I was wondering how those who have to work on Christmas day this year feel about it.
My company is giving us the holiday off, but my friend’s ENGLISH school is not.
I find it rather ironic that they’d been teaching the kids all about Christmas for over a month, and now are forcing the foreign teachers to work that day.
Grant it some people are probably happy to get the extra cash, what with Chinese New Year coming and all, but I find the whole idea stinks because they’d made such a big hoopla about Christmas with the kiddies.
When they asked their management “WHY?”, the answer was, “the parents wouldn’t understand”.
Well, considering, Christmas/Constitution Day had been a long-time holiday in Taiwan until this year, then I reckon the parents WOULD understand, especially the ‘kindness’ of giving their hard-working foreign teachers who’re largely from Christian backgrounds, a well earned day off in order to not feel so alienated from their own cultures.
Isn’t that what Christmas is all about, anyway? Charity?
An image of a greedy Taiwanese Corporate Bushiban ‘Scrooge’ comes to mind.
This is the sort of thing that we may want to support Richard Hartzell with in working against foreigner human rights abuses. THAT Bushiban, probably not unlike many others in Taiwan, seems to regard its foreign staff, who by the way are the main drawing card for their business, as potentially ‘troublemaking robots under contract’. It’s astounding what ‘they’, the evil bushibaneers, can get away with. Christmas slavedriving is only just the tip of that dubious iceberg!
After you so totally slagged my honest question about Christmas dinner in another forum, I’m not sure whether I should respond to this or not…
My work (English school) is open on Christams day and I agree with you that it does seem strange to make a big deal about Christmas in our lessons, Xmas show, etc and then not even acknowledge the holiday when it finally arrives…
I did, however, let my bosses know that I really wanted to take Christmas Day off so that i could relax and go for a nice dinner or something and they decided to let the foreign teachers at the school take the day off if they were so inclined. I’d say about half of us decided not to work. The other half said that they have nothing better to do, so they might as well. This seems a reasonable and respectful way of handling the situation.
BTW - what are people here doing for Xmas? As alien already knows, I have no cooking facilities whatsoever in my apartment, and would really like to eat out somewhere…
Alien, My mashed potatoes (homemade) are delicious and of course I would be cooking them if I had a heat source on which to boil water in a pot.
If you want Christmas, or any other day off, and your school resists, tell them you have to pick up from, or take to the airport, your father, mother, cousin, etc. Say your uncle is passing through Taipei on the way to Thailand for business and can meet you for a few hours at the airport on Christmas day. Your father insists that you meet him and have lunch.
As Richard Hartzell wrote in his column this weekend, family can be used as an excuse almost with impunity.
I once dropped some unwanted classes by saying that I had to study Chinese that night. I said that my wife’s family was putting pressure on her (and me) to get my langauge skills up to snuff. Worked like a charm.
Some schools force their teachers to work on Christmas. I’d be outta there like a shot. My schools are open, but I just went to the bosses and said that it was an important cultural day for me and they said “no problem”. If my boss was too tight to let me go for the most important cultural festival in the year, I’d either just not turn up or quit on the spot.