Tales of the "Strange" Contract

In the education environment, Asian language school bosses seem to prefer "foreign" (almost always European/American/Canadian type) teachers who are young, inexperienced and extremely compliant because of this. To be sure, it is much easier to control someone who doesn't know the ropes than it is to deal with someone with a little worldly experience who might just very well catch your minor mistakes and even, unfortunately, in many cases, much larger patterns of corporate ineptitude.

In any case, the rental agreement contract that clearly states what it states is now being called, "strange" and will, it appears, be ignored in favor of the status quo. This apparently saves the "face" of the folks that first drafted the "strange" contract, as well as the stubborn, caught with their pants thoroughly down folks in the administration office, who seem to prefer to fall back on the concept that the rental agreement is "strange," rather than to accept that a mistake in verbiage was perhaps made somewhere down the line.

Or... they simply didn't like the content of the original draft of the contract and quite arbitrarily decided to change it. In which case, it very quickly became "strange." Unfortunately however, they apparently didn't think it was necessary to redraft the contract to reflect their objections to it. And because of this oversight, quite naturally, what might otherwise be a minor communication problem has now become a larger bone of contention.

In fact, I really don't mind having to pay a small monthly "fee" (equalling roughly $30 US or slightly less, really) for maintenance fees on the furnished apartment provided by the school, but I would like them to at least admit the error and perhaps re-word the rental agreement for future reference. Instead, at this point, I am yet again being compared to the previous foreign teacher, whom, they seem to indicate, was much more compliant then I appear to be thus far.

Or perhaps they are just worried about nothing. Or I am. Either way, it's the usual tense situation in the English as a second language learning environment. However... it's usually only tense if you are not one of those select few whitey candidates who are young, inexperienced, compliant and naive enough to simply nod or bow and smile to every decision made for you, great or small, that comes down the pike.

And then there's the matter of being constantly compared to the previous American teacher. Other than our nationality, the previous person, thus far, seems to have had very little in common with me. In any case, she seems to have been the ideal candidate, while I am... somewhat... less, perhaps?

More later, on what makes me different from the individual who formerly inhabited my current position and perhaps... why it's really not fair at all to draw such comparisons in the first place.