So Allison asked for more blog…it’s her funeral.
This week was actually pretty eventful – from thinking I was going to lose my job, to trying to fix my camera, to discussing menopause and breast cancer with rooms full of ten and eleven year old boys and girls—there’s never a dull moment in Korea.
Let’s start with Ms. B, her name has been changed to protect her identity; the B stands solely for Bureaucrat. I believe I’ve spoken to the wisdom and moral fiber of my bosses in previous blogs, so this story may come as quite a surprise.
Ms. B is 22 years old and just graduated from college. Her mom is friends with the owners of our school, so upon completion of her degree her mother though entering the soulless world of middle school English as a Second Language Education in Korea was an excellent entry level profession for her young daughter. She started work and, I believe, was trained comprehensively in the art of screwing up everything. She was hired under the pretense of being an HR director at our school. She began work right when we were hiring new teachers, so her job was a pretty important one – communicating with the applicants about visa information, issuing contracts, making the new teachers feel comfortable about their decision to teach in a foreign country whose national food looks like someone violently slayed a cabbage. Most companies would look for someone with experience – HAHA! – our bosses are much too clever to fall into such a trap. There’s no need to pay an extra sum of money to someone who knows what they’re doing when you can hire a low level intern for 500 bucks a month who will probably screw everything up once, twice, three times BUT! Here’s the beauty: at some point they will learn something and the investment will come to some kind of fruition.
Lucci has been in contact with some of the new teachers and they say that working with Ms. B has been…delightful. Angry emails asking them why they aren’t in Korea when there won’t be jobs for them for another three months, responses to questions about visa information which include “I don’t know…call the embassy’, and other emails filled with countless gems of wisdom like “I don’t know” “ask someone else” or “search the internet.” Ms. B puts the “Hu?” in human resources.
It’s not only future employees, however that she is making miserable. She was promptly put as the mediator of communication between the teachers at my school and our boss. This works out wonderfully because it adds another person to my email list that never answers emails/ doesn’t know what I’m talking about. The idea to add another level of Bureaucracy to our small school, is perhaps to my feeble mind just too complicated to understand. I’m sure there is some pearl of wisdom behind it which will be bestowed upon me upon reaching heaven, nirvana or some other higher state of consciousness.
In her two weeks of employment I have 2 anecdotes blog worthy.
1 – That time Ms. B told me to get out of my apartment.
Most HR people are probably pretty friendly, good with words, diplomatic, accommodating – none of these, however come to mind with Ms. B. Two days ago I received an email from her highness which read something like this:
“Tedd,
When are you leaving Korea? We have teachers coming and they need to be comfortably accommodated.
Scathingly*,
Ms. B”
*Email may not have actually been signed this way
I get this email and wonder, “Am I going to be asked to leave my job next week when the new teachers come?” “What am I going to do? I had plans to go to Japan in September…” I have deleted several expletives that were buried in the previous phrases, as I was rather frustrated about being asked to leave before my contract had expired, and with only one week of notice.
I immediately fired a back an email which read:
“Ms. B,
I’m leaving upon the successful completion of my contract.
Tedd”
I figured since she was an HR person she should probably be able to move her rather girthy backside and look for my contract in her piles of paperwork. The next day I immediately went to the post office to buy boxes to start boxing stuff in my apartment to send home.
The next day I went to our secretary and asked if I was going to be asked to leave. Our secretary doesn’t speak much English so the response was more or less a … “yeah, looks that way” To which I just stood still in confusions, for, not to toot my own horn, but I’ve been a rather successful teacher-well-liked, handsome, witty- and there was absolutely no reason for me to be asked to leave…. Well, except for that wild card reason of “Our bosses are incompetent and hired 4 teachers to replace 1 who is leaving 2 months after they arrive”. The secretary further went onto explain that maybe the teachers weren’t officially expected to arrive in a week and Ms. B could merely ask them to delay their arrival. Our secretary asked me when I was going to leave…
…which leads me to B story number 2.
2 – Occasion 3409384075 that Ms. B sent a worthless email
So I tell our secretary that I was planning to leave mid-September and that I could bypass a lengthy visa renewal process if I was allowed to get out of my contract a few days early. If I did this I could merely get a 30 day tourist extension on my visa and not have to have a medical check, criminal background check, AIDS test, etc. The secretary nodded in confirmation and told me to email Ms. B about my plan and that way she could tell the new teachers to come later.
I promptly went to my computer and sent an email to my bosses and Ms. B about my plan. I apologized for my first curt email and told them I didn’t understand Ms. B’s first email and wanted to leave in mid-September under my current contract. I didn’t mention the visa extension because it didn’t seem necessary at the time. I signed the email and sent into cyberspace.
This afternoon I click open my email box and find an email from – guess who! – Ms. B!!
It red as follows:
“Tedd,
I talked to your secretary and discovered that you can bypass the lengthy visa renewal process by applying for a tourist extension on your visa. This should allow you to stay in Korea without getting a medical check.
Ms. B”
There was about three seconds where I wondered if I somehow stepped backward in time one day and had read an email that had inspired me to tell our secretary about the visa extension that I had found on my own time.
Then I realized that I had just been sent an email about what I said to our secretary the day before. Basically I had told someone something to tell someone else to tell me exactly what I had told in the first place.
Yeah. Chew on that.
So, to transition as awkwardly as possible – what is one thing Ms. B will experience later in life?
Regret and pain about working for an ESL evil empire in Korea? No, but good guess!
How about Menopause!!
Yes, we did have two separate listening tracks in our classes which dealt heavily with the topics of menopause, estrogen and breast cancer.
Tedd? (you ask) are you teaching a sex education course or introductory biology course in Korea to high schoolers?
No, I am not. I am teaching basic English to 10 year olds who have trouble understanding that “I is go” is not a correct sentence. Some of them even misspell their own names on their quizzes. (A personal favorite is a Katie who spells her name “Katei” – she is affectionately known as Kay-tie.)
In his infinite wisdom, our director decided that the best way to end our listening classes with our beginning English speakers is to have two separate listening tracks about geriatric women and the struggles of menopause. One of which is about muscle loss after menopause, the other about breast cancer in menopausal women and the dangers of drinking alcohol.
Okay, right, I know you’re thinking, “Tedd this is practical knowledge all these kids need to know. Right after the alphabet, menopause and breast cancer are two issues all children under 12 should know about. I mean how many of these 10 year old girls will turn into raging alcoholic grandmothers with breast cancer!” I agree this may be a nit picky complaint, but the awkward pot it stirred up in my classes was enough to make me question the merit of said listening tracks.
Most of the week I was able to get through the tracks by telling the kids that menopause was when “women can’t have babies anymore and their bodies begin to change as they get old.” I actually avoided any confrontation with menopause and counted my blessings It is worth noting that my fellow teacher Chris answered any question directed around or on menopause with “menopause is a vocabulary word.”
My other co-teacher, Michael da Lucci, felt it necessary to tell the kids in detail about what happens in menopause. This, however backfired one fateful afternoon when he asked his class, “What is menopause?” One girl, who felt particularly academically stimulated by these listening tracks, spread her legs and shouted “Pee stops!” Pee in Korean actually means blood – how this 10 year old girl had an in-depth understanding of the female reproductive system is up for grabs, but Michael was so mortified he just was like, “Yes!” and never mentioned menopause for the rest of the class.
I also tried to mince my words to avoid any direct talk about breasts during the breast cancer tracks. I was able to get by most of the week by saying that “your breast is just your chest. Girls get cancer on their chests.” This satisfied most students. All except Lilly. It is important to note that Lilly is perhaps one of the sweetest students at our school – her probing into the meaning of breast cancer was completely about gaining a total understanding of the listening tracks rather than about making Teacher Tedd turn magenta. It was Lilly, though, who raised her hand and said, “What do you mean chest?” To which I started to color and told her “women get bumps on their chests that show they have cancer.” Lilly looked thoroughly perplexed, while some of the other students started to understand a) what breast really means and b) why Tedd was starting to sweat. Lilly still didn’t get it – even with the sniggers of the other students providing hints – and again asked “What do you mean?” This is the point where I started to say “Chest” awkwardly and make subtle movements with my hands over my chest to give myself pantomime boobs. Lilly looked at me for a while before her hand shot over her mouth and she squealed in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry teacher!” she said gasping. I, of course the consummate professional teacher, was starting to laugh along with the rest of the kids. I was wearing a bright, red polo shirt that day and one of the students felt it necessary to point at my shirt and yell, “Teacher! Shirt and face same! The same color!” Lilly again apologized to which I merely said that she was too smart and too interested in class.
Pretty embarrassing for all. Although one thousand times less painful from an email from Ms. B.
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