Trouble in the middle of HESS initial training: and my weapon against evil- DENIAL!!!

A couple of days into the training, we each called or were called by our HNST (head native speaking teacher, basically your western manager) from our branch.
We'll call my HNST James. My first impression of him over the phone was that he sounded mild-mannered and kind. A couple of minutes into our conversation he said we should discuss my schedule.
My schedule? Two kindergarten classes, I already know.
Noooo he said. You don't have two kindergarten classes.

?

"Fortunately," said James
(I soon learned that if James begins a sentence with 'fortunately', you ought to head screaming for the hills, because what follows will be anything but fortunate)

"fortunately you do have a kindergarten class in the morning. Then on Mondays, wednesdays and Friday's you'll have a class called Treehouse, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays you'll have a class that's just like kindy called jump. Then you'll have HLS classes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday."

My mind was already racing. There must be a mistake. For the entire training so far I'd been looking at my fellow trainees during the non-kindy sections and thinking 'you shmucks, those classes are going to suck! Thank god I did my research and am only teaching kindergarten.'
I also knew that kindergarten is a morning class, and the buxiban (older children) classes run from 6:30-8:30pm- and have homework and tests to grade, not to mention baffling lesson plans.

Also the schedule he was talking about would be about 32 or 33 hours a week- not exactly the 15 I had dreamed about.

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I actually had thought that I would only be working 33 hours HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!! The truth was I would be PAID for 33 hours- I'd be working MUCH much MUCH more.)

But the part that killed me was the 8:30 am start and the 8:30 pm finish...I didn't know when treehouse and jump were, but I wasn't pleased that I was already being forced into a split shift schedule.

I told James that there was a mistake and that I had agreed to a Contract C full time kindy schedule. He replied that Jump class was for kindy aged kids, so it would be almost like a contract C! Wasn't that great?

He told me I could talk to the main office staff and see if there was something else that could be done.

I got off the phone and immediately my mind went into some sort of denying reality survival mode. I just decided that squeaky wheels get the grease and that I'd be a squeaky wheel.


At the end of training, nearly 40 trainees happily lined up to sign their contract. I refused. What an awkward moment. Here I am in a foreign country, my visa is tied to the company I'm working for, I don't have enough money for a flight home, and I'm refusing to sign their contract.
I was told that less kindergarten children had signed up at my branch than expected- that was why my schedule had changed. I was told to go, try it, see if I liked it, and if I didn't, we'd figure something out.

Now I understand that it must be a logistical nightmare to do what Hess does- hundreds of new teachers, thousands of students, crazy scheduling, many unkown variables (will the new teacher pass training, what kids will sign up for which classes, will we have too many or not enough teachers, etc.) and to be fair to Hess they are honest that you may not get the schedule/location that you want. And they did give me exactly the location i wanted. 1 out of two, considering what they're up against, isn't bad.
But I wasn't going for not bad, I was going for good, so this new development sucked.
They must have understood the kindergarten situation long before I boarded the plane to Taiwan. They just didn't tell me until it was convenient- meaning, I was in Taiwan, tied to their visa, with half of their unpaid training behind me.