Things start to get unpleasant part 2

So, a few hours after I left messages everywhere and went off to get my fingerprints taken for my criminal background check just in case, I get a call from work. It was about a half hour before my first class. The call was from one of the secretaries saying that my first two students canceled. I explained that I wasn't coming in anyways and that I had left a message. They didn't understand and wanted to know what was up. I tried to explain that I'm not coming into work while they're painting in a small space with no windows. She didn't quite understand, so I just said I'm sick.

About an hour later, I get a call from my recruiter. I generally dislike recruiters, but this guy and his company are pretty great. The recruiting company is and was esl-planet. This call came 11 months after I started at the school. The recruiter called to ask what was going on because my boss had called him to request two new teachers because he wanted to fire me and the other teacher who didn't come in and pay an immigration officer to ban us from ever coming back to Korea.

I explained the situation. He seemed pretty shocked. He advised that I go in anyways and try to smooth things out, but to take pictures just in case. He then calmed down my boss, and I went in. The place was pretty unbearable, but only one of my students decided to come that day because the rest didn't want to weave through cords attached to running saws in order to sit in a tiny room filled with sawdust and paint fumes any more than I did. On the way in, I made sure to snap tons of pictures with my phone and got the other coworker who opted to stay home to pose with a seven year old student next to a pile of rubble and power tools.

I spoke to the head teacher who said he agreed with me, but I should have handled it more professionally, and that I should just apologize because the boss was pretty pissed. The boss came in, but he had calmed down a bit.

He told me that he was very disappointed and that I stayed home because I hate Koreans. He then said that I wouldn't do that at a job in America. I then told him that if someone running a similar business in America decided to hold classes for children in a construction site, he would be facing class action lawsuits from both the employees and the parents of the students, his business license would be revoked, and he would most likely be facing criminal charges as well.

He then pointed out the new oxygen pumps in each of the rooms and said that he deeply cared about all of the teachers and had them installed in all of the rooms for our health. The oxygen pumps were actually just a gimmick of the franchise he bought based off of some study that if you pump oxygen into a room, students would be more alert and receptive.

I decided to drop it and hope that this was the end of my troubles at this school. Aside from the past week, my experiences at the school were generally good. My hours weren't too bad. Even though I sometimes had a heavy class load, my prep time was minimal, I had complete control over the content of my classes and I had various other perks.

This, however, was only the beginning.

****Continued in Part 3****