Tony

Tony is the new manager at my campus. He happens to be the nephew of the owner and is a complete tyrant. I think he has really good intentions to turn the school around and make it a better institution for the children. However, the Nazi-like regiment that he is trying to instill is not exactly going well with the teaching staff. Before Tony, we had Jae, the most easy-going boss on the planet. She always had a positive attitude and as long as you showed up on time and did your job, there were no problems. So compared to the laid-back atmosphere we were used to, Tony's extreme and chaotic changes didn't exactly fly. I'm sure all of the dramatic changes we were facing would not have been nearly as bad if he weren't trying to implement them during intensives, the busiest time of the year for the school. But, the fact of the matter is that he was, and it was too many changes all at once with no time to properly meet his demands.

Like I mentioned before in my previous blog, I wanted to give the new guy (Tony) a chance despite the rumors that I had heard about his managerial style. However two weeks have passed and I can't take it anymore. I really respect what he's trying to do but not the way he's trying to accomplish his goals. Anyway, its this disagreement in our personalities that has led me to make the decision fulfilling my current obligations to the company and terminating my contract early.

Tony and I met to go over my contract extension as I had intended to stay until July, but after discussing my new contract, I went home with a terrible pit in my stomach. Although I had discussed staying longer than one year with my old manager, Jae, I still had not signed any paperwork. Which in my eyes meant my current contract would end at the end of January, two weeks later.

I called my dad in a panic. "There's no way I'm staying here until July. I think I will try to come home in April." My dad responded by saying things don't sound good and that I should leave at the end of the month. All I could think was that would be an impossible task. I am completely unprepared to leave in two weeks. I have no job prospects, no place to live, and my funds aren't where I'd like them to be. All he kept saying was we'll figure it out, come home.

So I stood in my little studio apartment, pacing back and forth trying to stay calm as a wave of stress crashed over me. As overwhelmed as I was already becoming, I emailed Kristen Kraus, one of my old co-workers at TDM in Arizona. I had no intentions of asking for a job. I simply was trying to find out how the industry was doing as a whole because I was suddenly thinking of coming home earlier than planned. She responded with, "Call Colleen right away. It's important."

As soon as I made the phone call, my old position was offered back to me, but as a seasonal/independent contractor. I took it as a sign and didn't look back from there. My biggest concern was having a job upon returning to the states, and now that I had that covered, coming home was just a matter of prioritizing what I needed to wrap up in Korea and set up in the states within the next two weeks.