Working In The Developing World

Part I: Peter Gets Blackmailed With Deportation

This is the first in a 3 part series. This first installment is about my first 72 hours in Vietnam. And I don't write this for the sake of trash talk, (the company in question is earning a bad enough reputation without my help) rather, I write this to let you know some of what can go wrong out here. Working abroad in the developing world carries a different set of challenges that growing up in the West does not prepare you for. Hopefully, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you will have learned a little something about how to sort it out from reading this.

So let's begin...

I went to Vietnam planning to sign a ‘6 or 9 month ish’ contract with a company called SET Vietnam (Supply English Teachers). They gave me some guidance in acquiring my visa, sent somebody to the airport to collect me when I arrived, and even let me sleep in one of their classrooms for my first 2 nights in the country before I found a place to stay. This was very nice of them.

However, after only a day in the country I was already hearing overwhelmingly bad things about this company from all the expats I brushed elbows with. People told me stories of the company manipulating people, bullying them, and straight up just not paying them. So this was cause for concern. To be real, I didn’t really know anything about them.

The day was fast approaching that I was scheduled to sign the contract with them. I decided that it would be prudent to pull the thread a little bit and see what happened. I arrived with a couple negotiating points for the contract in mind that I thought would be quite reasonable. I was really just looking for some reassurance that they were reasonable people.

When I entered the office they were quick to shove a contract at me. A girl told me in broken English that she thought it was a good contract. The manager of the company was in the other room though. She was apparently not planning on being present for my contract signing. Whatever. I smiled and told the girl that I had some things that I wanted to talk to the manager about. She looked uncomfortable but called the manager in to talk to me.

I politely began to talk to her about some of my concerns. As I spoke she quickly dropped her polite smile and became quite angry. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to back track to a place where I could dismantle the bomb that I had inadvertently triggered. Everything I had said was quite reasonable so I was sure that it was a mere misunderstanding that was to blame. These types of negotiations are much more difficult when there is a language barrier.

Eventually though I knew that I had been understood. The real issue at hand was that this woman was hell-bent on bullying me into signing her contract, exactly as it was, today.

I told her that my understanding was that this was supposed to be a negotiation and in a negotiation both parties need to make some concessions in good faith. I highlighted to her that I was doing that and that she needed to meet me half way. She angrily responded that she would not change the contract in the slightest. She told me that I needed to sign it exactly as it was.

Inner monologue: "Ok Peter, you’re a bitch if you sign this right now."

I told her that if she was going to be this way then I wanted to no part in a contract with her or her company. She responded that if I didn’t sign it immediately that their company would go to the government to have my visa revoked so that I would be "kicked out of Vietnam", which I assume(d) meant deported.

Pause.

This was a threat I had not anticipated. Would they really do that? More importantly, could they do that? I was not knowledgeable enough to know the answer to these questions and unfortunately, this was a fact that she was taking advantage of. So if I chose to walk out I was taking a huge risk. I thought about all my friends back at home who had said goodbye to me. It would be pretty embarrassing to have to come home a week later as a failure.

Now that I have been here for a while, I know that this was SO stupid. I cringe when I think about it. First of all, I didn't do anything wrong. But, let's talk 'worst case scenario' here and assume that I had. They had/have no power to deport me. Even if they had gone to the government (which I doubt they would have) and even if the government had actually bothered to do anything about it (I’m pretty sure the Vietnamese government has bigger fish to fry than this) the most this woman could have done was get my work permit revoked, which amounts to no more than a slap on the wrist. In order to revoke my actual visa she would need my passport, which she did not have. Without the work permit I would still have been perfectly capable of finding new work (and better paying work) and my visa would have remained valid.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that she did indeed have the ability to get my visa canceled. What then? The answer is that I could have gotten a new visa issued the very next day. Also I maybe would have had to pay a fine at the airport. It would have been a hassle, but it would have been very doable. Vietnam is a stickler when it comes to visas, which is why there are entire (albeit, sketchy) companies devoted to acquiring visas for anybody who wants one. I would have had a few days at least before I needed to leave the country if any of this had actually happened, during which time I could have gone to any one of these companies and secured a new visa. Then I could have taken a flight to Bangkok and returned the next day a worry-free man. This is called a 'visa run' and it is how at least 80% of teachers working here operate.

But I didn’t know any of that yet. It was my third day in Vietnam. I didn’t know anything. I actually didn't even know that I had a work permit separate from my visa. This was something that I didn't even know they had gotten for me. I didn't know that they had it locked away in a drawer somewhere. But I did know that if she was capable of doing what she claimed then walking out would land me in quite a bad situation. This was more than I wanted on my plate during my first week in Southeast Asia. So I angrily signed to contract, knowing full well that I was being taken advantage of.

The manager breathed a visible sigh of relief when she saw my name written on the dotted line. She owned me for the next 6 months. She asked me if I had been talking to or consorting with any other companies (that might have made me a better offer).

WTF! NO! But maybe I should have been...

Signing that contract is honestly one of my biggest regrets. I shouldn’t have played it safe. Why did I play it safe? Because I was afraid. I allowed myself to be bullied and intimidated into submission. I would soon learn that the potential fallout from breaking this 'contract' was pretty minimal. I knew this, but still, I stayed. Why? I'd like to tell you it's because I'm such a great guy, but that's not the reason. I stayed because I was afraid of rocking the boat. But as time passed, I realized that my ‘boat’ was much more stable than I had originally thought. I should have just walked out when I had the chance, before I signed the contract, come what may. But I didn't. I didn't have the balls to do that. And now I was stuck.

Furthermore, making decisions based on fear is pretty contrary to what I had flown across the world to accomplish. I came here, at least partially, to free myself from that pattern.

Oh well, lesson learned. There was so little time left in my contract by the time I had this 'rocking the boat' epiphany that it was less profitable to quit and tell them off out of pride than it was just to put my head down and complete my contract. So I swallowed my pride and resolved finish my contract, collect my salary, and rock the boat at every opportunity from there on out. It's all part of the process.

Another big complaint I had about my indentured servitude to SET was how little I was being paid. I was a guaranteed $1,300 per month (plus overtime at 20 USD/hour). This sounds decent (for Southeast Asia) until you do some math. I was required to work 21 hours per week. I worked every one of those hours, and then some, which put my hourly rate in the 14.50 USD/hour ballpark. This is insultingly low for an English teacher here. Now usually work for $25/hour. Honestly though, I felt kind of guilty complaining too much. While this might be low for a teacher, it is still stinking rich in Vietnam. The average Vietnamese person makes maybe 5,000,000 VND per month (a little less than 250 USD) and my paychecks were usually around 35,000,000 VND. Poor me.

So, despite mixed feeling, I worked the duration of my contract. And I did my best to make light of the situation by working hard to sharpen my teaching skills. The contract lasted until early February. The expiration was right before Tet, Vietnam's Lunar New Year. It was never a good (or even decent) work environment but for as many ways as they made my life worse, I will admit, they also made it easier. And even though I resented dealing with SET, I was actually having a good time teaching. I would definitely have been having a better time elsewhere, but I was having a good time nonetheless. It turned out that I really liked teaching.

It was all going fine… until one Thursday evening in mid January.

My contract was about to end with SET. SET (Supply English Teachers) is essentially Hanoi's ESL pimp. I worked for them and they worked for people that needed teachers. They would send me to various schools and English centers and then take half of what my salary should have been.

But I was teaching a full schedule and a wide variety of different classes through them. Of all these, my favorite class was a business English class that I taught during the evenings for a large corporation. I had become friends with these students in a way that I hadn’t with any of my other classes. I regularly went out for dinner and drinks with them in fact. I was under the impression that the class would end shortly before the expiration of my contract. At least that is what their boss had told me.

One Thursday evening though, I came into class and they told me that they wanted to continue the class after the Lunar New Year (this 3 week holiday is called Tet) and they wanted me as their teacher. ‘So we will talk to the English center…’ they began but I had to correct them. As much as I loved teaching them, I would not be working through SET after Tet, at least not in the same capacity. They quickly responded with the suggestion that after Tet I sign a contract directly with their company and cut out the middleman entirely. I paused. Well, that’d actually be perfect. I needed to find some regular work for after the holiday anyway so why not? I shrugged my shoulders and said ‘Well… sure?”

When I got home that night I got a call from a girl that worked at SET. She said that something had happened with the class and that the manager was accusing her of telling me company secrets.

Company secrets? Like, really? Are you Coca-Cola?

Looking back, I go back and forth about whether or not this girl was looking out for me or just trying to elicit a reaction from me. She walked the line between stupid and manipulative like a pro. I was never quite sure what her angle was. She kept saying 'why are you worried if you didn't do it?' I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not knowingly, but if you are on trial you are always going to be nervous.

Well, soon after this I received an email from my manager asking me to come into the office and talk to her because my contract was going to end soon. This same girl told me that when I came to talk to her I was going to be accused to emailing multiple of SET’s clients (including the aforementioned corporate English class) trying to steal them away via direct contracts. It was against the contract that I had signed with SET to ask their clients to 'go direct' with me while the contract was in force. Of course, these were utterly false accusations but supposedly they had some sort of evidence against me in email form. The girl told me that the manager was preparing documents so that I could be deported if she decided that I was guilty.

Deported? WHAT!? Can they even do that?

If you read Part I of this saga, you know that this is not the first time they had threatened me with this. And you also know that I the answer is 'no'. They do not even remotely have the ability to deport me. But I didn’t know this yet; I was about to find out.

But first, a little background: who were these accusers?

Alleged Accuser #1

The first one was the corporate English class that I had become such good friends with. I figured that what must have happened was that one of them had called SET to tell them that they would not be renewing their contract and the manger had jumped to conclusions. I didn't think that any of them had gotten me in trouble purposely; it must have been a misunderstanding. I would end up having to ask them to clarify to my manager that they had asked me, and that nobody had any intention of having me sign a contract with them while my contract with SET was still in force. But I would later find out that none of them had said anything about it to SET. They said that they thought that I had accidentally gotten myself in trouble needed them to bail me out, which they were happy to do. At that point we both felt confused. Clearly there was a mole who was feeding SET false information, but their identity remains a mystery, and not one that I care to get to bottom of.

ALLEGED ACCUSER #2

My second accuser was really out of left field. It was a company called E-Connect that provides foreign teachers to problematic public schools. These classes often had 40 or more 16-year-olds that would try their best to talk over you for the entirety of the 1.5 hours you got with them as a teacher. I would regularly lose my voice teaching for them. It is really the bottom of the barrel when it comes to teaching jobs in Vietnam, but I was doing my best. The T.A.s (teaching assistants) that work for them are all cool young people but very few of them like E-Connect either. They also don't pay particularly well, nor treat their employees particularly well. It really would have been an odd choice for me to break my contract on their account. But the manager claimed to have an email that I had written to them.

Needless to say, I was very curious to see this email. 

Now back the present

After I hung up the phone with my informant I called a woman who had become something of a ‘visa consultant’ to me. She said that this was the ‘oldest trick in the book’ and that I shouldn’t worry. In her 15 years dealing with peoples’ visas, she had only heard of one person that was actually deported. And he killed somebody. She assured me that in order for my visa to even be cancelled they would need to have my passport in their hand, so as long as they didn’t have my passport (which they didn’t) I was totally safe. I breathed a sigh of relief. She continued that if I had any issues that I could always call her. She said that she would be glad to come support me by pretending to be my lawyer.

Let’s just pause for a moment to acknowledge how awesome that is. This woman was seriously my angel. I will include her contact information at the conclusion of this post so that you too can get your visa with her if you ever come to Vietnam.

So I scheduled the meeting with my manager. I scoured my 'sent mail' folder just to be sure that I hadn’t sent any questionable correspondence in my sleep.

...........................nope!

Whatever evidence was waiting for me was going to be a genuine surprise.

As I mentally prepared myself for this meeting, I reflected. Why was I even surprised? Why had I signed this stupid contract in the first place? I played it safe. But the truth is that my existence abroad was far less fragile than I thought. I was seriously stressed, but let's consider the worst case scenario. I don't want to sound overly aware of my privilege, but the worst thing that could happen to me in most of these scenarios was getting sent back to my safety net in America… one of the richest nations in the world. Darn! I would feel like a failure, but I would be in an objectively better situation upon arriving home. And "Peter Gets Deported" would have made a great title for one my articles. #perspective

The Fateful Meeting

It lasted about 5 minutes. Maybe less.

I told her the truth: that I didn't do anything. Then I called her bluff and asked if I could see the emails that she was talking about. She said she hadn't seen them herself and that she would ask for them.

Seriously? You’re preparing documents to “have me deported” and you haven’t even seen these alleged emails?

Well here's a spoiler for you: I never heard another word about it after that meeting. It was all just part of the usual fear-mongering and bullying that goes on at SET. The meeting couldn't have been shorter, and then I was on my way. It was a bit anti-climactic, but the story isn't over just yet.

My visa angel

(SHE CAN BE YOURS TOO!) 

Name: Lai

Email: cozyhotel@gmail.com

I cannot recommend anybody more strongly than I recommend her. Hit her up.

Rewind: Renewing My Visa

As much as I resented my employer, SET, I had been doing my best to keep my pride out of the equation in planning my next move. And 3 months into my time in Vietnam I needed to renew my visa. I had 2 choices here:

  1. Renew my visa for a full year through SET on the condition that I continued to work for them in some small capacity after the termination of my current contract.

  2. Do a ‘visa run’ like most English teachers and get my own 3-month visa, independent of SET.

What’s a boy to do? Setting aside my pride, if I worked part-time for them a few hours per week then I would be paid a much more reasonable hourly wage. And that was my main complaint apart from the grudge I had against them – the low pay. Visa laws in Vietnam have been changing a lot so having a year-long business visa would be quite a valuable asset to me.

So when it came time to renew my visa 3 months into my time in Vietnam, I agreed to get my next visa through SET for 1 full year on the condition that I would work the minimum number of hours for them possible and that there would be no contract available for them to manipulate me with. The manager told me that I could work 7 hours per week at 22 USD/hour and this would be okay - a promise I should have gotten in writing.

That still left the matter of the visa fee. Most employers will at least offer to help pay for the cost of a new visa. I knew that SET had no intention of helping me in any way they didn't need to so some haggling would be necessary to receive any financial help. After my swift indoctrination into the realm of business negotiations in the developing world, I did my best to persuade them to pay for the fraction of my visa cost that was proportional to the amount of time that I would be working for them full-time. I had 3 months left on my full-time contract with them so, if I got a visa for 1 year, they should pay for 3/12ths of it (25%). They agreed, so we went ahead and renewed my visa accordingly. I paid the other 75% of the fee out of my own pocket.

Fast forward: Back to the present

Now fast-forward back to where we started. I had renewed my visa through SET even though my contract with them was about to end. The clock on my contract was ticking when, one day, the manager called me into the office and told me that she changed her mind about the 7 hours per week. In order to keep my visa she would require me to work 15 hours per week minimum and I would need to sign a contract. I had to laugh. Of course this would happen. What had I been thinking renewing my visa with them?

Apparently I had forgotten that they are manipulative fiends because it was only then that I saw their strategy:

  1. Convince naive foreign teacher to get a long-term business visa through their company by proposing a reasonable work arrangement

  2. After the naive foreign teacher has paid for the visa, change the terms of this arrangement. What are they really going to do about it?

  3. The naive foreign teacher will be unhappy, but ultimately do what they say, because changing visas introduces costs and uncertainties into the equation that most people prefer to avoid

"That's it," I thought "I'm done." I was officially pissed. The mischievous, spiteful little demons inside me were starting to tell me all the crazy, deceitful ways I could seek revenge against them for screwing me yet again. Meanwhile my shoulder angel... actually for me it's more like my shoulder Dad, reminded me that you'll never regret keeping your cool.

I chose to stay cool and act like an adult. I took a deep breath - *inhale* *exhale* - and then I was okay.

So what's my play? I definitely wasn't going to give in and work for SET a nanosecond longer than I needed to, so I knew immediately what was going to happen. Since I paid for it myself (or what remained of it), I didn’t want to cancel my year-long visa. I thought that would be very unfair. But SET didn't care if it was 'fair' or not. They were going to keep me under their thumb at all costs. But they couldn’t cancel my visa without my passport. In order to cancel my visa they would need to convince me to give them my passport. How could they do this? By holding my final month’s salary hostage until I met their demands. It was actually less than a month’s salary but it amounted to about 1,000 USD. And sure enough, that's exactly what they did.

So was my yearlong visa worth more than 1,000 USD to me? That was the question. It was one that I should never have had to answer but in the end I decided it wasn’t. But by the time this all happened I was dangerously close to leaving for Indonesia (my lunar new year trip). If I didn’t have my passport back in time for my flight I would have wasted even more money on the plane tickets that I had already bought. I needed to hedge my risks somehow. What would a smart business person do next? I don't know, but here's what I did.

I agreed to give them my passport. But I was beyond frustrated with them so before I gave it to them I pulled out a napkin and wrote a small contract on it, you know, since they love contracts so much. The contract said that they would reimburse me for all my expenses and buy me new plane tickets if they failed to return my passport to me in time for my flight. I made the manager sign, stamp & scan it for her and my records.

The Contract To Liquidate The Contract

When I came back a few days later to pick up my passport and last pay check, they made me sign ANOTHER contract to ‘liquidate’ my current contract before they gave me the money. This contract stated that I couldn’t work with any of SET’s clients even after the termination of the contract. To be clear, this "not working with any of her clients" term was nowhere in my original contract, the one I had been bullied into 6 months ago. I planned on working for some of their clients.

In this weird, last minute contract, this term came in the form of an ambiguous, 1-line statement. I later sent it to my father (a lawyer in the U.S.) and my friend (a lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City) for them to look at. They both concluded that this was ‘Past Consideration’ and that I was under no obligation to honor this ransom note of a contract. Not that it would have mattered in Vietnam anyway.

There was a moment in this negotiation that I always think back on. In this moment, the manager realized that I just wanted out. I was leaving even if I had to cancel my visa to do it. At that point her tactic changed and she began trying to talk up her company again. And then, she asked me why I was leaving.

I was almost insulted she would even ask that... but then again, that question was kind of an opportunity. This was my chance to tell her exactly what I thought of SET. If ever there was a moment to unload, this was it. My mind raced. What's the most hurtful thing you can say in a situation like this? (Yeah, it's an ugly thought but we've all thought it at one point or another so shut up.) I didn't want to be so mean that I lost credibility. I had to pick something believable, something subtly destructive, something that would linger and pick at her soul like a dry scab. I needed to confirm one of her deepest, darkest insecurities. They say that the tongue can hurt like a sword and I needed to use that sword to slice her heart with a malicious yet witty one-liner that would bring her whole world crashing down around her in a devastating cloud of smoke and ash.

So what should I have said?

Mmm... nah.

In all my experience with her, if she had proven anything it was that she was a sociopath, so the emotional route was out. She's a businesswoman (of sorts) though, so here's what I came up with:

"Your company provides a service that teachers just don't need."

And I walked out. Yeah, maybe it could have been better. I'm not great at being mean when I need to be. But that was the end. I washed my hands of SET. Until this series of articles that is.

Peter's Perspective

SET is a weird place. Anybody with some experience can pick up on that even from the interview. And the manager that I have been referring to – I can’t quite explain it, but she has a certain… quality. I have discussed this at length with other teachers who have dealt with her. This quality goes beyond the usual sketchiness of business in the developing world. It might sound dramatic, but I would go so far as to say that the quality I am picking up on is evil. Is that dramatic? Well I threw these same thoughts out over dinner and drinks with other teachers that had had similar issues with her and nobody scoffed at the word 'evil', rather, they all nodded gravely. The SET office has a strange dynamic. Everybody that works there is afraid of her. She enters the room and her underlings cower and grovel at her feet like Hades's minions.

SET’s business model is to prey on the inexperience of foreigners. They will rush and bully people with no experience into fake contracts and then use these “contracts” to bully them even more. There are lots of terrible stories floating around Hanoi from people just like me. But it’s not just foreigners like me that are being taken advantage of though. Other Vietnamese companies that deal with SET are also having similar issues. I don’t know all the details but I have heard staff from more than one other company that deals with SET explain how they are being extorted and taken advantage of continuously.

As for their Vietnamese staff, there was a core of employees that seemed to be forever indentured to SET but the final spot on their roster was constantly changing. I became actual friends with one girl who briefly filled this spot. She said that when she quit the manager refused to pay her an entire month of salary. She was barely scraping by as it was so this was a big financial blow. I think it all worked out for her in the end though. This girl, however, is just one link in an extensive chain of people that SET does these things to and, statistically speaking, it probably hasn't 'worked out in the end' for all of them.

Moving Forward

Now I freelance, and even though finding work is more of a hassle, I am SO much happier without them in my life. The termination of that contract was nothing short of freeing. Working in the developing world continues to be a challenge: the norms are different, people are far from professional, and sketchiness is just part of the deal. However, you will be happy to know that not everybody is like SET. I have worked for many companies since then, and most of them, despite their developing world short-comings, are good people. And that is the most valuable thing I can ask for in an employer.

Working for SET was a bad time, but it taught me a lot. So here are my big takeaways, for whatever they're worth:

  1. I'm learning what I value in a job: I will always choose a better work environment with better people over more money.

  2. This is a bit more academic than I normally get, but I am learning about effective management techniques. How you treat your employees is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you treat employees well, they will go above and beyond for you. If you (try to) rule by fear, you will be resented and business will suffer.

  3. But most importantly, I have learned (some of) what it is like for immigrants to be taken advantage of when they are "fresh off the boat". It happens all over the world in some seriously heartbreaking ways. When I return to the U.S., I hope that I can find some sort of consistent way to help immigrants get on their feet when they first arrive because now I know what it is like to be lost, alone, and scared in a new place. And worse, I know what it is like to be preyed upon in that vulnerable situation.

 
 

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