It was my 50th birthday this week, so I took two huge chocolate cakes to work for my students. Before class started, I talked to the owner about an issue re a co-worker, a teacher, whose frequent absences required combining my class with his, often with only minutes’ notice when I arrived at work. I felt this was harming my students and, on my birthday, all the plans I’d made for my class now had to be done away with because of yet another last-minute call to say he’d be absent that day.
As I was having this discussion, another foreign teacher arrived for work. Within seconds of hearing my conversation with the owner, he invited himself into the discussion by shouting and screaming at me that I had no right to talk about this teacher and his frequent absences. I asked him on what basis he thought he could join in uninvited, and he said, “Because I was listening…” I encouraged him to move along and get ready for work, and he walked off.
Moments later, he stormed back and went off on a long rant, puffing out his chest and getting closer and closer to me. Finally, he lost control and told me, in front of the two owners and other co-workers, to “F**k off!” He then walked off. I called after him that he’d be back to apologize momentarily, so I would wait where I was. “No, I won’t,” he said, with his back to me, walking off. “No, you’re right about that, you’re not man enough to apologize.”
Anyway, he did come back, he was marched back by the owner and provided an “apology,” most of which was spent blaming me. The owner expected me to be satisfied with that, but I said I definitely was not. I know what a big mouth this teacher has, and I knew he’d be going off to marshal support against me, having been there many years and me a much shorter time.
So, after some discussion with the owners, they understood that my main concern was that there would be no repeat of such bullying behavior, and they asked what they could do. I said I would go home and spend the next day coming up with a proposal for ensuring no lasting consequences from what happened. And that’s what I did: I asked that the teacher receive a written warning and agree to a few conditions, simple things like not trying to interact with me, not making any comments about me to other staff/students. The owners replied that this had been agreed with by themselves and the foreign teacher, and I was to come back to work.
If you got this far, the really interesting stuff happens now:
Being told by the owner to “come back and teach the children,” I returned to the school for my next scheduled class. I went early in case there was anything to clear up. The owner came and sat with me and we had a 20-minute talk. When we reached a break in our conversation, we both felt like we were being stared at. We looked up and two of the Taiwanese teachers were there, staring at us, hands by their sides. I asked what they wanted to say, and the first one said: “If you continue teaching here, I will not work with you.” Then the second one said the same thing. Then another foreign teacher came and started standing over me, intimidating me, telling me I had to leave the school immediately. I told him I was employed at the school, but he kept getting closer and closer and I thought he would grab hold of me, so I left. As we got to the elevator and he was out of earshot, he threatened me, saying if he had been there when I spoke about his friend (the teacher who kept being absent), he’d have “f**king crushed” me.
I sent a message to the owners asking why they had had me thrown out of the school after telling me to come and teach, and they said I am now not to come to work. I asked why, and they said I quit. “I quit, how?” “Because you took home all your personal property from the school that day!” Well, it’s true I took some clothes home to wash, but that now apparently means you’ve quit! I said I am still employed at the school until my contract runs out, but they said I can not come to the school.
Basically, what I thought would happen happened, the teacher who publicly insulted me was, at first, going to take the medicine of a warning, but then decided that if he got the other foreign teachers on side and some Taiwanese ones, they could just threaten to quit if I resumed my teaching.
So there we have it. This will go to mediation, I suppose, and those who followed my previous posts re my legal fight with a buxiban owner, will know that by now I am highly experienced in this kind of thing.
Interestingly, there has been a conviction in Taiwan for using the Chinese equivalent of “f**k off” as an insult, and the owner usefully sent a long description of the incident where they note the use of these words to publicly insult me, so I will have this teacher brought to the police station and see if I can get a charge to stick (hard, but sometimes happens).
Oh, the birthday, my 50th. No cake (for me), no card, no gift. Never mind, maybe my 100th will be better.