Curiosity to fill the void.

Dearest readers and friends I apologize for not writing in a while but there have been many a happening in my life as of late and that is what I want to write about now.

Two months ago I had my birthday and then a week later I met a Korean girl who is now my girlfriend. The week after that my boss, Sunny, took me into her office and told me I was fired.

That's right. Fired. The following is the story.

March 18th my boss sits me down and tells me that she is firing me because she has been so pressured by the parents to get a new teacher. She talks about how there have been ongoing complaints about my teaching style and abilities. Sunny also mentions the financial implications of everything and that if she gets rid of me she can hire a new teacher for a little less than she was paying me. Reading between the lines of this conversation she was basically using me as a scapegoat for the low enrollment and high dropout rate that J Language is facing. This all went down five minutes before I had to teach my last class for the evening so there wasn't a lot of discussion.

I couldn't really think of what to do so the next morning I called the agency that placed me here and they basically told me to roll over and take it...real cute. I said screw that and then I talked to all my friends that night at the local bar and they started to give me advice. One friend, Chris, gave me the email address of a legal aid type person he knew, John, and so I started to talk to him. Now John said my contract was 95% solid and that she was not firing me for legit reasons and that I could fight it. That is what I wanted to do. John then pointed me in the direction of an actual Labor Law Firm here. I started to email with a man there and he gave me some options all of which would have ended up costing me an arm, a leg, and my first born.

Basically what the law firm could do was file a claim for me and then Sunny would have had to battle it if she wanted to, keep me on, or pay me out. What she would have had to do to fire me from that point is to prove that through two consecutive quarters I, alone, had caused a 50% loss in revenue. This being impossible she would not have stood a chance in court. All this being the case I would have unintentionally shut down my school from how much time, money, and effort Sunny would have invested into it and I was not about to do that.

I had been talking to one of m coworkers about my situation and it was brought to the attention that there could be trouble if I went to the law because there was a small small chance that the school would have been investigated and certain members of the staff fired. One of my coworkers decided to quit an upon doing so informed Sunny of my going to lawyers. Sunny did not bother to listen to me right away as I told her she didn't know the full story and that I had only talked to people who know the labor laws of Korea for guidance in what to do in my situation. This all made her very angry and she told me that she could do what she needed to do to legally fire me right away but she didn't want me to go until she had a new teacher to replace me. She let me pick a date and May 4th is what I chose as my last day there for the new guy to come in and me to get out.

To make this long story short I was fired for bullshit business reasons and I am forced to come back due to certain things going on at home that you may or may not hear about.

Some of the other things that Sunny did while she was firing me was to lie to me through her poor communication skills by leading me on to think that the other foreign teachers were fired or had quit because of me, thus making me out to be a bad guy, and she said that she could never trust me. Q.E.D. I felt like shit and it made the situation a lot worse because I really didn't want to show my face to anyone or talk about it with people. Oh well these things must happen for a reason yes?

This firing also means that I don't get my next few months pay, I don't get the severance pay, and my flight home was not paid for by the school. It all sucks but I am getting over it all. I just need to come home and get my head on straight now and all will be good.

Side story: Sunny's trust in me was replenished over the ensuing weeks up to my termination due to a couple things. First off I continued to put the same 110% effort into teaching these kids as I always did and kept a level head about things. I am proud of myself for that and I have realized there is not point in being a dick or whatever because that is going to get you nowhere. The other thing was that there was a situation at the school where Sunny had to immediately fire a different teacher and that made the entire school feel a little unsafe and insecure but Sunny knew how against this other teacher's situation I was so her trust came back. Sunny now claims as a favor to me she will write me any kind of recommendation letter for whatever my next job may be.

Anyway that is pretty much it. I fly out of here tomorrow so I will be seeing you all soon and I will do a recap of my 10 months blog and a last weeks here blog too.

Later days!!

Blog Shout out: To Netty for helping me through all of this.