Never work for Mike Mills in Warsaw

Never take a position with Mike Mills English in Warszawa. The owner is certifiable and messes around on pay, hours and anything else he can. he tempts you with good pay and the promise of no lesson observations, he says he does this because he doesnt believe in them, however after subbing some of his classes its because his students tell me that he is a less then good teacher.

you have been warned.

youtube.com/watch?v=e6jSeeSRzkI

Same guy?

According to post 283 Harry - the Mike Mills school is ok:

I've certainly never heard anything bad about him or his school.

It has an excellent reputation as a school and as an employer.


From the list on there:

ACT - Still going, still good teachers, smaller than it used to be.
Lang - Likewise
Resource - Reluctantly sold by its excellent owner and didn't thrive afterwards. Closed 18 months later
WSC - Still going but lost their biggest customer. Decent teachers, awkward firm to work for.
Ability - Dunno - isn't there a Callan School with that name.
L2 - Unusual methods. Was making money. Is it still going?
Extreme - Who?
Mike Mills - Still good

Yes, it's all true - native speaker teachers be very, very wary of this man. He sacked one teacher because he had cancer and needed time off for treatment. Others he has not paid or promised to pay for courses for them, only to refuse to pay for them later and just sack them instead of fulfilling his promise. Mike Mills is simply a bully who loves to humiliate his teachers and impose penalties on them. I know several excellent teachers who later went to work for the British Council who have been treated this way - basically cheated out of money by this man. Another story one of them told me was that he invited one of the teachers to his flat to watch football. The teacher went there, and Mike Mills asked him if he wanted some pizza; he said he wasn't that hungry, but he might have one piece if he's ordering. So Mills ordered the pizza and the teacher had one piece just to be polite. The next day Mills deducted the cost of the entire pizza from his salary. He's that kind of petty, bullying, cheating, ego-cripple.

sounds like they have an axe to grind

Sounds strange.In real life I've only ever heard good things about that school.

Instead of a hatchet to bury.

ahh a capitalist playing the game, most business men promise the world to get what they want then deliver fcuk all as long as they get paid - oldest trick in the book.


Bitter female maybe?

His accent is diabolical, and he would **** me off as a teacher as he has absolutely no charisma - but I have my doubts about this story.


Funny that Lingua Nova are getting slagged off there - I had nothing but positive experiences with them. They were very kind and always, always paid invoices on time.

Snap. Have never heard a bad word about the man or the school but have heard good things about both.


One friend of mine worked there for a fair while and liked it. Two others didn't like it at all.

The way I heard it, the school had more than one owner, and the majority shareholder fired the manager. Of course that may just have been a smoke screen from the manager for his failings running the company as the market became more competitive. He is known to be extremely eccentric and now spends every all of his time trolling a certain Internet forum along with his former subordinate, some guy named "Harry from NWE":

Strange, I heard a story about that place as well. Something about some guy that was so incompetent that he was fired from every single job he could find in Warsaw, and he now can be found in a Ukrainian town "teeching" while spending his days spreading nonsense about other people online.

Certainly explains why that guy in question has such a grudge against Harry and Jon.

Obviously bitterness goes a long way.

If the manager was hiring incompetents, it is no wonder the school failed.

Who said that the person in question worked for the school that you're referring to?

Still haven't gotten over it, have you? How long has it been now?

Is probably nonsense. And since the majority shareholder at the time is sat right next to me now, it is certainly wrong.

One wonders who is posting and why. Probably somebody fired for an inability to teach good lessons and turn up on time.

Like the one fired due to claiming for lessons he never showed up at and whose TV station wife just dumped him, or the other one (with no qualifications who asked for a sub every week) that's washed up in Tarchomin and doesn't have enough cash for a ticket home. Or the American dork who used to post here (Chris something in real life - his username here I tactfully 'forget' ) who was fired for sheer f*ckwittedness and was last heard of trying to blag money of ex-employers who fired him because he was sat on the platform at Dworzec Centralny waiting for a train back to Zielona Góra and couldn't afford even a bottle of water.

The owner of Mike Mills, (meaning Mike Mills) as I understand it was absolutely great but developed serious health problems which affected his interpersonal relationships and all spilled out onto YouTube. It's one of those things that people who ae the most dynamic and decent in life can also go a bit potty

Whereas the crappest and most tawdry in life can just sit on the wings (or beyond them) and snipe (inaccurately) at people who achieve so much more than they ever could.

Get well soon Mike, people's thoughts are with you!

And don't let the betamale underachievers grind you down!!!

What???? Some people put some nasty stuff about him onto .. YouTube!!! Legally is it right? YouTube is needless to say lot of BS. Anybody neighbor's dog can post any crap about anybody or anything. Only idiots take it seriously. I don't know the guy but it is very low to do so..... Some people have no morals....

No, he put it there online himself, sort of random monologues from behind his desk delivered in a way that reflected very badly on himself. A normally decent guy, I assume he had some serious health/wellbeing issues and hope he is OK now.

As language schools go, his was always one of the better ones.

ah, ok if he did it himself! I also suppose that it is illegal to post things about people without their consent although impossible to catch the person if in far away "exotic" places. YouTube is no reliable source anyway...

Quite. It's just a snapshot of what the person was doing at the time they uploaded it.

Mike was in my opinion fine before and hopefully he is fine now. It was all a few years ago anyway and I haven't heard anything since which suggests all is OK.

Often business people are quite interesting and forthright - without it they wouldn't have set the business up. Disgruntled ex-employees who don't care much about the truth of what they write aren't a good guide to anyone's character (or their professional conduct), unfortunately in English Teaching there are some spectacularly hapless 'teachers' who can't find their way to a lesson or even remember the name of the school they work for!

No, the manager of that company told me quite plainly that he had been removed as manager by the majority owner, that he had owned a minority share in the company, and it was in litigation. (He was later known to be giving advice about Polish lawyers for litigation on an online forum.) I suppose if one really wanted to know the truth, one might see what litigation resulted in Warsaw. My last direct contact with him, was a text message that I interpreted as a sexual advance. (He was obviously homosexual.) After I declined that, his conduct towards me changed, and he began spreading rather nasty gossip about me. He is a person best avoided.

One wonders what the post above has to do with Mike Mills, but clearly someone's reputation in Warsaw is so poor that he feels the need to bring threads back from the dead in an attempt to score some points.

Pretty well. Basically the only person who had to be fired ever and it was sad to have to do it for the first time. The rest is just stuff he's either half understood or just made up. Regarding any advance - well frankly he flatters himself. As for Mike Mills, although he's quite a character, the quality of teaching at that school is still superb.

Dear mods, the above quote was edited out of my response, and it is curious how someone could be fired by a manager who claimed that he himself had been fired by the majority shareholder. Since jon357 appears to be confirming that he was the manager, I suppose it is open to actually see what litigation existed in Warsaw about this company.

ChrisR (and all your other guest poster names), it's actually very hard to know what point you're trying to make, especially in relation to Mike Mills.

Mike Mills is still in business in Warsaw, but other schools like Resource have long ago folded leaving a paper trail in public offices. Of course, there is no suspicion that Mike Mills engages in gossip about anyone on an Internet forum, or blames others for poor results in business. Perhaps there is a connection?

Good. Teaching standards there are considered high, and apart from the OP he has a decent reputation as an employer.

So why mention him Chris? Anyone would think you had a chip on your shoulder...