Stuck in the Middle

The job of the Japanese staff at NOVA is to sell. We are under enough pressure as it is from our bosses to meet sales targets. One reason why the turnover in staff is so high is probably because of the stress we get. It comes from all sides-our bosses, the foreign teachers and from the students. We are helplessly stuck in the middle.

Of course, among the teaching staff there are good teachers and bad teachers. It is the bad teachers who don't understand what it means to work in Japan-they assume that the work rules back home must also apply in Japan and they will not accept any other way.

The Japanese staff aren't all perfect but, if they had to do 30 minutes of overtime (actually, it was normal for the staff to do at least 2 hours of overtime, all unpaid), for example, they wouldn't complain. However, if a teacher even has to do 5 minutes of overtime, they'll demand to be paid for it. This kind of selfishness surprised me. Do they have any idea of how much work we do for them so their lives are simplified to the point of punch in, teach, punch out and go home?

One teacher that caused me much stress was an American named Jay. His was in the midst of getting divorced from his Japanese wife. He was always in a bad mood and would vent his anger on the Japanese staff. In his mind, Japanese staff=NOVA.

I was the first target of his anger one day. He really needed to go to the hospital but he didn't have health insurance. He was covered under a plan with his wife, but since the divorce was very bitter, he wanted out of this plan and back into the one he used to have with NOVA. So, Jay sent his health insurance card to head office to get it renewed. For the next week or so, he would always ask me if his new insurance card had come yet.

I phoned head office to ask what the delay was. Head office told me that they hadn't received a certain document from his wife yet and therefore couldn't issue him a new card. The document from his wife was absolutely crucial. Head office then told me that this was not NOVA's problem and that Jay should sort it out with his wife. NOVA wold not phone his wife and ask for the document he needed.

I translated this to Jay and he flew off the handle.
"MY WIFE IS NOT GOING TO HELP ME!" he screamed in front of everyone. "I NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL! DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE!"
I explained to him again that unless his wife gave him the document, NOVA couldn't do anything.

After he finished yelling at me, he asked for a resignation form.
"Tell me how to write it."

I couldn't believe his nerve. He eventually got his health insurance after more yelling at the Japanese staff.

I also had to put up with students complaining about teachers. Bob was such an example. Unlike Jay who yelled a lot, Bob was really weird. If he were sometimes late for work, he would give a wild excuse that no one could believe. He would never use "I overslept" as an excuse.

Anyway, I had to deal with the many students who complained about him. NOVA uses report forms to record student complaints and we make them available to the head teachers once a month. In my school, most of the reports were about Bob. The biggest complaint was that his lessons were boring.

The most shocking one was during a private lesson with a female student. He told her to close her eyes and imagine that she was on a trip with him. He would then start to tell a story about the trip. For the entire class. The problem was that he did this in a small classroom (1.5 tatami in size!) and made the student keep her eyes closed the whole time. Bob scared students. In this girl's case, she was a beginner and couldn't understand what he was saying most of the time. Another student complained that Bob spent a class telling him about what he disliked about Japan. This particular student came running to me to angrily complain and demand that Bob be fired,something not in my power.

As managers, we got it from both teachers and students. The only thing we could do was bite our tongues and wish it would all go away.

Masako