. He was inspired to write this book by unknown history. The stuff that doesn't appear in history books. The stuff we don't learn in schools. Chapter one in the book is the truth about Columbus. Not a hero. Much is known about the civil war and slavery but little is known about what happened to the native Americans during that time.

Other small people who made a difference were people who went on strike and won. Where are those stories? Why don't school children learn them I wonder. The Colorado Coal Strike of 1913. There's a Woody Guthrie song about the Ludlow Massacre, but does anybody learn the song in school or read about the bloodiest labour dispute in the US? They say between 69 and 199 people died.

What about the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912? Bread and roses. These are heroic stories of small people fighting big industry and winning. Zinn says people don't go to wars, governments do, so when people fight in wars, which he did (he was a bombardier in WWII) they fight for their government, not their country. But people who are fighting for proper labour practices, freedom of speech, equality and the proper government of their country... THOSE are people who are fighting for their country.

It seems to me that governments in the US, and some other countries I can think of, have become destructive of their citizens' basic democratic principles. If people want to fight for their country, they just might have to fight against their government. I'm not advocating bloodshed. I hope we are more civilized in this day and age. But let's all try to do many, many small deeds like joining a rally or protest; starting one; writing a member of government; joining a labour union; starting one; writing a song; (writing a blog post); studying REAL history; learning about REAL heroes in your culture; there are a million things we can do, but staring at our phones isn't one of them.

As we can see already, 2020 ain't making ITSELF a good year!

The World is Another Year Older and Stupider

Well happy new year first of all. Why not start off with something stupid? Happy new year. It's a new year of making money for our employers. This should make us happy? It's a new year of spending five days of smiling at people you want to throat punch; receiving a small fraction of the pay for the work you do 100% of; getting out of bed before the sun comes up and coming home after it goes down; just getting out of bed at all; wearing clothes that make you uncomfortable; maintaining a professional demeanor; faking your fake, fake fakeness all for two days off. If you're lucky. That's happiness nowadays. And the ratio of years we do this to years we don't is even worse. Check out some information I ran across in an article by Alex J. Pollock titled "Retirement Finance: Old Ideas, New Reality." Pollock discusses what he calls the work-to-retirement (W:R) ratio, which divides your number of working years by your number of retirement years. In the past, when people worked longer and lived shorter lives, the ratio was modest. Someone who worked from age 20 until age 70 and then died at 75 would have a ratio of 50:5, or 10. Today, someone who works from age 22 until age 62 and lives to 82 has a ratio of 40:20, or 2. That's a big difference. That may sound better, but it's not. Because now it's practically impossible to save enough money for retirement so we're actually at a worse ratio. Anyway, I don't want to get into the money.

Basically, we get five years off from birth to the age of 5 because we're pretty useless workers. By age 5 or 6 we start our training. Companies of the world agree to allow that 15 years of downtime when we COULD be put to work, in order to make us better employees later in life. That's euphemistically called our education. Used to be just get your high school and you could move on to a good job. Nowadays it's almost mandatory to get some university education so we get a few more years of the good life before becoming the property of some company or other. Then you just work. For 50 years. That whole time we may get enough to have what we think is a "good" life with a home, a car, cable TV, but added in there are children. Future workers that we are responsible for overseeing while they're trained to put in their 50 years. We still only have 2 days out of 7 that are good ones, if we're lucky. You could look at that and say it's 28.5% of our lives that our owners allow us, but after we get the shopping, banking, kids activities, social responsibilities etc., taken care of, how much of the weekend actually IS what we call "me time?"

Is it any wonder that by the time most of us reach retirement, we're so used to being robotic workers, we're practically racing to the grave to escape the non-productivity of retirement? How many people reading this actually feel GUILTY when you're not busy? That's our programming. You can consider me a conspiracy theorist, and I am so you'd be right, but am I wrong on this? Are we not programmed to practically self-destruct if we're not doing something? "How are you? Keeping busy?" If we were not so well trained our answers to that would (and should) be, "Hell no! I'm doing nothing my friend!" But when was the last time you felt proud of doing nothing? Here's an extreme example:

It's extreme NOW, but this is where we're all heading. Japan may be the perfect corporate society. It's a bit of a long vid, but watch it and see how stupid we are. The subject of the video, if your owners have not allowed you the time to watch it, is how the Japanese are concerned with their declining birth rate. It's the same here in Korea. They are all told it's disastrous, but every time I leave my apartment I am slapped in the face with the nagging reality that Korea would be SOOO much better with fewer people! Japan is like that too. So why is it a "disaster?" It's bad for the companies. Less livestock. That is all.

In case you doubt this, watch this vid all the way to the end when there are a few brave people who talk about the overwork, "karoshi" culture and suicide rate in Japan. "Karoshi" is basically dying from overwork. And if they don't die, they commit suicide. Similar in Korea. These SAME people who are (acting) so concerned about declining birth rates affecting the happiness of the people, when confronted with this very real problem in their society, will generally say, "This does not exist. You are mistaken. We are all happy in our work. Look at our national joy!" Maybe joyless people don't multiply.

If you have the balls to actually TAKE your vacation even though you can see the boss looking favourably on the sycophantic employees who didn't and looking down his nose at you as he shakes your hand while saying, "Enjoy your vacation..." while invisibly stabbing you in the back with the other hand and thinking, "... you decadent, lazy, non-team player! I can find a thousand people right now who would forfeit their vacations for the privilege of having your job," just think how exponentially stupider that is when considering automation. It's coming, and instead of preparing for it by cutting workweeks and lengthening vacation time, two things the workers of the world have more than earned from the companies, well, a lot of companies are just going the exact opposite route because... GREED.

In an ideal society, large companies, not the workers, will have to PAY for automation. They don't just get to axe our jobs and put the extra livestock out to pasture where they'll eat all the grass in a day, then die of starvation. They have the responsibility of easing the machines into our lives. This will cost them money. The employees must still maintain their wages but work less. In our present corporate world, which is only getting worse, in which maximization of shareholder profit is the one and only thing that matters, and this is a socially acceptable virtue, machines, robots, computers are going to cost people jobs and put people in the poor house. We are told, and more importantly, we BELIEVE, that there is no alternative, but that's bullshit. Corporate bullshit. The smelliest kind.

SKhynix, where I used to work, has a great example. Not long ago, the computer chip factories that I live right across the street from (and smell when they're cooking chips) employed people to carry chips by hand from place to place. Now they have robots that do the same thing. The guys who work in this area at SKhynix will tell you that the robots are slower and less efficient. But that doesn't matter. They're doing the work more cheaply. You have electrical and maintenance fees, but compared to a worker's salary, those are much better... for the shareholders who care about nothing but money. But when you talk to the executives, which I used to do 5 out of every 7 days, they'll tell you that the very worst thing about these robots is that they have cost hundreds of people their jobs.

From what I learned while working with Hynix people, this is not a totally evil company. The employees who are let go (well executives anyway) are given a two year severance parachute package. I am not sure if chip movers get that deal or not, but if they did, it would give them a little bit more grass to graze on while they try to insert themselves back into a society with fewer and fewer (not to mention worse and worse) jobs available. The execs agree, this is reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the company for whom a lot of these workers have worked ten, twenty, thirty or more of their 50 year terms. They should be treated better. And most, if not all of my execs agreed that if the company can't afford to take care of the employees instead of just heartlessly releasing them, then they should NOT use the robots. Problem is, exactly none of them have to balls to present this idea to management and owners because they'll lose their jobs.

Management and owners need to be forced to do what is right and the agencies who are the only ones who have ever succeeded at this, namely unions and government regulatory agencies, boards and commissions, are being systematically dismantled as part of our deteriorating global society. Will 2020 be the year we slide into another seemingly inevitable depression? I dunno, but HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!!!

Another way the whole world is getting stupider: online shopping. I have avoided getting a credit card my whole life... okay, I can't just pass this stupidity by. Before we get to online shopping, let's talk about credit cards, which are a necessary part of it. There's a word that Montgomery Burns and people of his ilk (or worse) don't want you to know about.

 Usury. It's pretty high up there on the list of the most despicable things a person can do. Jesus himself was forgiving of murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and other criminals, but he thrashed the usurers. Scorn for moneymen has a long pedigree. Jesus expelled the moneychangers from the Temple. Timothy tells us that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Muhammad banned usury. The Jews referred to interest as neshek—a bite. The Catholic church banned it in 1311. Dante consigned moneylenders to the seventh circle of hell—the one also populated by the inhabitants of Sodom and “other practisers of unnatural vice." With credit card companies combining with the ingenuity of the financial minds who brought us credit default swaps and bundling to maximize the interest on credit card usage to well over 20%, and minimize the regulation, or what they'd prefer to call "government interference," credit card users really ARE being Sodomized.

But who among us doesn't have and use them? Even I, a lifetime boycotter of this evil, stumbled into one when I found out that the bankcard I got with my most recent Korean account is not an actual credit card but CAN be used as one on an increasingly large number of online shopping sites. (And I won't get into how stupid we continually are to just allow banks to be the holders of ALL of our money because I've blogged endlessly about that before. But with stupider and stupider ways to make us pay more to pay them more, it's still the stupidest thing we do.) My bank card actually worked as a credit card last time I was in Japan too. I saved the receipts because I wanted to calculate the exact rate of usury that was applied, but I lost them. I assure you that with the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to Japanese yen) plus a service charge on top of the interest rate, the "bite" VISA took out of me was probably closer to 40% than 20%. This is legal usury folks. Prove me wrong.  So why do we allow it? In fact ENCOURAGE it by getting all the credit cards we can? Because we're stupid.

Okay, now for the online shopping. It is not by accident that I inserted the Simpsons and Jesus references above. For it was through the wanton desire to purchase a Simpsons related product, not for myself, but as a Christmas gift for two of my best friends, ONLINE, that the stupidity of online shopping was illustrated. And if you've known me a minute you know exactly NOTHING is illustrated to me the easy way. I have to go through some highly unlikely experience that sucks like a nuclear Hoover at the time, but makes for great blog fodder later. And here we have another. I saw a site through an internet ad (don't let me forget the next category of stupid: internet advertising) on Facebook called Toon Me On. It's a good idea but DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM.

I sent a pic of my friends Amber and DB to them. They were going to draw it in the style of the Simpsons then put it on a bag for Amber and a baseball cap for DB. Amber loves bags and DB collects ballcaps. I was all excited about it! I just KNEW they would LOVE these gifts. It was a great pic of them too. The site says that within a few days you will get a jpg of the drawing emailed to you. Delivery was going to take 3 weeks to a month but I had ordered well before Christmas so I reckoned they'd get here on time or early. Two weeks went by and I still hadn't received the drawing. I was noticing on the Facebook site of theirs that a lot of people were complaining about them being slow. I sent an email to their contact email address asking what the schedule was. I received a couple days later, "Working on it." Three weeks after ordering I started participating in the Facebook chat and got ANOTHER response, "Dave, what's your order number?" I replied, "1035." They did not reply. A month after ordering it was nearly Christmas and I had sent emails, Facebook questions, everything I could and they were just ignoring me.

I was supposed to be sent an email when my order was shipped. Still no email and it's been 6 weeks. The site is a scam. Trust me to find a site like this! 105 American dollars down the shitter. With the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to US dollar), a service charge no doubt and the exorbitant interest rate. Plus on Christmas Eve, I had to go out and buy Amber and DB replacement gifts that were nowhere near as nice. I reported the site to a sort of online scam reporting site, but what the hell are they gonna do? It's probably some enterprising young Chinese capitalist trying to "teach" us stupid westerners the error of our ways. I've mentioned this before on this blog. The Chinese cheat generally has the same mentality as the western con man: they convince themselves that they are doing us a favour by scamming us so that in the future we won't be so trusting. It's how they can sleep at night. But in this instance I think this Toon Me On fraudster may have tuned me in. I had previously avoided online shopping the same way as I had the credit card. Because they're both STOOOOPID! Think about what we are doing!

If I asked 7 billion people around the world their top three secrets, just about every one of them who had a credit card would include that number as one of their top three secrets that they don't want anyone to know. In some cases that number is actually the same as their bank account number. With only this information, somebody could steal all your money for crying out loud! WHY are we so cavalier about just giving our credit card/bank account numbers to online sites? It really IS stupid and in my final email to this fraudster I actually said something to the effect of, "This was a really good scam! Congratulations and go fuck yourself."

Before I leave the topic, I have to mention the delivery of these online goods. Here they are just left on the floor behind an unlocked door where any Joe Blow can pick one up and walk away with it. In other countries, they're left on the doorstep. Now we have a new kind of criminal. What do they call them, Amazon porch pirates? 90,000 packages go missing daily in the US? Maybe this is just a really loud and clear message to us: stop being STUPID! Read this article. It makes some awfully good points about online shopping being just another way the internet is making us antisocial. Don't fall for the cooked up stats that say it's good for the environment. You KNOW credit card companies and Amazon can afford misleading studies like the ones tobacco companies used to pay for. Online shopping should only be done by people who don't have access to some products because they can't get out or they live in a place where they can't get that product. Otherwise, get off your lazy arse and go out. You'll feel better afterwards. You might even have to TALK to a friend or MEET a new friend. You may even help save a small business from getting absorbed into the burgeoning monopoly of Amazon.

Okay, on to internet ads. Do you remember way back when we thought that the internet was kinda like, sorta, almost, in some ways FREE? Yeah a long time ago. Like a few years back? Yeah. I member! D'you member? We could pay our 50 bucks a month and then we'd have all kinds of stuff available free! Free music, free movies, free chat sites, free information, libraries of free books, free news, free comedy, free videos of all sorts and, of course, free porn! Best 50 bucks of every month. Well it used to be anyway. Here's another phrase The Man doesn't want us to know: Bait and Switch. They get you hooked on the goods, and with the internet it didn't take very long, then they take it away. And we're so stupid we act like they're heroes and we pay these assholes money to give us back what we used to get for free.

I remember when I could go to Youtube and watch a video. That's it. Just watch a video. Those days are long gone. Now I go to Youtube and immediately have to scroll past a banner ad for some Korean shit. Often it has some music, and to say annoying Korean music would be redundant, that I have to mute. Then I type the song I'm looking for. It comes up. I click. An ad comes up. Five seconds later I get the option, and this is beautiful, the option to "skip ads." Oh and by the way, there's another little banner ad in the bottom left corner. I select "skip ads" and we go to ANOTHER fucking ad! Sometimes it's another 5 seconds until you can select "skip ads" or even more misleadingly, "skip all ads" again. And by the way, there's another small banner ad in the bottom left. Other times, especially if it's an Apple ad, the ad will play for its entirety. Sometimes 15 seconds or even longer. Then your song starts and I swear to GOD at a random time in your song there just might be ANOTHER AD!

My internet rates have not gone down since the addition of all these extra ads. In fact they've gone up a little. Ahh but have no fear fellow stupid people, there is a new and improved internet we can purchase for a little bit more that is almost completely ad free. The bait and switch. They're doing the same thing with clean air and water but that's been a longer and stupider process.

And now for the final example of the world's increased stupidity, the university/college degree. This could very well be considered a beautiful example of the bait and switch con. For years and years, and I do believe I even said so at the beginning of this post, it was nigh onto impossible to get yourself a decent shot at feeling a little better than some company's asset without one. In certain professions and certain specific institutes of those professions, this remains true. I gave an example in a recent post of a place where I was hired before, refusing to hire me for not having the same master's degree I didn't have when they hired me last time. This is a sign that employers are feeling like they are getting the upper hand in the power struggle between the worker and the employer. They are getting more brazen and even refusing to hide their power tripping, much like we can see from their political cronies nowadays. There was a time when they kept their abuse of the working man better hidden. But the steady erosion of government agencies and people's organizations that will do anything about it, has emboldened them.

In the university example, they are no longer shy about admitting true mastery of a skill, study or profession is meaningless. It's the purchase of a piece of paper denoting that mastery that is meaningful. The PURCHASE. After 20 years in the field, I am a master of teaching English as a second language. When I took my TESL certification a few years into my career, my teacher said I could teach the course and I have little doubt if I signed up for a masters in TESOL now it'd be the same thing. I'd be teaching the teacher as much as he/she would be teaching me. But that's not important. The important part of the transaction would be me paying some education business (college or university). That's what these institutes have become. Schools are businesses nowadays. And I can't teach at one until I pay my dues and bow to the powers that be, admitting that I literally buy into what they're selling. Like getting a credit card and online shopping, I have avoided this for a long time, but it might be another thing I get forced into. Why? Because I am stupid too! The world is stupid and I am stupid.

Happy stupid new year.

World Jr. Hockey Team Canada 2019/2020

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Boxing Day Canada vs. US! Doesn't get any better! But before that happens, I thought I'd familiarize myself with the boys on the team this year. I have seen NONE of them play live. And I've only seen them play ONE game vs. Switzerland. An exhibition game. So I'm going by what the experts say and by stats.

That said, I do this every year and it's sometimes even surprising to ME how close I come to what the coaches do. I usually have a couple calls TOTALLY wrong, but in general it's not too hard to guess what's going to happen. I'll tell you what I think line by line, which won't be easy because the lines will probably change before Boxing Day and maybe after. I will highlight my top 5 guys to watch too.

So before the game yesterday, without having seen these guys play at all, I tried to guess what the forward lines might be. I chose the first line perfectly! LINE 1: Left wing - Foudy, Center - Dellandrea Right Wing - Dudas. This is weird. Foudy and Dudas are Centers. Dellandrea is too but sometimes he plays right wing. So I had him on RW, Dudas on LW and Foudy as center. Dudas shoots R so he'd be deadly for one-timers on his off wing. He's small and he is QUICK! Foudy had a goal and he was all over the place in the game. Dellandrea showed some great moves. The player of the game and one of my top two guys to watch in this tourney, was Aiden Dudas. He showed good speed, good passing, good penalty killing and a good scoring touch. And I think I like him even more because he's the smallest guy on the team tipping the scales at 168. This was by far the best line in the game. Great chemistry. I wouldn't change it. After saying all that, there's a good chance that this line will end up being a kind of high scoring third line.

LINE 2: This line will be line 2 only by default. It's because it will include the projected number one pick in the next draft - Alex Lafreniere. He is one of five players who stunk the joint out in the last World Jrs. so he has that under his belt. He's got 23G, 47A in 32 games this season with the Rimouski Oceanic. Keep in mind that the Quebec league always has higher scoring than the OHL or WHL or the like. I don't know why, but it's always the case. His 70 pts. are the most of any player on the squad so he'll be one to watch. He's a set-up man so he'll want a goal scorer on his line. And he's one of only THREE guys who are not listed on HockeyDB as centers. He's a LW. His center in yesterday's game was Barrett Hayton, but that's likely to change. Joe Veleno wasn't able to suit up yesterday, but he and Lafreniere are good together so the coaches won't mess with that. I predicted these two together, but that's a no brainer. I predicted Cozens on their right because he IS a right winger and he's a goal scorer. He's already got 20 goals for the Lethbridge Hurricanes this season. But the coaches put Nolan Foote on the right wing. He's got 15 goals with the Kelowna Rockets and speaking of rockets, his shot was impressive. So I think this might be a good fit with Alex and Joe.

LINE 3: I had Quinton Byfield on the left wing of the third line. I say line 2 will be line 2 by default because I have one of my feelings about this kid. A LOT of people agree.  He's 17, tall, heavy and smooth as silk. He skated around like he was playing pond hockey yesterday. This was an exhibition game, and it was Switzerland so he might not be allowed to do that in a real game vs. Russia or the US or one of the better teams. But he was darn impressive on offense as well as defense. He's got 22G and 35A with the Sudbury Wolves this season. That's comparable to Lafreniere's stats because he's in a tougher league. Even though Lafreniere has been touted as the number one pick for a couple of years now, this kid could shock the hockey world! I'd tell you to keep your eye on him but he'll be very hard to miss. They had him playing with Cozens as center and Lavoie on right wing, but I think they'd be smart to put Dylan Cozens on the right wing (cuz he IS one) and put the returning player, who has been playing in the NHL with Arizona this season, Barrett Hayton, in the pivot position. THIS should be their number one scoring line. Hayton looked very comfortable on the ice yesterday, like an NHLer playing with minor league players. All three of these guys are goal scorers who can also pass. This line could be DINE-O-MITE! I hope they put it together!

LINE 4: Line 4 will definitely be the fourth line. Well, I guess nothing is definite. When I was making lines, I couldn't help but notice that Raphael Lavoie and Benoit-Olivier Groulx BOTH play for the Halifax Mooseheads and both are lighting it up this year. 48 pts. in 30 games for Raphael and 41 pts. in 26 games for Groulx. They're both listed as centers so they may not play on the same line for the Mooseheads, but you can bet they're together on the power play. Chemistry HAS to be taken advantage of so I think these guys will be together. Connor McMichael was playing right wing yesterday with Groulx at center on a line with Dawson Mercer on the left wing. Dawson Mercer is a RIGHT wing so I dunno what that was about. However, McMichael is probably the purest goal scorer on this team. He's already got 25 goals this season for - hey what do you know! - Coach Hunter's London Knights. If Liam Foudy weren't so good on that line with Dellandrea and Dudas, I'd stick him with McMichael because HE'S playing for Dale Hunter this season too. But you can bet both guys are on his power play and they'll be together on the power play for Team Canada too. Chemistry! So line four, if this is it, ain't gonna be no checking line.

This leaves two extra players: Dawson Mercer and Akil Thomas. Team Canada still needs to cut one player from the squad and it appears that player might be Thomas. He was used more sparingly in the game than any other player. From what I saw of him, he was good, but it looks from his ice time, like he's the guy who will be cut. Mercer is very young, undrafted and almost as small as Dudas so it might be him who gets the hook. There always seems to be one player on the squad who gets inserted into multiple positions for penalty killing, injury relief, garbage time with a huge lead and such. I think it'll be one of these two. Unfortunately, the other will be cut.

On defense, Canada has the monstrous Kevin Bahl at 6'7, 240. He'll be paired with Jacob Bernard-Docker as the shut down duo. Jared McIsaac and Ty Smith are both returning players from last World Jrs. They both looked solid, especially McIsaac. Bowen Byram was the only defenseman who I thought looked a bit sluggish yesterday. He's a Vancouver Giant and they're my minor league team, but I gotta be honest, he might be skated around by opposing forwards at this tourney. Hopefully not at a really important time. Calen Addison looks like he'll be a really good quarterback on the power play and he'll be taking shots that will be tipped by the goal scorers. He's had a cup of coffee in the NHL with Pittsburgh and he impressed me yesterday. Also his stats are strong so he's definitely one to watch. But there's another young kid who looks like he might go very high in the next NHL draft. He's 17 but I'd say he was the best defenseman in the game yesterday. Jamie Drysdale is his name and he's got more points, 31, than any of Team Canada's defensemen this season playing for the Erie Otters. That includes 6 goals. Addison has 7 goals for the Lethbridge Hurricanes, but fewer assists than Drysdale. These two could be DINE-O-MITE as the point men on the Canadian power play.

I'm not going to say much about the Canadian goalies because the Swiss didn't test them very much. However, they looked weak during the shootout. Hopefully there will be NO SHOOTOUTS this year.

So here are my top 5 guys to watch.

Quinton Byfield

Aiden Dudas

Alexis Lafreniere

Jamie Drysdale

Calen Addison

GO BOYS GO!

Holiday Hypocrisy

Unemployed again. But it's the best time of year to be unemployed. It's the Christmas/New Years/World Jr. Hockey season. My apartment is cool, I watch football and hockey pretty much every day... I am happy NOT to be writing lessons for practically nothing 8 hours a day like I was last year at this time. I'm thinking of doing something productive with my time. I could study, write, clean, but - nah, I have a better idea: I think I'm gonna grow a white Christmas beard!

To be honest, I haven't been quite that idle. I've thrown myself entirely unwillingly into that hypocrisy we all know as the job market again. It's a(n) hypocrisy we all participate in and actually contribute to. We consciously or subconsciously know it's hypocrisy but we surrender to it. Let me splain. No that would take too long. Let me sum up.

Yesterday I applied to a university called Dongshin University. Again. You see back in Feb of 2011, 8 years ago, I was living in Pyeongtaek  ( I think Anjung to be specific) in my little, traditional Korean house just waiting out the winter applying to universities for the spring semester, which starts in March. Pretty much what I'm doing now. And one of the places I applied to was Dongshin University in a little pear growing town called Naju in the South of South Korea. It's got a big statue of a pear just as you're coming into town and another one just as you're leaving. They grow lots of pears there. You know, the big, juicy, round ones. I don't find them half as tasty as a small, pear shaped Bartlett pear from the tree in my Mom's back yard, but they're treasured over here.

I was (almost) successful in my bid to work at Dongshin in 2011. I nailed the interview and got the contract. Here is a scan of it.

But you know me and my bad luck. The year 2011 was when they stopped allowing criminal record checks from just any police station in Canada to be used for job application in Korea. In their wisdom, the Korean government, or the immigration portion thereof, thought it best to only accept CRC's that originated from the main RCMP office in Ottawa, Canada. That meant that anyone teaching English in Korea from Canada, and there are a LOT of us, had to get one of these:

every time we got a new job here. For me that's almost every year. It's like that for a lot of us. They KNOW that NOW in Ottawa, and you can get one of these in a couple of weeks if you don't mind paying for the faster service and delivery. But back in that first year there was a huge backlog. Mine took 5 months. So I was unable to take the Dongshin job. I got entirely frustrated with Korea and left. The day before I got on the plane home to Canada, I received in my little, traditional Korean mailbox, my criminal record check, which was then useless.

The stamped, verified, or "apostilled" criminal record check, along with

BAM! A stamped, verified or "apostilled" degree and

BING a valid passport, get you

BLAM an alien card so that you are entitled to work in Korea.



So what is the hypocrisy of which I speak? I just told you a good deal of it. Think of what a person has to do in order to get all this documentation and proof of existence. You have to fill out a lot of applications in which you volunteer a lot of information and you have to PAY. We'll get to the PAY  part of the hypocrisy later. Let's talk about the information part. We have to work backwards from the passport. The absolute height of the hypocrisy of which I speak might have been the "guarantor" for my passport. You need a person to vouch for your existence. A reputable person like a doctor, lawyer, clergyman, politician, used car salesman, drug dealer, you know, a reputable person from a well respected line of work, to vouch for you. Failing that (and I failed that) you need a notary public. This is essentially a lawyer who notarizes things. For money. The idea is to get somebody of good moral standing who you have known for some time to give you a character reference. But I didn't know anybody nearby the passport office who fit into any of the categories that were allowable, and I was in a hurry. So I paid a total stranger, a notary public, 50 bucks to sign a document that said this dude's okay. 50 bucks. If anyone ever asks what your character is worth - it's fitty bucks. At least in Canada.

But let's go back even further. One does not just GET a passport, oh no! One must fully commit to a society, a system, a(n) hypocrisy first. What did I need to get my passport? I mean other than flipping a lawyer fifty bucks. I mean the very essentials. You need to fill in the blanks on that passport application. What does one need to do so? Well initially, you're gonna need a name. Sounds silly but you can't get a passport without a name, can you?

If you want to get really Orwellian, read this article about Canadian and American birth certificates. It basically says that what we think of as money is not money. Only heavy and unwieldy gold and silver are actually money. The banknotes we exchange, and now the credit card transactions, are just debt obligation bonds against a gold and silver standard. We think the gold and silver reserves to back up these debt obligation bonds reside in our countries, but our countries have been bankrupt for a long time. Their bankruptcies, or their debt, is owned by the World Bank/IMF. They're the same thing. The World Bank owns Canada and the US.

Interestingly, our birth certificates too are debt obligation bonds, but they're more like stock. We, us people, are the preferred stock of the corporations of Canada and the US. Our birth certificates are registered securities. Stock certificates against which WE are the sureties or the "chattel." We are possessions, livestock if you will, registered at birth (or shortly thereafter) as the property of the world bank as partial payment to them by the corporations that are our countries. Our countries sell us to the World Bank at birth without our parents' (or obviously our) knowledge or permission. We are sources of revenue and taxes for our countries from birth. That revenue we create by consuming, working, doing our social duties like getting married, getting jobs, having families, buying shit, it gets sucked up by our countries and sent off to the World Bank to help pay the interest on the ever increasing debt our countries owe them. It is estimated that if we could cash in these bonds, which we can't, they'd be worth over a million bucks each. My character is only worth 50 bucks, but my existence is worth a million and I don't really OWN either. How's THAT for hypocrisy?

Now the PAY part of acquiring a passport. We need an address. That requires a home. Somebody's paying for that home. You need to outline your entire education. School ain't free either whether you go to a for profit school or a public school, you or your parents pay in money or taxes. You need a phone number, which you pay for. Phone numbers are increasingly important. You can't get a bank account any more in some countries without a phone. And without a bank account, you can't get a job. So we all must PAY the phone companies and the banks. No choice. Cuz we gotta work, right? How else can we afford a home, education and a phone? And we also need two pieces of government issued I.D. Preferably photo I.D. So you need a driver's license. And probably a car.

This is how deeply you have to dive into your county's financial culture before you can even get a passport so you can get OUT of that country and financial culture. So now you're in Korea. You want to work. You need to get the criminal record check cuz they don't know what kind of shenanigans you've been up to in your country before you got here. And the criminal record check done by your countries top police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, don't mean shit either unless you pay a total stranger, that good old lawyer/notary public, fitty bucks to stamp it and say, "Hummph hoaa hrrrr yeah this dude is A O K!"

You also need a degree. You don't need knowledge or skills. You need a piece of paper stamped and/or signed by a university official saying, "Huuumm hooo heerrr haaaa yup, this dude is OK!" But that's not good enough either! You need a total stranger, hello again notary public, to whom you pay another fitty bux, to vouch for the guy who vouched for the document that vouches for your education. My degree is just a voucher I bought. And I am still paying for almost every year.

You also need a medical check cuz nobody knows what kind of medical (mostly sexual) shenanigans you've been up to in your country. So they do blood and urine and physical tests to make sure you don't taint the health purity of Korea. And you pay for this too. A doctor analyzes the results and says, "Hooarr hhrrrmmm hummm yup, this dude is okay." I absolutely KNOW we can't be more than a few years away from a new immigration law in Korea making it necessary to get a lawyer to vouch for the doctor who vouched for your medical test results. They almost have that already. Only medical tests done at certain hospitals by previously vouched for doctors (most likely vouched for by a notary public who doesn't know the doctor at all) are acceptable. But at least we don't (yet) have to pay those notary publics. What a great gig that must be eh? "I'll say you're a good person for 50 bucks. 50 bucks for validation here folks! Get your proof of character right here for the low, low price of fifty dollars!"

So back to Dongshin University. My application package was sent in the morning and I was contacted the very same afternoon. I was pretty sure I'd get a response because not only had I actually been hired before at this school, but part of the job was teaching kids camps during summer and winter break for the Naju City School Board. I had actually done THREE camps with the NCSB, one right AT Dongshin University. I sent pics of one of the camps I did including the director, Mr. Lee and the representative from the NCSB, Mrs. Choi. I sent their phone numbers because they still remember me and will vouch for me. Mr. Lee actually ran for mayor of Naju City last year and I included this pic of him with his number.

Add all this to my 20 years of teaching experience 12 of which has been in universities and colleges and I'm a shoe-in, right? Well the reply was simply, "Do you have your masters degree?" You see it's not the knowledge that's important. After doing this for 20 years, I AM a master! But without a piece of paper signed by somebody at some university stating, "Ho herm hummm hrrr yeah this dude's good," along with a stamp from a total stranger, the notary public, which costs a lot of money plus fifty bucks, well I just can't be trusted can I? So Dongshin will probably hire somebody with nowhere near the skill and experience I have, with a masters in bagpiping or auctioneering and I'll keep looking for work.

Are you seeing the hypocrisy? This is why I will be drinking heavily while watching football, NHL and World Jr. Hockey during this season. If you should happen to get a Facebook message or a text from me that's incomprehensible, go easy on me. The tedium and soul-sucking nature of applying, interviewing and getting all the dox for a new job might just be my least favourite thing to do. Kinda puts a damper on the whole Christmas/New Years/World Jr. Hockey/NFL football season. But I'll try to keep a few sugarplums in my head even if they might have to be the highly fermented kind.

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...