Fuddland

I’ve had a lot of positive feedback regarding my teaching lately; some courses have ended and questionnaires are given out in the last lessons to assess the performance of the teacher and the general service provided by my company. I’ve scored in the very goods and excellents almost across the board. The boss has also mentioned more than once that she’s happy with my work and appreciates the efforts I have made.

So it was something of a surprise that, along with my basic salary this month, I received zero performance-related bonus — it had been my understanding that I would be able to earn up to an extra couple of thousand a month if things were more than satisfactory. So naturally I asked what areas I needed to work on in order to qualify, and was told that it was not my teaching that was the problem, but that I had discussed certain issues with the other staff, word of which had gotten back to the boss somehow [fill in your own paranoid conspiracy theory here].

I’m not going to go into the details of what it was that I had been talking about right now, but it was certainly something that I felt quite strongly about and wanted other people to be clued in to what I had observed, with what I felt was good reason. Now she may have a point — perhaps I shouldn’t really discuss these sensitive matters with anyone, especially when the language barrier means there’s a chance I don’t know the full story, or misunderstood what occurred, and company loyalty is a very highly-regarded quality — but for this to completely cancel out my performance ratings was a bit disappointing. And call me picky, but I think company loyalty only comes when you’re actually proud to work for your company — it’s not simply demanded because you happen to be working for them.

I had to laugh at one of my manager’s closing comments of the discussion, which went — almost verbatim — like this: “I really hate gossip so I don’t think you should talk to any of the local staff anymore, particularly not [staff member] because I heard [very personal information about staff member].” Hmm, the words pot and kettle come to mind.

#1

felicity | 2006 / 09 / 13 – 05:20

sympathies go out to you. there is nothing worse than feeling that you are not getting paid your worth, especially when you seem to be a hit with your students. if it were back in blighty there may have been a way of arguing your case, but things seem to work differently out there. fingers crossed that your boss looks at your performance rather than listen to gossip next month!

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