A real life nightmare: Santis and Orgilmaa- Stay Away

[Elisa]

I wish I had read the other review of Santis before embarking on my own journey to teach there. Orgilmaa Doloonjin can be a complete nightmare when provoked, even unintentionally. When I spoke to several ex-teachers who worked there they called her a "slave driver" and a "black widow" among other things. One teacher told me he had seen 16 or 17 teachers go through there, all breaking their contracts and leaving early. Here is why:

Although I loved Mongolia, Santis became a horrible place. Orgilmaa told us they were one of the highest paying schools in Mongolia, which turned out to be a complete lie. They are the 2nd lowest. I was also working 6 days a week, every singe week, instead of the "occasional" Saturday as they had said. If you go to the bathroom, you are late to class. They often work teachers 8 hours SOLID, without even a 10 minute lunch break. Otherwise, you have several hour long breaks in between classes where you have nothing to do and nowhere to go. During these times, they often ask you to teach a private or sub for another teacher right away. However, all of this is NOTHING compared to what I experienced with them. It is a very very long story, but I will start by saying that I had very good reviews from my students and a great relationship with them. I really did enjoy teaching them, despite the problems with the school. The director and her husband Andrew both seemed to like my boyfriend and I, and I had no personal problems with either of them whatsoever, or anyone else, until I decided to leave.

Although I never signed a contract with them (they neglected to prepare one), I gave Santis a 30 day notice letting them know my boyfriend and I would be leaving. I also told them I would try to help them recruit new teachers, which I did by using contact from my University. At this point I had no idea how horrible they really were and I was only a little unhappy. My boyfriend was very depressed there however, and wanted to return home for personal reasons. Shortly after giving our notice, we found out his grandfather was dying of cancer.

We would have left on pleasant enough terms if Santis did not then try to charge us a $400 dollar fee EACH for our work permit. Work permits cost only $100 in Mongolia, as we later found out. Not only did they try to charge us this amount, but they did not tell us they were planning on it. It was only when I found out from another ex-teacher and asked was I told, two weeks before our departure. They were also going to hold our pay ransom to make sure we stayed the entire 30 days (which we had every intention of doing). Things became so unpleasant that we finally decided to leave immediately, which is what we should have done in the first place. They went as far as trying to get the exit visa office to withhold our visas, trapping us in the country. It was only after 4 trips there, two hours, $225 dollars and me crying in desperation did the Senior Officer finally give us permission to get our visas. We then went to Santis before our classes were to start to warn the manager we were leaving so that she had some time to prepare. She was obviously *shocked* that we had succeeded in obtaining our exit visas, and furious. It was hell. I felt trapped in the country. We left Santis without getting paid (we worked 19 days for FREE), and in debt after having to buy our plane tickets home. My boyfriend did not have enough money to fly to NY to see his grandfather since they did not pay us. I am confident that what they did was illegal, and they were holding us to a contract we never read nor signed.

Here is a letter I wrote to the founder of Santis a few weeks ago. I have deleted his name because I do not want this page to come up under a search for him as he seems like a wonderful and honest person. Unfortunately, as he was no longer affiliated with Santis, he could not help beyond sending a very kind and thoughtful email back.


Dear *,

This is Elisa Wirkala, a teacher at Santis in Mongolia. We spoke last May/June when I was applying to teach at Santis with my boyfriend. I was a Spanish teacher at * elementary, and know your daughter.

Well, I'm really not quite sure where to begin. I am not sure if you are still affiliated with Santis, or if it is only Orgilmaa. If you have no current affiliation, I may be wasting your time, but it is worthwhile to write to you just in case.

We have been teaching here since August 20th, and decided to leave earlier this month. (I felt bad about leaving them short on teachers, so I wrote a long email to many of my University of Washington professors and several heads of departments explaining the need for teachers here. I have just received an email from a girl wishing to apply for a position at Santis, because of this email).

We never signed a contract with Santis, as they neglected to prepare one. On about October 3rd, Andrew (Orgilmaa's husband) told us that he was about to make one for us, and on October 5th we gave our 30 day notice, for reasons we described to Orgilmaa. We love Mongolia and like teaching, but have decided to return home for several reasons. Although we never signed a contract, nor even read one although Orgilmaa said she would send it to us via email to review before we left the states, we still wanted to be considerate and thus abide by their 30 day notice request. We gave our 30 day notice and now are preparing to leave on November 4th (31st day). Unfortunately, Orgilmaa took this news very very badly. I was later told by an x-Santis teacher that they would charge us a fee of around $80 dollars for our work permit. Santis had never mentioned this. Last week when I went to the accountant to request our last month's payment in dollars instead of Tugriks, she informed us that she wouldn't pay us until November 3rd (our last working day) " to make sure that we stay until then" even though we should get paid on the 31st, like everyone else, for October. She also said that they wouldn't be paying us our full salary, because of some kind of "fee", which she couldn't describe in English. We spoke to Andrew about this, which I'm certain would have never come up until the day we left if I hadn't asked. Andrew told us that this "fee" may be as much as $400 US dollars EACH, and that they hadn't decided how much to charge us yet. He said he would talk to Orgilmaa that day and get back to us immediately (on the same day).

The next day, we still had heard nothing, so we went to speak to Andrew. He said that the fee was because we entered into Mongolia on tourist visas, and it is more expensive to change a tourist visa into a work permit. I then printed off numerous emails from Orgilmaa proving that she knew full well when we would be in Beijing (she wanted us to get a visa there), and that she had told us our visas were being processed and she was going to send them to the Mongolian consulate in Beijing so that we could pick them up. She said this only took one day. We arrived in Beijing on July 21st or 22nd. We stayed in Beijing waiting for news from Santis about our visa, but no news came. Orgilmaa knew we were going to be in Beijing for one week, maybe travel around China, but be in Mongolia in early August. Because the train tickets were very booked up, we decided to leave for Mongolia whenever we could get a ticket, which was on our 8th day in Beijing. We emailed her an email titled "Urgent: Visa" on July 28th, and called several times, leaving a message the last time saying we were leaving Beijing on Saturday, and we still hadn't heard anything. By this point, we thought maybe they had decided not to hire us, and we were slightly panicked. We went to the Mongolian consulate in Beijing to see if they had sent us anything. They had not. The consulate told us if Santis sent the documents that day, they could process them for us immediately. Unfortunately Santis never returned our emails or phone calls. We left for Mongolia two days later, with no news from Santis.

When we arrived in U.B, we got an email from Orgilmaa on July 31st saying, "Wow, what a surprise! You're in Mongolia!" and gave us Andrew's phone number (we arrived in U.B. only a few days earlier than expected). This email was the first in nearly 2 weeks. We went to Santis, and Andrew said they had received our emails and had been expecting us. Why he didn't write back and sent our documents to Beijing, I do not know. We had faxed them everything Orgilmaa said they needed weeks earlier.

During our first conversation with Andrew he said he'd talk to Orgilmaa immediately and tell us that day how much we would be charged. The next day, he said he would tell us in one week. We told him we wanted to know by Monday, otherwise we were leaving Mongolia immediately. We feel very cheated, and like we are working for free. I'm not sure if I trust that they will pay us anything in the end, after all that has been said and done.

They are now trying to charge us for the extra fee incurred by their negligence. Since we never signed a contract, I believe what they are doing is illegal. Andrew is still holding us to that contract, saying that "it was sitting here waiting for you to sign", but as I wrote earlier, we know that to be false. We asked Andrew if there was a clause mentioning the work permit fee, and he said no. I also have emails proving Origlmaa was supposed to send our visa to Beijing the week we were there, and that she knew when that was.

The other foreign teachers at Santis think we should talk to a lawyer about this, but I am very hesitant to do so. Andrew told me that they are about to sue another x-santis teacher, and knowing Orgilmaa's reputation among the old teachers, I'm reluctant to aggravate her more. At this point Liam and I are both very stressed, and want to leave Mongolia immediately. Our plane tickets are for November 4th, but without knowing whether or not they will pay us, there's little reason to stay. We have worked all this month, and are supposed to be paid on October 31st. I don't mind too much that they're paying us late, on November 3rd, but I am worried they will not pay us what they owe.

I'm very sorry for bothering you with all of us. I believe Orgilmaa is in D.C. now, isn't she? If you could tell us the standard Santis procedures for this situation and what we can do, our rights, the fact we never signed any contracts, etc, I would very much appreciate it.

[malinkyhoy]

I'd like to add to this review, that i managed to hack 4 months of a 1 year contract with Santis, which were the worst foru months of my life. I was told the same thing that Santis were high payers and and that we might have to work the occassional Saturday, which I had to start doing immediately when I arrived in UB.

I had to work 9 out straight sometimes without a break and on 1 occassion I worked from 9am - 9pm, solid! After leaving my contract early Santis tried to deport me and Orgilmaa demanded that I hand over my passport to her, so she could "Cancel" my work visa on my behalf. I couldn't leave because the salary was so bad that I couldn't fly home and I also wasn't warned that I'd need an exit visa to leave the country again after my arrival.

Santis are not to be trusted, they pay bad, they treeat all their staff badly and take everyone including the students for a ride. What's more the faculty head, David is an abusive alcoholic and the only teaching experience he has is based on his experience at santis. The worst thing is, we had a staff meeting in June of 2006, which was just before I left and Orgilmaa actually said "I don't care what you do in your classes as long as the students come back and pay".

[Motivated]

I've already said my bit about Santis under another black list on this site but i left a few things out:

Santis: 'Highest paying school in Mongolia'
Reality: You pay $600 per month, for 37 hours per week = $4 an hour. Both Hartford Institute and The American School of Ulaanbaatar pay 3 TIMES this much for a hell of a lot less hours.

Santis: 'Competitive salary'
Reality: Competitive compared to the pay prison inmates receive for working in the kitchen would be more accurate.

Santis: 'Some saturday work may be required'
Reality: Myself and others worked EVERY saturday the whole time we were there.

Santis: 'We pay in your choice of US dollars or Mongolian Tugrik'
Reality: You never once paid in US dollars, even though myself and others requested it every month. Instead we all had to carry home a huge bulky wad of Tugriks, which by the way are completely worthless outside of Mongolia and cannot be changed anywhere.

Santis: 'Great working conditions'
Reality: You call working 9 hours straight of 55 minute lessons with 5 minutes between each class to prepare for the next one starting right on the hour (and you better be in that classroom on time - or else!!), no toilet or lunch break or not even 10 lousy minutes to get a cup of coffee GREAT working conditions??

Santis: 'We are UB's #1 foreign language institute'
Reality: You bestowed that great and honorable title upon yourselves. Other language institutes see you as just having a wicked sense of humour. The Mongolian Medical University are just one example of a business that cancelled their contract with you after their students complained to their administration that they didn't learn anything at Santis.

Santis: 'Qualified instructors with experience'
Reality: So why do you regularly employ backpackers who are just passing through via the Trans-Siberian railroad and who are on TOURIST visas? Highly illegal practice.

Santis: 'We are a Mongolian-American Joint Venture'
Reality: Once upon a time, yes. Edward Nef is the majority holder? He is no longer affiliated with Santis in any way. Santis is wholly owned and operated by Orgilmaa, who has never taught a single hour in her life. The American flag that flies above the school is just there to suck potential students in.

Santis: 'There are NEVER more than 10 students to a class'
Reality: So why was I teaching a class of 16 with barely enough room for them to all have their books on the table?

Santis: 'Client centred needs-based learning system'
Reality: True...centred on bringing in unsuspecting clients because Orglimaa needs her pockets lined with money. Orgilmaa quote: 'I don't care what you do in the classroom so long as the students keep coming back and pay'.

Santis: 'Teachers will be provided with local health insurance'
Reality: Nope, nothing of the sort mentioned in your contract.

I think you all get the idea...