So you have to enjoy how life is always "teaching" you lessons especially when it seems to be the same lesson time and time again. I get it life. This time I get it. It doesn't matter how smart, talented, interesting, open minded, creative, blah blah blah you are. Trusting people to do what they say they can do is always a crap shoot.
This time around isn't as shocking or even earth shattering. I had a gut feeling, but I ignored it to focus on the fact that there were robots and an interesting concept to be apart of. I mean really, wouldn't anyone do the same...robots people...ROBOTS.
So I signed up (roughly speaking because no contracts were signed) with a startup that has this great idea for having robots as language buddies. I was basically hired for my experience teaching kids and being awesome (mostly in my head), but ultimately my perspective.They obviously had not one clue about the education industry because this group of guys were in the IT industry that basically worked with refurbished servers and re-purposing many companies old network systems. This threw me off a bit, because I was under the assumption they were innovative, forward thinking, and planners. My bad. I realized immediately how unfocused and self destructive they could be especially when they said "visas are so easy", "we're doing something thats never been done before in SEA (southeast asia)", "this will go big and we will be a publicly traded company", [insert grandiose statement here]. Even with all this silly speak I called visionary bullshit. Whatever it was robots. I got to play with a robot everyday.
My role changed immediately when they realized my other strengths
(I am willing to attempt anything and like a challenge) and I started designing a curriculum for "in class use with the robot". I was working on an interactive kids book that would go along with the robot. We just started doing focus groups, which I setup, organized and magically constructed with the help of the group. Yes the scope of my position changed vastly and became dynamic. It was challenging because I wanted to believe.
I still had my hesitation from jump street. I would get into arguments with the head guy that was more focused on having brand marketing, and the robot making loud noises (he thinks kids are idiots and that loud ass sounds will appease them and convince parents to drop 10k USD to purchase) instead of focusing on trying to get the robot developed to be functional.
Meanwhile, I'm traveling to Singapore and KL and the other offices to work with programmers and animators to try implementing the new designed curriculum. Why was I traveling so much you ask? Because they could not bring the robots into Thailand without having to pay a phenomenal fee to customs. This posed a new level of drama when we needed to repair robots. Sending and receiving them from the Paris company where they are maintained and having customs hold for a few weeks...not sure how that fit into their business plan. I voiced my concerns with this on top of marketing tactics and was marked as being negative and not contributing solutions. Which is true, I do not know how to save a sinking ship. So I continued to just rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic (thank you Ebert for giving me an expression that perfectly fits this situation)
I was going to give them until November to come up with some solutions for all of the grievances I had. It wasn't just me, all the foreigners thought the same thing, especially when it came to visas.
Fast forward to last week, I found out they could not do visas, they did not have the robot company registered, they had gone through 3 shady "lawyers", "agents", "somebodies cousin" to do the paperwork for the foreigners. Cutting corners basically. I was very upset by this and in a group message (yes unprofessionally and absolutely disrespectful) told them "they needed to get their heads out of their asses and start being more open about this lack of process." No I was not thinking of winning any popularity contest and no one disagreed.
Not to my surprise I go into the office Monday. I apologize to the the "manager type" guy that was only hired because he's white and that's how you sell stuff here. I said I was sorry for being so venomous in the message, but he has to understand our frustrations. He replies with a "you cannot disrespect us like that", which I totally get. I know I was wrong. I try calling the head guy and his wife to apologize. They have conveniently stop taking calls, messages, and not replying to emails prior to the message. I knew right away what was coming.
4 hours into the work day (I was deleting files and moving things to my flash drive. I cleaned my work laptop completely and left very basic things I did on the server) manager type guy tells me and an animator that this isn't about messages or anything other then the visas and that they will have to let us go, because they cannot do your visas. I said "oh, ok", the animator did not take it so well. I thought he was going to start swinging and breaking robots. Dude is all muscle. He immediately went to our other Bangkok office where the head guy (that had been avoiding my calls/emails/messages all weekend) to try and talk to him. I changed my flight dates, printed out my boarding pass and found a hotel and started using the office printer to print out information on visas and jobs. I needed to exit and I still had stuff in the KL (Kuala Lumpur) office which me and the animator where suppose to flight out to go to this Tuesday.
There is a robot show coming up that they now realize they are not ready for. They let us keep the flight ticket and we could use it however we wanted. I thought "they really think they're doing us a favor, hilarious". Before I left the office Monday, they asked if I could do freelance work for them HAHAHHAHA. Ballsy people. I smiled and said "of course". If I choose to actually help them I will charge them ASTRONOMICAL fees for my assistance.
I had an interesting talk with the animator about what he had discussed with the head guy on our flight to KL. Apparently the head guy is just as big of a coward as I thought. He apparently thought we didn't appreciate all of the money he's spent on us and his shady efforts and compartmentalizing methods of information. He especially didn't like my message, the one about them suggesting they remove their heads out of their asses. The Thai staff apparently had a problem with the animator that none of us realized and thats why they needed to let him go... figured it was BS reasons. I was over it all 2 weeks ago. They just pulled the trigger before I did, which is a little annoying.
So that's that. Sorry this was so long, but I've been to busy to do a play by play of the #robotlife that was happening. I wanted to genuinely give this a chance. I can say I tried with no regrets.
On to the next thing now.
Sending positive vibes everywhere!
Signed Uncompromising Anne with an e
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