Never let it be said that TBI has any deeply-held values. Yes, they are incredibly greedy (in a short-term way) but that is surely a vice, not a value. There are no moral beliefs that I can see that have ever trumped short-term expediencies or the lure of an easy dollar. Respect for their customers? You have to be joking. This is the company which passed off former trucker Chris Needham (a man without a degree in any subject) as a “lecturer” at Uniprep. This is the company which has ignored several hundred customer complaints about old computers at TBI Kuningan. These computers are now almost a decade old, but TBI continues to ignore the flood of complaints. After all, how would Mariam buy herself the latest Hermes handbags if she invested some of the profits back into the business? Yes, intelligent business owners realize you have to spend money to make money, but “doing the right thing for the business” is another value Mariam’s clique has never possessed.

The Morals Free Zone

Yet if there are not any deeply-held moral convictions which inform their conduct, they can sometimes be shamed into doing the right thing. Without any moral compass to guide their actions, they merely take their cues from public opinion and the reactions of others- in other words, they mimic normal, empathic people, not having an ounce of compassion in their own greedy hearts. Over the past couple of years, we have seen them back-flip like the worst kind of unscrupulous politician on every single policy of importance. They have gone back and forth on employing teachers illegally on VKU visas; they have announced there are no more foreign managers and then changed the rules for Luke’s drinking buddies, Scott and Matthew; they have admitted their are chronic problems at TBI Bekasi through some of their mouthpieces and denied them with others; and they have lied that “Islands”, their first online learning course, was designed and created by TBI, when it was really bought off Pearson, the owner of Wall Street.

The Age Discrimination Climb-Down

Their latest back flip relates to the maximum age for Indonesian employees. Over the past few weeks, I have published three articles about their immoral age discrimination. I revealed how TBI had set a maximum age of 35 for applicants for management positions and an incredibly discriminatory maximum age of 25, with a degree!, for front desk workers/student assistants. We showed how TBI had long expressed a preference for young and inexperienced employees, who Luke openly described as easier to control and manipulate. This particular theme has been prominently discussed on here in recent weeks, and now TBI has once again gone into reverse gear.

Two days ago TBI advertised for 6 new positions ranging from a School Manager vacancy to Student Assistant vacancies. (In 2014, staff have started dropping out in record numbers, but that is a different story). After months of advertising only for youngsters, they have suddenly dropped the age requirement in 5 out of 6 jobs. The only one which still says 25 years old was an old ad that still hadn’t been filled. All the newly posted ones have no reference to the number 25, 35 or any other number at all. This values-free company has once again been shamed into sweeping their shady practices under the carpet. But don’t be fooled. They are still the same cheap, dishonest swindlers they always were.

Old TBI job ad: No one over 25 can apply