Wednesday 18 February 2009

The Changing Faces of Web

The wall of Web's teachers and tutors

It seems that the already rapid turnover of staff at Web is about to drastically accelerate. On Friday all but one of the tutors -- the Chinese teachers -- will officially be resigning from the training centre. It was all a bit of a coup, and it seems that not one of them has altered their position. If anything they are all resilient to leave and start afresh elsewhere -- which is a good thing right?

The drama all kicked-off just before I was about to return to work at the beginning of this month. To cut a long story short, it began with the new year bonus money being an absolute joke (we got 500 RMB, better than nothing, but a few thousand short than most companies in the city would have paid to their employees), then on top of that our grand dictator, er....I mean, boss, decided that the global economic crisis is coming for Web so some wages may have to move south for a while. The final blow came when he announced that tutors were ten-a-penny to get hold of, and that they would have no chance of finding a better alternative. United they stood, and united they decided to show him who was boss, and quit. Of course he attempted to bribe them back (never with money though), all to no avail.

So now, here we are, with half of our office changing hands. It will be sad to see them go, I hope we keep in touch with each other. For some of them I feel it really is the excuse they needed to do what they want to do. Five new tutors have been hired -- a slight kick in the teeth -- but we shall see how smoothly things operate once the changeover begins. Somebody's going to be busy changing the staff portraits, although I will wager it doesn't get changed for at least a month.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first guy (top left) looks a little scary. Something you would see from a police station snapshot (Most Wanted list.)

I also notice all the Chinese teachers are female.

Homeopath said...

Just found your blog...... Interesting.....I’ll be back to read more.

Johnny Ding said...

God, it was your words mad me though of the whole matter. God! It was so confused when my tutor Candy told me that they were leaving. But now I am with them and you too. It is unbelievable! How dare he do that? Obviously it is not a worthy place to stay.

My friend, Chris, I know it will make more disappointed about WEB. You are right, it is satiric that they still have the pictures on the wall while the tutors are already left. Gambling: 5 pounds for One month !

Anonymous said...

Obviously it is not a worthy place to stay.

But will anything change?

Not until proper regulations and rules are set into place protecting foreigners (wai guo ren) rights.

Now see Johnny if you are in the UK, and you happen to find yourself unemployed you are entitled to receive income support if you work part time and housing benefit to help with paying the rent and so on.

So yeah you can point blame at the training centres, but they are only a small part of the problem...Overall, there are much bigger fish to fry. Please try to be more objective, and of course they wont take the pictures down, because they can continue to make money from them!!

mabelp said...

According to that pic, there're many chinese staff in WEB, right?
I think employees would leave if their current working places are not good enough.

Christopher said...

Thanks for all of your comments. Johnny, the bet is off, they changed the portraits on the same day! I was shocked, Web never usually works like that.

Elwin said...

It's so nice to see this wall again! Though it seems that less and less teachers would like to stay at WEB.

BTW: I found and still think that Chris your photo on the wall looks like Jake Weber at "MEDIUM"

Christopher said...

Elwin, haha, I just looked at a picture of the guy from Medium, and I know what you mean, his hair style is just like mine. Yes, it's a shame that so many teachers have left, and it looks like there may be more to come too.