Some clips of Flight of the Conchords. "Business Time" and "Jenny" are partcularly great. Two very talented and funny Kiwis!

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Michel Raux Inlingua Belfort France

Michel Raux has been mentioned on this blog before. He clearly operates some of Inlingua's worst franchises in the East of France. Bargepoles out troops and avoid this guy like the plague. This was originally posted on the Inlingua Paris section.

"I worked for Inlingua MBR in Belfort, for almost 3 years. (It's part of the MBR Services franchise owned by Michel Raux and operating out of Strasbourg.)

Everything that the previous commentors said about MBR is 100% true - and more.

I left, on medical advice, after becoming really ill and severely depressed from the stress of working for them.

Let's see - there were the mad hours I had to work, the long distances I had to drive to see clients, the amount of paperwork that they forced us to do that was unrelated to actual teaching (because they got rid of office staff to save costs and made the trainers pick up the slack), the psychological bullying and threats. Many phonecalls to my home after hours. A total invasion of privacy. Awful, awful company.

They blatantly lied to me about the hours I'd be working when I was offered the job, and then gradually forced me to work more hours than I wanted to, often until 8pm (after starting at 8am - never mind I was a single parent and had children to get to and from school and childminders) threatening to reduce my classes to nothing if I refused, (so that I'd be forced to resign and save them from the hassle of firing me.)

I received only 4 hours of 'training' and was then thrown into the deep end and left to swim. A client then complained that I didn't seem to know what I was doing (well of course I didn't) and I received a written warning from Michel Raux. How crazy is that?

I have since thrown away my Certificate of Training - it is worthless.

Even in treachorous winter weather (and I mean heavily snowed under roads and even in snow storms), I had to drive through dangerous mountainous regions to get to clients - no excuses were tolerated. I cannot tell you how close I came to having horrible crashes - on more than one occasion.

Their attitude to clients was equally as bad - arrogance such as I have never seen in any company before. My clients complained bitterly about being charged for last minute cancellations - which were usually due to factory lines breaking down and needing urgent attention. (Since when is an English class more important than getting a production line up and running again?) Inlingua refused to budge on that.

Having said that, most of my immediate colleagues/trainers were brilliant. It was just management that truly sucked.

My advice? Steer clear of Inlingua MBR."

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