FYinSK - Mar. 2013

March 2013

What hurt me most was the part where «  they had been looking for a new teacher for 3 weeks » already. Counting back, that brought me to my second week in Korea, before I had even received my GrapeSEED formation. How could they judge my teaching in 2 weeks, when they tell me that they didn’t mind my not having any experience in teaching? I found that very unfair.

They did not like my accent. 

How could they decide that it was a good reason to fire me, when they had had a Skype interview with me before I signed the contract?

I wrote an email including what I remembered he had told me, and explaining along the way, all that I thought was unfair about his judgement. I did not want to keep working for them if they did not want me, but I thought it very unfair of them to have started looking for a replacement before I could show my worth. I said that if the accent was the main reason that was not a good reason because they had talked to me before I signed and nothing was wrong. I told him that if they didn’t want me it was okay, but that I did not believe I had breached the contract in any way, so that it was not a legitimate reason to fire me, that by doing so, they were the ones breaching the contract, not me, as it had been a mutual agreement. I asked him to help me find another employment.

To which he took my email, answered with a written paragraph on every point, printed it and brought me in a room to read it with him. He did not give me the printed paper, nor send the letter, so I can’t say exactly what was in them, but even a year later, the shadow of it remains imprinted in my brain.

He said that the accent was not the only reason. He wrote that I had no technique for teaching, I was not a good teacher, that I lied saying I was a native teacher and that I had tricked and lied to them. He verbally threatened me to do a background check and that if I really wanted to push it and bring it to court it would end up being really expensive and that he would not let me alone. The room was equipped with CCTV I thought, as I was holding back tears, wasn’t that ironic that the whole dragging in the mud of an innocent was being recorded by the one doing the dirty work? 

I had just gotten many shocks in a very short amount of time so I did what I learned so well in Japan, I put on my smiling polite mask. Those statements were unfair on so many levels, and this whole thing was so dirty on so many levels, that I decided I would have the least possible interaction with that school anymore. I would do my very best, do what they wanted, and then leave with a smile. Maybe one day, there would be divine retribution for the ills they did me. Or so I still hope.

I said that I did not want to do anything against the school, that I just wanted to leave nicely and find a place that would like me. That they just had to write me a letter of release and I’d figure things out. 

I work the best I could, and taught the system to the new teacher the way I would have loved to have been taught. It was still fresh in my mind, so it was easy for me to tell which apparently insignificant detail was super important, and so forth.

At the end of the month, they gave me my last pay check. And asked me to reimburse the flight ticket. 

As**oles. 

In the contract I had signed with them, had I decided to leave before the end or had I not followed the contract properly, it was said I would need to reimburse my airfare. Which is legitimate. However, for many reasons, I believe that it is them, not me that broke the contract. That’s probably why they never mentioned me having to pay the airfare back before the very last day right before giving me my release letter. The hell with them. I was going to be the better person out of this. 

I gave them the money, so I would never have to see them again.

My sister in law has this expression I like a lot « choisir ses combats » choose your fights. I had no strength left in my at that point, so I just choose to let life take its course. If they were meant to go down, I hope I would not have to be the one to be doing them wrong. 

That’s how I started a new Korean life. 

Broke. $$