Limbo - How low can you go?

I should probably mention that I'm kind of at war with my boss at the moment. I've made 2 trips to the labour board already. The first earned me a letter from my employers refusing my demands for money they've withheld from me and lovely threatening language about how I'm a terrible teacher and am in serious danger of losing my job because my teaching ability is insufficient. This was never mentionned before my trip to the labour board, of course. If only I had the letter with me now I could make fun of it. There's a part about me not being 'a RESP teacher.' I'm not exactly sure what that means. I can only imagine they weren't able to listen to the Aretha Franklin all the way through. Not that they know what the word means anyway.

I'm worried that I might be fired sometime next week and that they'll deduct the recruiting fee and airfare from my last paycheque. I guess I just get to sit in suspense until that happens. I'm almost looking forward to that since I'd be able to go back to the labour board and claim unfair termination. Basically the problem is that I wasn't fully paid for morning classes I taught back in August, they haven't paid me overtime for some Saturdays that I worked and they withholding too much tax from my paycheque. All in all, it's quite a bit of money. The only problem is that I might not get any of it because of some strange tax law that lets employers pay income tax only once at the end of the year. Therefor, the tax office has no records as to how much tax I'd actually owe and so it's unsolvable from the governments perspective until my boss actually pays my taxes at the end of the year. The other things were just verbal agreements and so I can't prove anything.

It's just really frustrating and I don't know what to do quite frankly.

Change

Despite initial hopes and expectations, I don't think my second stint at English teaching will last much longer than my first. I've been having trouble with my bosses lately. And even if I get everything I want, I'm not sure I'd be that satisfied. I just don't there's much more for me to be got by being here aside from a little more money in my pocket. Sometimes, I enjoy my job and while I'm in the classroom it never seems that bad. The idea of work though is something that I'm beginning to despise. Just having to go into work and feeling that my work doesn't matter is starting to bother me.

Perhaps, it's because I either don't notice any progress being made by any of the students or they aren't making much at all. Some of my initial plans have also gone awry. I was going to take Korean lessons and then my bosses proved themselves to be unreasonable and I decided to cut my stay short by a few months. At which point, the 4 hours spent learning how to ask what something was and to say what something is or isn't seemed especially useless. (Is this a shoe? No, it's not a shoe. It's a chair.) I also skipped to the end of the book and could still follow it and so 4 hours a day 5 days a week to practice speaking seemed hardly worth the time or expense.

I had also planned to be better friends with my co-workers by this point. Of course, I favoured others over them so am a bit alienated from them. I'm not sure I have all that much in common with them anyways and going out can be fun every once in awhile but I don't really relish the idea of getting drunk at every opportunity.

So instead of talking badly about the past which I feel is all I really ever do on this thing. I should try to be positive about the future. I suppose the possibilities can be both exciting and unnerving.