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.

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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.