Life / Where to find CHEAPEST International phone rates in Poland? [7]

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated... I'll check VOIPDiscount and MSN out...

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]

Thanks for your collective feedback -- certainly feels reassuring on the whole. Have done a few things since my post. Called Polish Embassy in US and was told that I was now illegal and there was not much to be done except eat the fine. Called Warsaw airport border guard who looked up the fine for 20 days overstay (that's my current number) and, after confirming three times that I was "American," stated there'd be a 100zl fine and no other issue.

Called another Poland airport and, after appealing that well the employer/school had perpetrated blatant lies, was told by border guard, "well you shouldn't have believed them." She said you'll have to go through "many procedures" when you get to the airport, and you will have to have a tax, and, well she couldn't think of the word, and then blurted "punishment!"... You will not, she said, be able to come back for one or three years. When I pressed her for details about any fines, she says, "No I will not tell you," but why?, "because you only want to find this out so you can just come to the airport without going to the immigration voivodship office first." Talk about cynicsism!... I might have said, "but then why should I now believe YOU?"

So now I have called the voivodship here in this part of Poland and they are looking up the answer as to what to do. I have read elsewhere that it is conceivable to be given an extension under extraordinary circumstances such as a broken leg. They have just invited me down assuring me I won't be arrested and that they'd try to find what the status of my ostensible work permit and visa is.

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]

I did indeed contact US embassy in Warsaw first and, after saying yah they'll probably blacklist you, they referred me to the voivod. Border guard I spoke to on phone told me they would not be honoring or recognizing the Schengen change until March, so the old rules would apply till then. In any event fare with Wizzair from the much more civilized Gdansk airport was 81zl to my US flight in Kastrup/Malmo vs. a lot more from the Berlin airports.

Just back from voivod where I laid out papers and story and they shook their head in disbelief of the scamming as if to say, yah more of the SOS. Guy first tells me you'll certainly be let out, but it's 50-50 whether they'll blacklist your return here for one year. He called border guard to verify and they told him 100% chance I'll be prevented from returning for one year. I asked for extension under these circumstances and he said well you can apply but likely won't be ready till after you leave.

Again many thanks for your posts.

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]


Well, who pays?

"Offer" in general can mean bid or present for sale, among other things.

When context shows a commercial transaction,"offer" as "bid", in my informed view, dominates in colloquial American usage over "offer" as "present for sale." Offer thus here retains the element of gratuity or sacrifice that the word more originally carries, insofar as the "surrendering" is construed to be more from the buyer than seller. You're not doing me any favors offering me something for sale, goes the proposed cultural assumption, as much as when I'm offering to pay you some amount for it. The seller is seen as predatory not beneficent, the buyer is viewed neutrally.

(This may be a fertile clue to broader cultural differences in what "commerce" deeply means. For example, European airlines commonly use "offer" in their literature, while US airlines will tend to use "sale" or "deal" or "promotion.")

While that's one source of ambiguity in a general sense, here the context is somewhat different. One reason to believe "offer" means "they'll pay" is that it appears in the next item after the salary. This is especially a credible interpretation if a previous email explicitly says, "we will pay for your flat," which it did. And applying the standard American assumption on the word "offer", the school should be construed in this clause as "buyer" and thus as offering to pay me for something I'm selling them -- ie, here, my services. The alternative interpretation, viz, that they are a "seller" , while plausible, fails to defeat the first interpreation on my reading for lack of evidence. I mean, why offer ("sell") me an apartment as part of the contract -- are you in that business too?

The ambiguity was such that at the time of signing I asked a colleague whether she thought I should amend the contract to repair it. She said no, I can't believe it can mean anything but the value of the free apartment you'll be getting. That this was the correct interpretation was (fraudulently) confirmed by the vice-director on at least two occasions when I asked specifically, "will you reimburse me the 900zl if I don 't accept the apartment(s) you will be showing me?" -- "yes." I was never reimbursed.

Oh and a last vindication came from the mouth of the teacher translating the words of the school's accountant when I demanded an explanation: "well yes it does look like they should be paying for it."

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]


Don't know how much more explicit I can be. Email offering me the job said, "We will pay you x amount as salary and we will pay for your flat," and subsequent emails stated they'd have "3 or 4" for me to look at.

I asked in our several phone conversations more than once whether this also meant that in case I was not happy with their offerings, that they would then pay the 900 TOWARDS any other apartment I might select. Warning me at the same time about local prices (ie, that for something 'nice' I would likely have to pay more), he said, yes we will.

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]


As I explained above, I did do that. It was precisely BECAUSE it was not otherwise mentioned in the contract, but had been so explicitly stated in the email and conversation (which predated the contract by a week or two), that I asked again more than once upon my arrival.

The bigger issue perhaps is that I allowed so much time to pass before I pressed the matter. As I've read, these Poles WILL take the benefit of the doubt anytime it's sitting there. Of course part of the reason I allowed some time to pass was that they told me at pay time that the "rent" was being incorporated in the pay and that taxes were 49%. My follow up on this absurdity was what led to the bust -- and a reinvigorated faith in a few other cultural stereotypes.

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]


"Losing out?" Not to dignify your ad hominem remarks, but only to clarify: I am not disparaging Polish people, either particular ones or generally. I merely made an observation and connected it to things I've read and heard more than once. The taking of the benefit of the doubt, by itself, given the complexity of human affairs, can be construed as neutral – at least if I give them the benefit of the doubt, ahem. The bullsh** that my rent was 'hidden' in the taxes can’t.

But since youve opened the adhom door, your negative interpretation of my post is itself consistent with a pattern of defensiveness I've witnessed here. You twist what I’ve written into this ‘attack,’ using a passive aggressive figure of speech in the bargain, in order then to serve up your own criticism, which is a banal and tendentious charge that only reiterates the most obvious upshot of my original question. YES, obviously, How F&$%# “careful” does one have to be around these folks?

If it's convenient to cite meticulousness, they cite it, and if it's convenient not to BE meticulous, they aren't. Certainly I've noticed very little of anything like ACTUAL meticulousness. Krauts they ain't. It all bespeaks a profound paucity of generosity of spirit, when it doesn’t just seem outright boorish, or just sad. (This is not to be confused with material generosity, SOME of which I HAVE seen here)


Consider it this way: the original post was a sincere question about penalties, not a veiled excuse for launching a polemic against an entire nation – though naturally, umm, I mean culturally, you found a way to make it that. As a matter of fact, I’ve been here for months, not minutes, and I have had 100s of recountable experiences which are ripe for the classifying. I didn’t fancy this the occasion to carry that out.

I am not at all surprised to have found patterns and convergences with things I’ve read and heard previous to arriving. I know I didn’t arrive with an ax to grind, and I guess my professional anthropological training (ABD) qualifies me, aside from my personal qualities, better than most to make accurate analytical distinctions, and draw reasonable if tentative conclusions.

More than in the States or even Sweden, where I've already seen some of this and have also lived for months, people in this corner of Poland seem to react to things as if they were already guilty. I mean, I’ve heard all about the pervasive low self esteem and inferiority complex. I had no reason to believe any of it. But since coming here, I do see how such a reputation might have evolved.

But to be fair, it all comes out only perhaps in contact with the likes of me, so I’m in that sense as much to blame for it as they are. How’s that for giving the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, if any of these yo-yo’s who eagerly accepted my email address expect anything like the kind of help I didn’t get here when they come California a-knockin’, they better check their collective golonka at the door, and at least read some Emerson, or geeze at LEAST Ayn Rand before they get here! I'd have thought they'd heard that if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna... well, you know.


You call this a lot? You talk a lot about me, but know nothing about it. Besides which, and aside from legalities, only people of a very specific cultural ilk (not to mention, in certain contexts, morons) imagine that repeated informal conversations and emails from the hiring authority are anything but ethically, again if not necessarily, legally binding.

Thanks though for your pointed and personal posts, they afforded quite an occasion for putting some of this down on keyboard. Generous eh?

Thanks too for the continued interest and input from other posters.

Law / Under contract to teach and fraud, is there a fine to leave Poland? [35]


One has "duty" only WITHIN a pre-existing SYSTEM of justice, on whose parameters all involved parties concur. There's been little here to make me believe there is any such thing that might hold up its end of the transaction. “Good faith” seems a quite alien notion (see above on benefit of the doubt). On the contrary, the dozens if not truly 100s of the other aforementioned experiences suggest otherwise...

Any effort to carry out some SUPRA Polish duty, whereby justice on a grand scale, like karma, will come around, maybe at soonest, on our initial climb out of Chopina, depends, at this point in world history, on something like a robust Hegelian belief in the cosmic-connectedness of world spirit. And in fact, I do subscribe to something like that.

I bear these people no malice, nor, bless ‘em, do I think they do me. But good will is something else again. (But wasn’t Kant from around here?) Fortunately, however, the relevant cosmos extends beyond even the revised Schengen borders. And this butterfly would prefer to beat its wings afield, probably among some very particular amber grains, rather than his head (or just as likely, someone else’s) on some wall free enough of graffiti – if he can find one.

Rippling in a stream, spattering on a mural, or poesizing on a forum, I have to leave a mark – in all good faith, it’s my duty. One the locals, on the whole, seem destined neither to understand nor appreciate.