International School drama

A friend of mine works as an online teacher at a school in Myanmar, called Leading Asia Myanmar International School, also known as LAMIS. From what I know, it is a new school, been around fora year or two. As we are in COVID time, all their teachers are not in Myanmar and deliver lessons following Myanmar school hours. They all have a valid working contract and only receive a salary without any benefits that an international school teachers would normally get. The owner of the school is saving tons of money on visas, air fares, health insurance, housing allowances, as well as contract completion bonuses.

Recently the school sacked their head of school (HOS) because they found out that ontop of being a HOS for LAMIS, he is also a HOS for a school in Europe. He did this because he hasn’t received his full salaries for the months he worked there. There were times where he had to pay other teachers’ salary with his own money as the owner rarely pays foreign teachers’ salary as agreed. Let’s call this HOS Adam.

LAMIS now has a new education consultant acting as the head of school. As all new head or manager, Greg wants to leave his mark at this new school. He has made some interesting suggestions and let out a few secrets he shouldn’t have. One of the suggestions he made was for all teachers to move to a country closer to Myanmar to reduce the time difference. One of the secrets he let out was his personal feelings towards one of the current teachers and that he has thought of replacing existing teachers with his own crew.

Going forward, I will call this friend of mine Anya. Anya and her husband work for LAMIS since the start of 2021 academic year. They live in Europe, with 3 kids. They were unemployed and needed this job to make sure they don’t continue being homeless. According to Anya and her husband, Adam sent them 500USD to help with the set up of online teaching. They all agreed that this would be deducted from their first salary.

A few days ago, Anya told me that 2 months into their employment, they have yet to receive their first paycheck. She and her husband asked Greg about it. His answer was, “I haven’t paid you your salary because HSBC can’t do the transfer. The first one bounced back and I don’t know what happened to the other two I made. HSBC said they can’t do a bank transfer to an alphanumeric account number.”

Now, Anya and her husband need that money so they can continue paying rent and put food on the table. With winter coming, her husband started to contact Greg almost daily to find out if they would be paid at all. He may have used flowerly language to express his frustration and desperation.

Greg did not take kindly to the messages and told Anya’s husband that he is done. He then removed both Anya and her husband from the school’s WhatsApp group. He also told Anya that if she wants to keep her job, she needs to tell her husband to stop harrasing him.

As we all know, there is always two sides of a story. I freelanced at the school when I was looking for a full time employment in Australia. To date, Adam, myself and the curriculum coordinator are still waiting for the money we are owed.

This Greg guy is new and after he took over from Adam, he sent a message to the group WhatsApp account telling everyone that he is the new Adam until LAMIS appoints a new HOS. Any problems or questions should be directed to him and not Adam. I did as he asked and he told me to speak to Adam as he has no knowledge of the issue (missing salary). From the one interaction I had with him, he seems to be working off a script and lacks in forward planning. No attention to details.

Questions I would love to ask him…

1. If the money transfer bounced the first time, wouldn’t you check with Anya and her husband to make sure that you have the correct banking details?

2. Did HSBC tell you why the transfer failed and if they didn’t, did you ask why?

3. You said you tried to send the money again and this time, you don’t know what is happening to that money. Have you contacted the bank to find out more?

4. I was a customer of HSBC when I worked in Malaysia. When I wanted to send money to Indonesia, they asked if the account I was sending the money to is a foreign currency account as they don’t send Rupiah. HSBC will tell you if something isn’t going to work.

For those who are reading this. what is your take on the issue? What advice would you give to Anya and her husband?

UPDATE: Anya got her last month’s salary yesterday. Her husband was told he would get his next month.

Whiskey made it home

After 8 month in Brunei, we received news that Whiskey had a spot at the quarantine centre in Melbourne. The date they gave us was the day after Ramadhan. Managed to change her arrival date with very little drama and the count down began.

Flight to Brunei booked and we also finalised her itinerary from Melbourne to Gold Coast. All seemed smooth sailiing and we continued to get updates on her departure progress.

On the day Whiskey was to fly to Gold Coast, we received a call telling us that her flight has been cancelled and they were trying to put her on the next available flight. Whiskey got on another flight and we were told to be there earlier as her flight took off 90 minutes earlier than scheduled. When we got there, we saw 3 other families waiting to pick up their pet as well. We were relieved because that means we were at the right place.

Whiskey came out disoriented… she was tired, dehydrated and very thin. We used the wet wipes we brought to help clean her up a bit and took her for a short walk before we drove home.

Five months later, Whiskey gained weight and is looking a lot healthier. She enjoyed winter and is struggling with the heat. Whiskey is learning not to lick cane toads and enjoying the beach more than we thought she would.

Five countries and she is now home for good. Thank you to everyone who helped bringing Whiskey home. It was worth the wait and we didn’t have to play the ‘what if” game.

Post quarantine

My first job after I came out of quarantine was being a Customer Service Specialist at Stellar. It is a call centre and I believe some of their clients include Telstra, TransLink, and My Aged Care.

The interview process begin with an online AI interview and a typing test. I guess I must have done alright since they called to do a non AI interview. I was waiting for my online students to come and I did have about 10 minutes before the lesson started. They asked the usual kind of questions such as working under pressure, meeting KPIs, computer skills and dealing with conflicts and agressive customers.

I received a formal offer 2 weeks later along with some readings to be done before the starting date. Training was hard and I must say quite tiring. There was a lot we had to process in such a short time and the trainer reassured us that most of the skills and knowledge would be picked up when we are on the floor.

Now, those who are unfamiliar with call centres, let me tell you what their expectations are. Average call time should be within 600 to 700 seconds, this includes authenticating the caller and recording what the call was about. You can do this if the caller is already a client and has their client number, and not requiring an assessment of any kinds. However, if the caller is a new client, required an assessment and would like to nominate a family member or a friend as a representative, you could spend at least 15 minutes on the call.

The next part of the KPI is about how on time you are. From the time you logged in to the system, taking your break and ending your shift. The calls you get on the day does impact on your tardiness. Say you were scheduled for your first break at 11am. You took a call at 10:30am and the client wanted to have another assessment, register her husband and had him take an assessment following the suggestion of an aged care worker. When you finished the call, you were 15 minutes late. This 15 minutes magically became 30 minutes…. WHAT???? Yes…. the first 15 minutes at the start of your break and 15 minutes after your break. As a result, you messed up both your average call time and break time.

During my time on the floor, I sat next to a guy named D. He worked for Stellar before, left and came back. He gave me great tips such as putting our calls on after call time (Stellars’s terminology for on hold) if our break or home time is about 5 minutes away. He also said that Stellar, like any other workplace, favours connections. The friendlier you are with the upper management or people who matters, the easier it would be for you to get noticed and promoted.

I didn’t think too much of this as it is pretty much the same in a lot of workplace. You can do no wrong as long as you are chummy with the boss. But he was right… He received a promotion not too long after he came out of his probation.

As for me, I left the call centre af the end of my probational period. I heard that out of 9 people that I started with, only 3 are still at Stellar. I know one is planning her exit as I wrote this.

I had no regret working for the call centre. It made me appreciate the work they do to solve our queries. The training they went through and the KPI they had to pass every month.