BOHME
From Eikaiwa Wiki
BOHME, also known as BOHME English Academy or possibly Eigo Teragoya, was founded by Steven Bohme, who no longer operates the school.[1] The company operates three schools; Gifu, Ichinomiya, and Ginan. English lessons are offered in student groups of 3 - 8 for both adult and children as well as private instruction.[2]
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Employment
BOHME hires university graduates who are native English speakers for full-time and part-time positions. BOHME is somewhat unique in that it offers company housing for teachers in a type of 'shared space' accommodation.[3]
Labor Disputes
The General Union Tokai Branch has, on at least one occasion (2002), had to become involved after BOHME fired a teacher without proper notice, failed to pay a dismissal allowance as required by Japanese labor standards law, and failed to enroll the employee in unemployment insurance.[4]
Complaint
There are about five or six livable rooms, all varying in size. The green room is by far the smallest, least desired, and usually left waiting for the newest teacher while all the other teachers have moved to better rooms. That's where they stuck me, which seemed livable at the time, but I didn't know what I was in for. The room is approximately two and a half meters wide by four meters long, with a walk in closet. And that's it. Everything else, the bathrooms, showers and kitchen, you have to share with the other teachers. Naturally, the timing can be a little awkward.
I was living in this tiny little room while sharing all the necessities with five other people, paying 40,000 yen a month in rent, yet being deprived of some standard basics that would be expected of a house with five foreigners living there. There was no TV whatsoever, NHK, anything, just static. There was an old generic DVD player (the cheapest money could buy). There was no internet connection either. The reason I was given was that it would cost too much to have these simple amenities.
My first month at Bohme was a living hell of stress. The training, not that I needed that much, was woefully inadequate. I didn't have anything resembling real training; it was more like four days of watching classes, preparing and teaching lessons, and being overwhelmed by a tsunami of information. How to use the crazy computer system (even though I love Macs, it was still a little nutty), along with the wealth of different books necessary for all the classes and all the CDs and CD-ROMs. Planning lessons in the initial month was a nightmare. Can't find the CD for the lesson? You have to iChat somebody to find out it's hidden in the computer somewhere, nine levels deep of folder upon folder, and then you find out the track numbers don't match what the book says. Nonsense like that has you killing a lot of time, wearing your patience thin and making you look like an unprepared fool despite the fact you've spent a long time trying to make the best lesson you could while trying to figure out this new material.
The recruiter and I were walking from Gifu Station towards the school on the day of my initial interview and she asked me, "How much time do you need to prepare a lesson?" First of all, I wasn't given any heads up that I would be doing a demo lesson. Not that it's out of the ordinary, but it was clearly an ambush and sprung on me without warning. She told me they had arranged for a student to come to the school and spend half an hour with me. What level is she? What kind of books do they use or do they use any books at all? How am I supposed to know how long it would take me to prepare a lesson when I know nothing about the student or how the company does things and what they expect? As with so many other things about this company, those kinds of questions are never posed to themselves or considered.
I was paying 40,000 yen a month for a tiny single room perched over a busy city street. The traffic would only stop around 2am and start back up at dawn, the trucks shaking the whole building as they pass by. So it was the same formula every day, finish work at 10pm, go home and maybe eat something, can't go to sleep for hours, then wake up a few hours later at dawn by the traffic and spend the whole working day sleepy as all hell, doing zombie classes.
I was sent to their main school in Gifu City, where the other teachers and staff know the school's reputation for having the most critical students around. What the school doesn't realize or ignores is that they are the reason the students gripe so much. For the first month and possibly longer, the staff member in the lobby (doing as she's been directed by the boss) asks every single student, child and adult, what they thought of the class. It's not like a questionnaire, it's more like an interrogation. The students are grilled to come up with any little thing that could be modified. What the company calls 'feedback' is only criticism. I virtually never heard anything positive, no matter how my classes or student interaction benefitted the company. My trial student signed up? So what. One student said you spoke too quickly for three minutes. Another student said you spoke too slowly for five. You told one student to stop picking his nose or quit nervously popping his zits. He didn't like that. That's the kind of crap I had to deal with, day in and day out.
I was told by the other teachers that the first month was the worst and then things would lighten up and the constant scrutiny would end. I felt like I was going to get canned at any given time during those four weeks. Then the recruiter who partially hired me came out to the school one day and told me she heard I was doing a good job and things were going well. A week later, she came back out with a letter from the boss telling me I was getting 30 days notice, for reasons wholly untrue.
Of the two teachers they hired before me, one was fired and the other quit, both after a very short employment period. And during my two months there, two teachers from America gave the Bohme school a try and bugged out back to the States in less than two months. One kid, observed and tried teaching some classes for about a week, and then with less than twelve hour's notice, he caught the next plane back to America.
The following work day after receiving my 30 days notice, I was informed with four hours warning I was being transferred to the Ichinomiya school for the remaining thirty days. I had thirty days to find another job, do interviews and still work an eight hour day, and now I had an hour-long commute stacked on top of it.
The contract states that for a partial month's work, meaning any work that doesn't start or finish on the first of the month, she gets to get away with paying you a meager 8,000 yen a day instead of the standard 12,500 yen. I started mid month, so I got hosed for two weeks, then I was given my thirty days notice mid month, so she got to screw me on the back end too. So, she got away with paying me 8,000 yen a day for a whole month.
The holiday times are too short to be able to go anywhere outside Japan. It's the typical stuff, 5 days during Golden Week, 5 days during Obon, 5 days in November, and 6 days from New Year's to January 5th. Three weeks total, Yipee!. Try flying back to the U.S., Canada or Oz on that schedule. The list that breaks down the increase of holidays over the years is laughable.
It was after I moved out of the Bohme school's house that the true screwing really began. Suddenly, the owner informed me that even though I was going to move out in less than a month, she was going to withhold the 80,000 yen her tyrannical contract said she could do. She wouldn't allow me to try to clean the single room myself, she wanted to call in a cleaning company (because of cat spray on the wall, which made the room uninhabitable), which I was told by other teachers was unprecedented. She also claimed the two meter long curtains were damaged by my cat, so she was going to buy new ones at my expense. And there was nothing I could do about it.
I had moved out on the 15th of July, left the key in the door and moved to my new apartment and job. Every teacher and the recruiter saw me leaving that day. I figured the news would get to the owner pretty quick. So I was surprised when the own tried to charge me for a full month's rent for July. I told her she had made a mistake and she shot back with a nasty email saying she 'was warning me that renters must give at least one month's notice in writing' before moving out. That's how she justified giving me back only one week's rent a month later. Then in the final billing, she charged me for three weeks utilities instead of two.
Supposedly, the cleaning of my tiny little room with hardwood floors cost 35,700 yen and the curtains cost 11,340 yen. It's common practice in Japan.
They say the best revenge is living well and to contrast my experience at the Bohme school, the next job I got was with a really small husband and wife school in Gifu, which subsequently went bankrupt. It paid the same as Bohme. From day one, this school bent over backwards in every conceivable way to see to it that I was moved in properly, set up with all the things I needed to get up and running. They took me to city hall to get my gaijin card address changed as well as my license address, along with dealing with the national health care address change and billing, all kinds of other stuff. Then they provided me with internet as soon as possible as well as my own NTT phone line and Yahoo BB cable TV. And as much as I told them I didn't want to be any trouble, they always told me it was no trouble at all.
And then there's the fantastic apartment I moved into. It's probably the best apartment I've ever lived in while in Japan. It's utterly huge, with brand spanking new wallpaper and tatami, with no neighboring apartments next door, so I don't hear the crying of babies and stuff like that. The rent is ridiculously low, only 55,000 yen for three giant rooms, a closet big enough to park a K-car in, great shower and separate bathroom, opulent kitchen space, everything. And get this: It didn't require one yen of deposit in the beginning or ever.
To make matters even better, the single school where I work: Right above me on the second floor of this stand-alone building. So, no commute times, driving, any of that. And should I want something cold or hot to drink between classes, just go downstairs.
The owners of this school treat me like family, like a prized commodity. They have chosen me and as a result, are investing in my happiness so that I'll stay around as long as possible, like the previous teacher, who stayed for five years and I can easily see why. Want internet at the Bohme school Toeicho house? The cheap owner will tell you to get wirless internet at your own expense, which I did, bought a brand new Mac Airport station and wireless USB stick and it still didn't work. That was 250 bucks down the tubes because my boss was such a cheapskate.
In my termination notice, the Bohme school owner had the trainer give me a letter saying how I was being sacked as a result of 'lack or student rapport', right? Which I now know not to be true. What's interesting is that at the new school I'm at, once again, every trial student, child and adult, has signed up. And how many complaints have I had at the new school in the two and a half months I've been here? You guessed it: Not one.
To be fair, there are some teachers there who have managed to get through the gauntlet and have hung on at Bohme for a year or five. So, yes, it is possible. The question is, do you want to take that chance?
