The Story of Joseph

In all my years at JLS, there have been some strange characters whom I have met. This list includes... Craig, who technically was employed by JLS for one month, but only actually worked one day (after claiming sickness for four weeks), and then fled the country... Wayne, who had horrid teeth and breath to match, plus a desire to punish children and, well, I'll stop there... Mike, who was liked by most of us, but had a bit of a crazy streak in him, and who came to a meeting completely drunk... Dan, who seemed like a good candidate to be "one of us" when he started, but who slowly descended into a morass of self-pity and loathing towards co-workers... Kaylene, who could be counted upon to break into bouts of sobbing at a moment's notice, and the previously discussed XXXXX, who once ended up riding around on a bike waving Ryan's sweaty underwear around her head, and who once got into a fistfight with Travis.

But for my money, the title of King Bastard has to go to a guy by the name of Joseph. During this guy's hall of shame career at JLS, he managed to insult just about every single person he worked with. One evening, he got into a memorable shouting match with XXXXX while all the JLS teachers and staff were having pizza together. Another time, he claimed to have gotten frustrated by a neighbour who was playing loud music on his stereo, climbed out of his window and manoeuvered himself to the neighbour's window, committed the act of breaking and entering, and then smashed the person's stereo.

However, the guy wasn't without his humourous moments. Being an American in an office filled with mostly Canadians, he once chastised Travis (also American) for being an "expatriate." When we told him that he, too, was an expatriate, he denied this heinous charge, saying that he "loved his country." And then there was the incident with the oil pills and the bed, but perhaps that story is best left untold.

Of all Joseph's idiosyncrasies, it was his tendency to lie that had the rest of us talking for years even after he left JLS. Some time ago, I wrote a story about Joseph for another project that described his tendency to be less than truthful about things. I will let that story speak for itself.

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This is the story of an American teacher whom I met in Korea.

Actually, I'm not positive he was American, or for that matter, a teacher. The only part of that opening statement that I know with 100% certainty is that I met him in Korea.

You see, this guy was a pathological liar. And an asshole. I came to this conclusion about two seconds after I first spoke with him. He had just been hired by my school, and he was going to cover my classes for a week while I was on vacation. He called me to arrange a time for us to meet, and the first words out of his mouth were, "Yo, Phil, how the hell ya doin'?" Umm, good.

I think there is something to the concept of first impressions, and I took this guy's impression to heart. (I want to be careful not to use his real name in order to protect his identity, so let's just use the nickname we game him as a codename: Jayseph. Now with that out of the way, back to the finer details of my story.) When I met Jayseph the next day at school, he proceeded to reinforce my first impression of him by throwing a fit in the office. "Where the hell is my shoe bag???!!! What kind of idiot would steal somebody's shoe bag???!!!" Is that the kind of shit I'm gonna have to deal with at this place???!!!"

The guy was obviously a prick of the highest degree, but to this point I had not perceived him to be an outright liar. Of course, I'd only known him face-to-face for five minutes. After he had calmed himself down about the shoes, we talked a little bit about the classes he would be covering. When I told him that some of the young kids could be unruly, he stated that he spoke Korean and would have no trouble communicating displeasure and discipline with the young hellions. Great, I thought. It'll be interesting to observe the students' behaviour when they get caught mouthing off in Korean.

We entered the first class, a group of grade one children with as much English ability as a wild animal. When Jayseph walked in behind me and took a seat at the side of the room, the children gasped. Immediately, I heard the words that are all too familiar for any large person in Korea (and Jayseph was certainly a large man -- horizontally challenged, as Seinfeld might say) -- "DDeung-ddeung ajjeossi!" Giggles followed, and as the feeling of embarrassment by my students' overt rudeness took hold, I looked nervously towards Jayseph to see his reaction. I guess I was expecting the 'Korean-speaking' Jayseph to scold the children and let them know the jig was up. Interestingly, however, he sat there with a blank look on his face, oblivious to the insult that had just been made at his expense.

And thus, the seeds of my perception that this man was not always honest were sewn.

The list of Jayseph's indiscretions against co-workers and other acquaintances is so long that I could write a book about it. However, I wish to narrow the focus of this narrative to instances where his truthfulness was questioned. For starters, how about his personal history.

When a new teacher arrives at your school, you are always intrigued to learn his or her story. Where are you from? How long have you been in Korea? What brought you here? Travelled anywhere? What's your favourite hockey team? And so on and so forth. Here was Jayseph's story: He was from New York. Before coming to Korea eight years earlier, he had been with the New York Police Department. And with the FBI. Wow, that's some background. He was also a black belt in taekwondo. Impressive for a man of his dimensions. Last but not least, he had a wife and son living in Amsterdam. Whew! Could the story get any more interesting?

Because I had met many characters during my years in Korea, I learned to take many of the claims people made with a grain of salt. But the outrageous, voluminous list of personal achievements Jayseph was claiming reminded me of Hitler's description of the big lie -- the bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe it. Only in this case, it was a big collection of lies. Nevertheless, could there be truth in what the man said?

A clue came on the infamous date of September 11, 2001. Every American and Canadian in the office the next day looked stunned by the tragedy we had all witnessed on TV the previous night. All of us except one. With hundreds of NYPD's finest having been among the thousands who had perished in the terrorist attacks, I would have expected our resident former New York cop to be in a state of despair. Instead, his reaction was more or less, "I didn't know those guys all that well... we weren't very close." Doh! Right then and there, all claims to historical facts in the life of Jayseph were henceforth subject to skepticism.

For starters, we weren't allowing him to claim that he was a former FBI agent anymore. And even when he showed up at school one Saturday wearing a taekwondo uniform, I refused to believe that this butterball, who could barely lift his leg above his waist, was a black belt in one of the most celebrated kicking martial arts in the world.

One night, my co-workers and I did an Internet search to see if anything -- ANYTHING -- would turn up on this man. There were people by his name to be found on the Web, but none seemed to match any description Jayseph had given of himself. While hardly a conclusive test, this gave us more circumstantial evidence that the man was a fraud.

As the year went by, Jayseph added to his legend of lying on almost a daily basis. He would call the U.S. Army Office in Seoul to arrange his once-a-month army reserve duty (Army reserve? Oops, missed that one.) He proclaimed that the girlfriend of a teacher at the school was his "sloppy seconds." Once, he gave me hope by saying that the school had "fired" him; alas, this also turned out to be a lie.

There was no doubt in my mind that Jayseph was a pathological liar. And I mean that in the medical sense of the word. It seemed like he felt compelled to lie, although for what reasons one could only speculate. In the end, Jayseph completed his one-year contract and was not offered a new one. He wondered why.

The most fascinating aspect of the Jayseph story is the fact that almost five years after he left our school, we teachers who were there at the time still talk about him. We relive his greatest untruths with bellowing laughs, still disbelieving that a human being could be such a liar. And we wonder what his real story is because, deep down, we want to know why he told so many lies. Some even express pity for the guy.

But not me. I still think he's an asshole.

--

Do I actually hate Joseph? Well, it is certainly easier to deal with him when he isn't around. I think that I actually do pity the guy because he obviously needs to lie to get by in his world.

Frankly, though, I will leave the analysis at that. End of story.

Year Two: Changes at JLS

My second year at JLS saw a number of changes in personnel as well as in the way JLS did business.

I might argue that the changes in the school actually began in February, 2001, when Travis joined our crew (soon to replace the departing James). In the office one day, while Leslie was standing nearby, Travis mentioned something about masturbation. Leslie was not impressed. I would argue that the attitude in the office amongst the foreign staff took a 180-degree turn that day. In the six years since, nary a day goes by without discussion of masturbation, farts, breasts, or whatever. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Now, onto the personnel changes. First, with Leslie not being re-hired, a new guy named Jeremy was brought in to fill the void. In at least one respect, Jeremy was a suitable replacement for Leslie -- both were from Prince Edward Island in Canada. I remember seeing this Jeremy character in the office, sitting with his Korean girlfriend. Later, Jeremy would tell many positive stories about her... how she always stood by him, and how her family fell in love with him. Even five years after they broke up, Jeremy still feels a warmth in his heart towards this girl. Yeeeaaahhh, riiiiggghhhtttt.

Later in May 2001, two more teachers were added to the Bundang roster. One was a guy named Joseph. (I will save commentary on him until my next post, specially written for him). The other was Patrick, a guy who would spend 3 1/2 years with the school. When Patrick started in May of 2001, the impression he made on many people was that he asked far too many questions about everything under the sun. Not that he was being intrusive, but rather he seemed to need to know what we all thought about our jobs. This aspect of his character was something we would tease him about, but overall he was one of us now.

JLS continued its rapid expansion throughout 2001. In late summer, Patrick introduced one of his -- what? -- acquaintances? ex-girlfriends? (nobody was positive about what their previous relationship had been) to JLS. Her name was XXXXX. I actually am not permitted to use her real name here because she wishes to remain anonymous on the Internet. XXXXX arrived at our humble school, and she didn't seem to hold many of us in high regard. Maybe it was because she had "taught high school in Edmonton", whereas most of us were somewhat lower life forms in the education world. Anyway, XXXXX stuck it out at Bundang school for a couple years, and then she got herself transferred to the new Suji branch of JLS so that she could get away from all the 'friends' she had made at Bundang. I will say one thing on XXXXX's behalf, however: she was one of the very few foreigners in Korea who bothered to learn Korean. That's one quality that she genuinely held over the rest of us.

In other changes, Mr. Huh (the owner/president of JLS) began to bump up our salaries. First, my monthly salary made the usual one-year jump from 1.75 million won to 2.1 million. Then, shortly after, he made another salary increase for everybody at JLS, and my pay went up to 2.3 million. Add in my Saturday overtime and my housing allowance, plus numerous bonuses for everything from Korean holidays to showing up for work on time, and I was genuinely feeling like I had struck the mother lode at JLS. Thanks to all this money I was making, I was able to finish paying off my student loans. A year later, I would finish paying off my uncle in New Zealand, who had also loaned me quite a bit of money for university. As well, I began to lavish various electronic toys upon myself, including my first MP3 player, a digital camera, and an Xbox.

But, what was the biggest change of all during my second year at JLS? Without a doubt it was... click here!

Charlemagne

Early in my first year at JLS, I had a class of grade six students that included a boy named Charles. He made an immediate impression upon me due to his enthusiasm for the class. Whereas most students' attitudes about studying English range from indifference to loathing, Charles was always happy to participate. Because of this, I took a liking to Charles, and I soon called him Charlemagne. He liked the new version of his name and accepted it whole-heartedly.

Charles is a fanatic about movies. During those early classes together, he would typically give a movie review for a film he had just seen or that was a personal favorite of his. He would usually focus on Steven Spielberg and George Lucas movies. He claimed at the time that his dream was to become a director.

Certainly, Charles was the most dynamic student I've ever seen at JLS. A couple years after I first had the pleasure of teaching him, he was in a middle school TOEFL class of mine. A new teacher was observing my class that evening, so I put Charles on the spot by asking him to give an impromptu speech. Without hesitation, Charles went to the front of the room and gave an effortless presentation. The observing teacher was suitably impressed. The other students in the class were more than likely intimidated, however.

A few months later, JLS held the first of what was promised to be a semi-annual speech contest for the students. Charles won easily at the Bundang school. Six months later, when JLS expanded the speech contest to an inter-school event, Charles represented Bundang. I was one of the judges. While other students gave fairly typical presentations about the importance of English or a description of the solar system (yada-yada-yada), Charles expounded upon the nature of good and evil. The other judges, who didn't know about Charles, quietly asked me if he had received help writing his presentation. To their stunned disbelief, I told them that it was all his work, and I had been witness to his ability for three years. Without further hesitation, Charles got top marks from the judges, and won his second speech contest. There were no more speech contests after the second one. Perhaps Charles had simply outclassed every other student.

Reading about Charles' accomplishments might make one think he is arrogant in some way. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is a genuinely good guy who simply enjoys English. A couple years ago, Charles felt that he needed a change of scenery and withdrew from JLS to attend another English academy. At JLS, his class was no longer getting lessons from native English speakers, and the Korean teacher was doing nothing but test preparation lessons. Charles is not the best testing student; where he excels is using the language for real-world communication. His new academy offered a more suitable environment, as he got to study and even write some plays. He told me he was happy doing this, but he wished he could have kept taking classes with the native teachers at JLS. To this day, he drops by on occasion to say hi to his former teachers, a gesture we all appreciate.

Charlemagne has now completed high school and will be entering university this spring. Last September, I met him for lunch one day. We talked for a good two hours or so. The following video is an interview I did with Charles.


He showed me the fruits of his latest passion, which is sketch art. He attends an art academy for four hours a day, and his work is truly amazing. Watch the following video to see Charles talk about his sketches.


In university, he plans to study graphic art design. Is there any doubt that he can be successful at whatever he wishes to do? Some people seem destined to become special. Charles is one of these people.

Going on seven years now at JLS, there has been only one student that I could think of as a friend. That is Charlemagne. As far as being an ESL teacher in Korea, one could not hope to do better than to have this young man in your room.