Give me my money

Something to keep in mind if you ever decide to teach or work in Asia; your money is not important to your employer. Only their money is important to them.
You will get paid, but there might be some money missing and it's your job, not theirs, to notice and say something. When the mistake is pointed out it's likely that they will admit to it, but not give you the money until next month (most teachers get paid on a monthly basis). Generally it's not much money so it's not a big deal and you carry on with your life while continuing to carefully check your pay (which will most likely be in cash by the way, but you will still pay taxes so don't get too excited).

The fun begins when you just don't get paid for one reason or another. I've heard stories of schools that have just closed up over night and not told anyone. Not the students or the teachers. Happily that doesn't happen often (at least not in Taiwan). Sometimes they can't pay you because there isn't any/enough money, which makes you wonder what they're doing with the tuition money that's supposed to cover all costs. Again, this doesn't happen often.

My most recent experience, and current favorite, is that the person in charge of the money didn't feel good and was resting,( at the place of business!) so no one was getting paid that day. As Barney Stinson would say, "True story." Instead of having everyone's pay in envelopes waiting for them (this happened a couple days after pay day, because I don't work every day at this place) they estimate how many people are going to come in for their pay and have that much money on hand that day. Truly irritating. I'm not someone who lives paycheck to paycheck and desperately waits to get paid, but it doesn't make getting jerked around for stupid reasons any less irritating.

Then there's the fun of checking your account and noticing that your pay hasn't been transferred. You go to work the next day to ask why you didn't get paid and find out that the account lost your info and forgot to deposit your money. Thankfully that situation was remedied immediately and I had my money that afternoon.

I've also had the joy of a company that has too many managers that don't share all the info all the time. In this case money that you're told you're going to get by one manager never shows up because the other manager didn't know about it, or was told something different.
"Instead of the large sum of money you earned here's a handshake. Thanks so much for your time." Big smile. You can imagine my reaction to this. Go ahead. I'll wait.

So this story is from the first company I worked for when I came to Taiwan. I signed a one year contract and in that contract it was stated that upon completing said year I would receive a return rate bonus. This means that for every class I taught I would receive a certain amount of money based on the percentage of students that returned in the next level.
For ex. if 95% of the students returned in a class I would get $1000NT. After one year that adds up nicely.
My one year date rolls around, and I double check with my boss who double checks with his boss (too many managers here) and I'm told I will receive that money on the first month after my one year date. This is because I extended my contract for 6 months and didn't need everything because I was leaving the country right away. So the time comes when I'm supposed to be getting the bonus, I open my pay envelope and it's not there. No bonus. Why Not?
I ask the girl who handles the money and she does not know what I'm talking about so I start getting everyone involved. Eventually I get told I don't get this bonus because I received money for a plane ticket. No I did not. I would rather have the money for a plane ticket, because it's worth more. I informed her (this is yet another manager) that I did not, in fact get that money and she got a shocked and confused look on her face. Phone calls were made and it was confirmed that I was right and should be getting the return rate bonus.
They said, "We'll give it to you next month."
I said, "no."
The money girl was shocked that I would say this to her. I had reached my limit and I was not going to let that money sit in their bank account when it should be sitting in mine.
In the end I finally got my money.