For the first month of Eny’s time as school manager, Lipi was also there. She ended up leaving Kuningan too, fed up by the lies which Eny and Luke had fed her, but in that 1 month she gave us a detailed report of what Eny’s new management style was going to be like, and it gives us insight into why Eny failed in the first quarter of 2012 and needed to be rescued by Okeu and Vinny. (Finally was eventually paid a week’s salary for work she didn’t do in order just to leave TBI and stop asking questions about unethical conduct).

Cameron had always insisted that teachers come in 45 minutes before their first class to do prep. This was greeted as an outrageous demand by the three teachers who Luke called ‘The Three Idiots’ in work emails- Colm, Craig and Matthew. He had also insisted that male teachers wear neckties and wear shoes (what an evil man!!!) Matthew France was livid about these rules and made complaints to HR that it was unfair he had to wear a neck tie or shoes (when he had a sore foot). The whining pettiness of Matthew France was out of control, which Luke acknowledged to Cam and HR, but Luke used these complaints as a means to attack Cameron from behind. He told Cameron (in emails) that he agreed that neckties and shoes were a must but he used the complaints by Matthew (who he had brought to Jakarta with him!) to undermine Cameron within TBI- especially to Mariam. When Cameron caused student numbers to soar from 490 to 675, Mariam started heaping praise on him and Luke got jealous and tried to get him fired. Matthew’s complaints were used as the pretext to attack Cameron for attracting too many teacher complaints. But let’s look at the flimsy complaints with the benefit of hindsight:

   Do Kuningan teachers wear neckties now? Yes they do.

   Do Kuningan teachers wear shoes now? Yes they do.

   Do Kuningan teachers have to teach business classes now? Yes they do.

   Can Kuningan teachers order TBI to pay their laundry now? No they can’t.

  In short, every single one of the complaints made against Cameron is still enforced by the current management! The supposedly ‘tyrannical’ decisions that he made were exactly the same policies that had been there before he started and after he left! They were never anything more than the flimsiest of pretexts aimed to cover up the ruthless back-stabbing of a supposed friend by Preece. Matthew France had been looked after by Preece for years in exchange for favors. France was working illegally in Indonesia all along (as he doesn’t have a degree) but Preece used his crooked Immigration connection in Bandung to get him a KITAS. (The whole time France worked in Jakarta his KITAS was issued by the Jawa Barat- West Java- immigration office.)

   When Eny took over, she did briefly allow the teachers to adopt a “no standards” approach. Matthew came to school without a necktie and cheered it on as a ‘victory for teachers’ rights’. (He did wear shoes however. Presumably his foot was no longer sore). He didn’t come in and do any lesson prep either. Teachers started arriving just before their lessons and just waltzing into class and winging it. According to Lipi, Eny didn’t even insist on them going to class on time. It became common for teachers to go into class 5 or more minutes late, leaving the students just to wait. In short, Eny let Matthew France dictate policy and surprise, surprise by early 2012 student numbers had dropped sharply and negative feedback was flooding in.

Apparently the degree-less Preece and France had not realized that the reason why teachers were asked to arrive on time, do some prep and dress professionally was because the students liked it! They were paying good money and didn’t expect to sit in class while Matty sat in the staffroom and chatted away. The bird-brained Preece and his stooges had never understood that the reason Cam had insisted on policies and standards was because the students wanted it! Business 101 for Dummies: look after your customers!

Well, poor Eny was saddled with stupid policies that Preece and France had forced on her. If they were going to claim that Cam asking people to do 45 minutes prep was “tyranny”, she had to appear to offer a new approach. Yet once again the foolish decisions of Preece were business poison and by the first quarter of 2012, TBI student numbers had plummeted. Though we didn’t ever get a number count, everyone we spoke to agree that it was “sepi sekali” (very quiet) and we also heard that customer feedback was that TBI Kuningan had become very unflattering. The words “boring” and “unprofessional” were often heard.

This, of course, is why Mariam went online in June 2012 and promised that TBI would be more flexible, less boring, more dynamic and more fun. Clearly the feedback they had been receiving was dreadful. The low student numbers were also reflected in the drive to suddenly recruit a new Sales person (Vinny) and a new ACTEL (Okeu) in an attempt to mitigate the damage low standards had done to TBI’s reputation.

By the middle of the year, the positions Preece had abolished had been recreated and the policies that Cameron and everyone else had enforced (but Eny hadn’t to appease that petty whiner Matthew France) were reinstated too. In short, the wisdom of the previous policies was covertly acknowledged and Luke’s crackpot ideas of doing away with ties, lesson prep and ACTELs was scrapped. The amount of damage he has done to TBI is beyond belief (though we are blamed by him in a typical scapegoating move.) By being Luke’s pawn, Eny has had to follow a lot of his stupid ideas and her performance has suffered accordingly.