Playing for the wrong team: Life outside the big four

For anyone who hadn't heard the news regarding Geos--one of the original "Big Four" eikaiwa--declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago.  Good news in the short term for anyone at the top of the food chain in the "Cautiously Optimistic Three," bad news for, well, everyone else.  With the original top banana, Nova, going bust in 2007, the reputation of eikaiwa and their teachers has fallen considerably.  Imagine the collective sigh of relief in the fast-food industry if McDonald's suddenly tanked overnight upon health inspectors discovering the supposed two all-beef patties in your Big Mac were actually fetal mice.

You know, hypothetically

And then the butt-clenching anxiety of the sudden realization that now, all that scrutiny is on you, Burger King.  Or you, Subway.  And especially you, KFC.

 Aww... you know I can't stay mad at you

At a time like this, it's nice to work outside the constraints of the "Big Four."  As Bob Dylan or perhaps a Snapple label once said, "threedom is freedom."  If that's true, you wouldn't believe how liberating it is to be this far down on the totem pole.  It's not that my school is small, necessarily.  We're doing okay for ourselves just shy of 200 students.  It's just that we're not, you know, making money.

Is it because we're bad at what we do?  Is it because we don't charge enough?  Or maybe because we accept aluminum foil instead of currency?

I'm going to throw a figure out there:

92%.

Thank you for reading.

 

Yes, 92%.  Without any scientific backing, research, or justification of any kind, this is my thesis: 92% of people either suck at their jobs or aren't paid enough to care.

During my time at a fast-food chain, there were perhaps one or two employees that actually tried.  Who actually cared enough to make the customers happy.  The rest of us stole bacon when the manager was away.  

Because all of us, regardless of how justified we were(n't), didn't really care how well the dishes were washed or if the food was even being stored at the proper temperature.  Because fuck it, if they really cared, they'd be paying us more than $6.50 an hour.  And now realize that this is probably true of virtually every fast-food restaurant you visit.

It would be awesome if this were just the fast-food industry because hey, free bacon, but everyone from expensive restaurants in Japan to the SEC to NASA phones it in.  It's the reason Japanese TV is a cesspool.  Just the same 30 or so "famous" people sitting around and bullshitting and eating on camera every single day, because that's easy to produce.  Writing scripts, editing video, and building sets is hard.  On many channels in Japan, you can watch for an entire day without seeing a single line of scripted dialogue.  

Japanese "comedians" do entire sets--make entire careers--around screaming, making "funny" noises, and making faces for five minutes.  Because writing a routine and practicing to perfection is difficult, but standing up and acting like a drunk homeless person is easy, especially when the everyone in the 30-man circle-jerk shares the same unspoken agreement to laugh and pretend to be entertained for everyone else, no matter how untalented.

So where I'm going with this?  Take a good, hard look at the eikaiwa industry.  Or hell, go to Google and look up any random eikaiwa.  Go to the first page and what do you see?  

Probably kids.  Fresh out of college, fleeing their respective countries for the Far East looking for a year of paid vacation.  In most cases, this is the majority of every school's teaching staff.  Most of these companies are marketing good-looking white people as much or more than English education.  Most sites won't tell you a thing about their curriculum, their teaching methods, their qualifications, or any proof that they can even teach.  Because it's so, so much easier to take a few well-lit, generously angled pictures of white people holding up a textbook and playing monkey-at-the-zoo than it is to hire people with any sort of qualifications or even a basic interest in teaching.

Hiring trained monkeys is easy, hiring qualified teachers is difficult.  Just ask McDonald's.  

Not too many qualified teachers there, are there?  Check and mate, reader.  Check and mate.

Even at my own school now outside the "Big Four" clusterfuck, I constantly hear the Japanese staff speaking in Japanese to the kids, spending half the class just shooting the shit and talking about boys and pretending to be fifteen years younger.  Or when I ask the manager how I should teach a class I've never taught before and was only informed of it an hour before the class was scheduled and the basic answer is "just fill time."  I've taught here long enough and at enough different schools and met enough teachers to corroborate this that I know these aren't isolated incidents.

There are no standards in this business.  It's making me lazy.  It's making us all lazy.

When I left the security of the "Big Four" and took this new job, I was worried I was playing for the wrong team.  I'm starting to wonder if I'm playing the wrong sport.  

I'd say the odds are about 92%.