In my last writeup, "cool" I mentioned spending a good 15 minutes to a half hour debating whether to jump in front of a train, after quitting my job, all because a British girl (she was maybe Scottish, maybe Ukrainian? something like that) used the word "cheeky" in a non-ironic sense. I mean, of course it was non-ironic, she was British.
So let me back up and explain why that might make sense. At the time, I was not working as an ESL teacher. So, a thing about the ESL business in Chile, and in much of the world: it can often be a scam, with many "institutes" being somewhat sketchy on both the morality and ethics of employment law. At that institute, like many others in Chile, I was theoretically an independent contractor. That meant I only worked for them when I wanted to, and had no other obligations. Except I did. Work had kind of dried up, and the institute wasn't very communicative about when it would come back. Did they not like me anymore? Was there no work available? Were they…