TEFL Knight: Create the Myth of Being Indispensable
Once upon a time in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, there was a simple English teacher named Phil. The schools there were a bit old-fashioned, lagging behind the rest of the world by at least 20 or 30 years. Phil was about to start a journey that would make him a legend—he would become the TEFL Knight, the Excel Master.
Phil was like most other TEFL teachers who came to Saudi Arabia. He stood in front of a classroom full of tired students who would rather nap than learn grammar. Phil wasn't special. His students only learned a little English, and honestly, he wasn't very popular. But Phil had one secret skill that would change everything: he knew how to use Excel. Or at least, that’s what everyone thought.
Phil started out teaching grammar lessons, struggling just like everyone else. He relied on strange grammar terms like "phrasal verbs" and "modals" to hide when he wasn’t sure about something. But Phil noticed something interesting about the other teachers: they were scared of anything that had to do with technology. He watched as they messed up projector remotes and stared at computers like they were from outer space. That’s when Phil realized he had a big chance to shine.
One day, after the English department asked him for grades for the hundredth time, Phil decided it was time to take action. He opened Microsoft Excel—a program his coworkers thought was super difficult, almost like flying a spaceship. He started making fancy spreadsheets—lots of colorful, confusing spreadsheets. He used blue, red, and green to make different sections. He added complicated formulas that connected different cells for no real reason. He made lots of tabs—so many tabs—all to make it look like he was doing something important.
"Phil’s got it all figured out," said the head of the English department with a sigh of relief, as they looked at all the colorful charts and data. "Well... it’s like some kind of super database!"
Of course, it wasn’t really a super database. It was just a big, messy Excel file with lots of errors. If you even tried to look at it wrong, it would break. But nobody else knew that. To them, Phil was a genius—like a magician who could make numbers come to life. Sure, sometimes the file crashed your computer or just stopped working. But people ignored that because, well, Phil seemed like the only one who could do it.
Soon, Phil was promoted. He wasn’t just a teacher anymore—he was now the "Lead Supervisor and Wizard of Anything With Rows or Columns." He didn’t have to teach. Instead, he spent his days making his spreadsheets even more colorful and more complicated. No one else could understand them, and that’s what made Phil seem like a hero. He had made himself look so important that the whole program seemed to depend on him.
Phil’s bragging didn’t stop in the classroom. It spread into his free time on the compound. He would go to the tennis courts, shirt off, grunting loudly every time he swung his racket, as if to say, "Look at me, I’m the TEFL Knight!" He had to be the best at everything—tennis, darts, even making the most noise at the compound parties. His loud voice and big gestures were all part of his act. Phil wanted everyone to see him as the hero of his own story, whether he was at work or at play.
Phil—TEFL Knight, the Excel Master, the King of Spreadsheets—had done it. He rose to the top, not by being a great teacher, but by being really good at making things seem bigger and better than they were. He turned simple skills into magic tricks in a place where people thought USB sticks were super high-tech. And for that, Phil wasn’t just a TEFL teacher. He was a legend.