Job Discussion Forums

[Markness]

As I cannot name the school publicly I will make it so that you can avoid it easily.

I just quit today at my small training school that I was working at for a little extra money.

It is run by one foreign dude and he is a very nice guy. The problem is, is that you have a contract that is for 20 hours and your hours working there are a lot closer to 40-50. He will not put in any effort to try and make your classes close together as he believes it is customer first, all the time.

If a student is late.. well, you are going to teach late. I had a student come 45 minutes late for a 2 hour class, and guess what, I still had to teach the full 2 hours. This was my first class of the day (just after lunch), and I had basically a 3 hour window of time with the guy. This doesn't include me having to get ready/uber to work too. So overall, because of one kid, it cost me 4 hours of time, and only got 2 teaching hours in.

As I mentioned before, the hours will be as stretched as possible, and this means that even though you are only contracted to work 20 that you will have to work close to 40 or 50. It was common for me to start around 2, and leave around 10ish, and I would have to do this 5 days a week, even though I only had to teach only 20 hours.

The other kicker was that the guy claimed that he had lots of students ready for me, when in reality there was only HIS students available to be taught. The first week was great, all my classes were put together and it worked out to be close to 16-18ish hours. Not bad I thought hey, for the first week? Well no, apparently I needed more hours desperately... even though it was my first week. The second week came along and my hours were all over the place with different students, third was the same...

I seldomly saw him teaching, maybe just if we had classes at the same time (mother/daughter kind of thing), otherwise it was pretty much ALL me doing all the teaching.

This week (today actually), I was scheduled to start at 12, and then have lunch and play with kids for 3 hours. After this 3 more classes got thrown into my schedule just this morning, and I still had to do 3 classes after that.. so 9 teaching hours in one day, with a 1 hour lunch break (can someone say overtime?), well no, actually that was just expected.

I told my boss yesterday if he could be a little bit more accomodating with the hours because I didn't want to put in 40+ hours a week for only 10k, and he said "that is just how training schools work, these are our services", so 10 hours a day is normal? Since when? I understand how people put their blood, sweat, and tears into a company when they're running it on their own, but if they hire someone to relieve them then you would assume they would try to be nice to them, well I guess not.

Another red flag was when I first met him he was going off on how "foreigners are always irresponsible" and kept going on and on about it. And I thought to myself that I'd just let it go. I know tons of foreigners who yes, match the description, but also a ton that work their arses off to make a living and do a good job doing so. He told me how he liked to exploit the work force he and take advantage of the cheap labor. Foreigners are no exception I suppose.

When I asked about when pay day was, it seemed like I had just shot his favorite dog. And was told "there is no set date". Bear in mind, he did pay me for the first week, but after today I doubt he is going to pay me for the last 2 (since he rage-deleted me off of wechat when I told him I wasn't coming in to work today).

Another thing to mention, was when I told him I will no longer be coming into work today he told me that "you're just like the other foreigners, irresponsible and lazy", or something along those lines. Well if I don't like putting in 10+ hour days I guess that really does make me lazy. No mention on my professionalism though. Never late, and I actually got him quite a few students in my small period of time there.

Just a cautionary tale, if you read a job posting in Chengdu that says something along the lines of "Are you tired of working for Chinese bosses? Can sponsor your own visa?", etc. then avoid it. If you want the name of the company then let me know because it is only 1 foreigner running it and 2 Chinese staff there.

Take care guys and be careful out there.

Mark

[SH_Panda]

No mention of your professionalism?

Didn't you just quit on the day you're supposed to be teaching, in the middle of a contract?

I'd say that's pretty unprofessional. At least give the guy some notice.

Also, you were working 20 hours a week 'for a little extra money'. Where are you supposed to be working? Do you even have the right visa to be working?

So much doesn't add up here.

[Markness]

[Babala]

Sounds to me like you weren't working part-time you were his full-time teacher. Things like office hours, split shifts between classes, payday... are things that should have been discussed before agreeing to work there. People make the assumption that if a foreigner runs the school then it must be okay which of course is not the case.

I don't fault you for quitting but you should have given at least a week's notice. It's not fair to the students you bailed on today. The fact that he is unprofessional doesn't give you permission to be.

[7969]

[Markness]

[Markness]

7969.. the post is messy enough