Alex

Alex was and probably still is an asshole.

He was pretty smart. He taught himself Spanish, French, Korean and Mandarin. He never taught himself, however how to interact with people. He would often ask something like "How was your weekend?" and when anyone started to answer, he'd either start talking about something else or walk away while you were talking.

He would ask for other teachers to cover classes for him and then never return the favor.

At this academy, the schedule was pretty flexible because most of the classes were one on one. As a result, schedules would often change every few weeks when a new student came or when one of the students had to change the time they came in. Alex took advantage of this. He would go behind the front desk and change the schedule. He would give the other teachers students he didn't like or who were at an inconvenient time.

His interaction with several of the students was also a little odd. The Canadian teacher and I noticed that he would make a considerable amount of physical contact with many of the middle school boys. At first it was playing around with taekwondo moves. Later, I saw him walking down the street towards the academy with his arm around the shoulder of one of my students. He also mentioned to the Canadian coworker that it wasn't fair that she and I got all of the good looking students while he got all of the ugly ones.

We both had our suspicions about him but figured he was just a little off balance. Then one morning, the Canadian teacher received a telephone call. It was about 7am on a Sunday. He wanted her to go to his apartment and pick up his laptop. She asked why, and he said he needed her to get it right away and he'd explain later. She didn't really want to, but he begged and pleaded, so finally she did.

The night before, our school had a company dinner. Everyone went out, ate and talked, and there were a few beers at the table. Alex drank about half of one.

After she picked up the computer, he explained that he went to a jimjilbang(spa/sauna) after the dinner. He fell asleep and had an erotic dream because of all the alcohol he drank. During his erotic dream, he somehow groped a child who was sleeping near him. The child went to his father and told him that someone groped him, and Alex was picked up by the police.

After hearing the tale of groping a child because Alex was "having an erotic dream," the coworker wanted to know why she needed to pick up his computer. He said he just didn't want anyone taking it because it was expensive.

News of the incident reached our school. This was because the parent of the child wanted blood money from our director. As is the custom here, no criminal charges were filed, but Alex needed to pay a ton of money. He didn't have that kind of money, so the school had to pay. I have no idea why, but he wasn't fired for quite a while.

A couple of months later, he was let go because the school didn't want to keep paying the parent of the groped child and because everyone hated him.