The March to Inevitability

Hello Everyone,
I am writing this as my official last blog. As I reported in earlier blogs NOVA has been having major financial troubles and they have not gotten any better, in fact then have only worsened. As suspected (by myself and many other workers) payment was not received as scheduled on October 15th, and as I write this on October 22 no has been paid yet. Needless to say it is a very frustrating situation. When pay was delayed on Monday, October 15th I decided it was no longer in my best interest to continue work for a company that cannot pay me, thus I submitted my formal letter of resignation on Monday, October 15th after it was realized that payment would not be made. Long story short, my last day of work was Wednesday, October 17th and I will be coming home Thursday, October 25th to attempt to regroup and get my life back on track.

While I am excited to come home and see my family and friends it is also very bittersweet. I really wanted this opportunity to work out. It was a great chance to see a part of the world I had never seen before. I was really hoping accepting this position would give me the chance to travel around Japan, but I was not really able to travel much further than then immediate area Isesaki due to the fact that I could not afford to spend money on travel, I felt daily necessities were more important, and since I didn’t have a guaranteed paycheck I could not take a chance spending what little money I had on travel. Although I was not able to see all that I wanted my trip was not completely devoid of travel, as all of you who have read my previous blog entries are privy to.

To illustrate the reasons for severing ties with Nova I will provide a small timeline of the Nova news as I received it while I was in Japan Note: While Nova is a hierarchical agency, like any large company in the US; it lacks any sense of transparency. I am not sure if it is because of its large bureaucratic nature or simply massive ineptitude in the tops ranks, but there was simply no flow of information.

From the time I arrived in Japan I knew something was not right with NOVA. My first working day was September 12th, three days before payday, and already people were somewhat worried that they may not receive the wages due to them. September 15th came and all my coworkers were paid on time. I started to think alright maybe everything is OK. Then I realized the Titled Instructor (a Titled Instructor (TI) is basically a branch manager, they are one step above the regular instructor (me) and handle operations such as employees reviews and observations ) from my branch had not yet been paid.

My hopes that everything with Nova was “on the level” were very quickly dashed as I realized my TI had not been paid. There was no explanation as to why he (or any other TI) had not been paid. Something wasn’t right. In classic Nova style there was no information from the “top brass” as to why this pay was delayed. After the first delay TIs were told they would be paid within the next three days. When that promise didn’t materialize they were given another date; same result. TIs were given the run around like this for two weeks, until finally pay was deposited on September 27th, a full two weeks late.

The company was finally able to scrape together the capital to pay their TI’s (note: there are approx. 900 or less TI’s in Japan, as each branch generally has one) but no one knew how they did this, or where the money came from. There had been rumors floating around that branches were being closed in an attempt to save money, but what good would this do? Nova doesn’t own any of the space it used it only further into debt. Again the upper management at Nova shines through.

As the TIs are paid people begin to realize that we are a mere two weeks away from instructor payday on October 15th. If Nova had no money to pay the TI’s where were they going to find the money to pay nearly 7,000 instructors? With no means of communication from above many turned to internet forums to get any grain of information they could, but it didn’t take long to realize these sources of information were teeming with hearsay and false information, but it was some information that we all so desperately wanted.

So nearly every Nova employee marched on towards October 15th, many of them (myself included) developing contingency plans along the way. These plans ranged from heading home to recruiting Nova students for private lessons. During the week of October 8th branch morale seemed to be at an all time low. It had been over two months since the Japanese Staff (those who put together teaches schedules and perform the day to day activities to keep Nova running) had been paid. Everyone had the same sentiment, we will not be paid next Monday and our work was suffering because of it. It is extremely hard to enter a less and struggle to communicate with a very low level student when you are all but sure you will not be paid for your trouble, but at the same time it is impossible not to feel sympathy for the student who paid for the lesson you are teaching them 2+ years ago, when the company was flourishing.

Then came the nail in the coffin for me. One Friday, October 12th we received a fax from the top brass stating they could not come up with the fund to pay instructors as scheduled on October 15th. The fax embodied all the tact we have come expect from Nova over the past two month – 1. It contained no explanation from why payment was to be delayed and 2. It was sent at about 9:30pm, half an hour after all branches close for the day and employees are at home.

Saturday I went to work to see if the fax actually existed and it did. I saw this fax as my chance to get out of Nova. A binding clause of my contract states that I must give thirty days notice in order to resign from Nova, but another binding part of my contract states that I will be paid in full on the 15th of each month, Nova was in breach of my contract and I no longer had to honor it. The news was all the buzz at work on Saturday, but no one had any real plans, as it came as more of shock. It was one of those instances where we were all expecting some sort of news, but when it actually came it was still quite hard to swallow. For me the decision was simple and I made it on the spot. I was not going to have my first paycheck from a company be delayed; I mean this was my first paycheck, talk about starting off on a bad foot. I was going to wait until Monday, October 15th at 3pm (banks in Japan close at 3pm, thus any payment made on Monday would be posted by 3pm) and when the money was not in my bank account Nova would have officially breached its contract and I no longer had to honor it.

At about 5pm I faxed my official, hand written, letter of resignation to my area boss. She called to confirm that she had received it and sent me all the paperwork I would need to fill out in order to make this official. I filled it out on my break, as I wanted to get this done as soon as possible and faxed it back to her. I was finally free, as of 6:15pm on October 17th I would no longer be an employee of Nova.

As I write this, I have not been working for almost a week now. I have everything in place to come home, my plane ticket and bus ticket to the airport, now it’s just a matter of waiting for Thursday so I can come home (and trying to spend as little money as possible now that I have so much down time) To reiterate my pervious point, as I am sad to be leaving Japan without a very good chance to experience it to the fullest like I had planned, I am even more excited to get home, see my family and friends and begin to get my life back on track. What I am not looking forward to is the whole process of getting my life back on track (i.e. Job hunting and house hunting) so if anyone has any connections please let me know, I’m going to need all of the help I can get.

In closing, thank you very much for reading my blog, and all the messages and things you have sent me since I have been over here, it certainly made the transition much easier. I am sure I will be seeing many of you in the very near future.

So until then take care,
Adam