Some clips of Flight of the Conchords. "Business Time" and "Jenny" are partcularly great. Two very talented and funny Kiwis!

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Beijing New Oriental Foreign Language School

Rudeness, arrogance and swearing are not good methods to employ if you wish to to get your school removed from the TEFL Blacklist but in the spirit of democracy your noble sleuth has decided to publish this comment from "Andy" which was today posted on the Beijing New Oriental Foreign Language School blacklisting which was created in 2006 although this particularly stupid comment from "Andy"was only added today. 
In this particular case the Inspector would appreciate any feedback whatsoever.
Incidentally I didn't write the original post. If you take the time to read through the blog you'll see that the infamous old rogue Sandy McManus (The TEFL Tradesman) published it, even though the default signature might indicate differently. 
The Inspector took over the maintenance of the Blacklist in 2007 which is why your comment has not only been published but given its own posting.
Sandy would have just told you where to stick your comment and he may well be right. I'm probably simply in a good mood because today we've seen the back of Dubwa.

"Yes, in image-crazy China, Beijing New Oriental does employ some gimmicks and marketing strategies but I work at New Oriental Yangzhou and get treated like a king. Its nothing like any job/employer I've ever had in the U.S. Curfews? Pay deductions? Many extracurricular activities? Either things were very different when this blacklist was compiled or the author is just a liar. He must have been walking to downtown if it took over 30 minutes. Why do you feel so powerless to leave the campus? What a pathetic person the author of this site must be. I understand disagreements with the philosophy of this school/business but this website is victimhood on steroids.
Anyways, the retention rate is quite substantial (some teachers have been here 4 years so they MUST know the author) and when I ask the returnees why, they say they had been fucked-over at other schools in China and they are comfortable here. Feel free to discuss things further with me. I doubt this will be approved and published by the author.

Michel Raux Inlingua Belfort France

Michel Raux has been mentioned on this blog before. He clearly operates some of Inlingua's worst franchises in the East of France. Bargepoles out troops and avoid this guy like the plague. This was originally posted on the Inlingua Paris section.

"I worked for Inlingua MBR in Belfort, for almost 3 years. (It's part of the MBR Services franchise owned by Michel Raux and operating out of Strasbourg.)

Everything that the previous commentors said about MBR is 100% true - and more.

I left, on medical advice, after becoming really ill and severely depressed from the stress of working for them.

Let's see - there were the mad hours I had to work, the long distances I had to drive to see clients, the amount of paperwork that they forced us to do that was unrelated to actual teaching (because they got rid of office staff to save costs and made the trainers pick up the slack), the psychological bullying and threats. Many phonecalls to my home after hours. A total invasion of privacy. Awful, awful company.

They blatantly lied to me about the hours I'd be working when I was offered the job, and then gradually forced me to work more hours than I wanted to, often until 8pm (after starting at 8am - never mind I was a single parent and had children to get to and from school and childminders) threatening to reduce my classes to nothing if I refused, (so that I'd be forced to resign and save them from the hassle of firing me.)

I received only 4 hours of 'training' and was then thrown into the deep end and left to swim. A client then complained that I didn't seem to know what I was doing (well of course I didn't) and I received a written warning from Michel Raux. How crazy is that?

I have since thrown away my Certificate of Training - it is worthless.

Even in treachorous winter weather (and I mean heavily snowed under roads and even in snow storms), I had to drive through dangerous mountainous regions to get to clients - no excuses were tolerated. I cannot tell you how close I came to having horrible crashes - on more than one occasion.

Their attitude to clients was equally as bad - arrogance such as I have never seen in any company before. My clients complained bitterly about being charged for last minute cancellations - which were usually due to factory lines breaking down and needing urgent attention. (Since when is an English class more important than getting a production line up and running again?) Inlingua refused to budge on that.

Having said that, most of my immediate colleagues/trainers were brilliant. It was just management that truly sucked.

My advice? Steer clear of Inlingua MBR."