Fuddland

Meanwhile, I’m earning some pocket money by still working at the company I earlier officially stopped working for on December 9th—as I’ve explained, during the notice period we reached a mutual agreement that I would finish off the courses that I’m in the middle of teaching; this suited me fine because it coincides nicely with the end of my Chinese course.

This month I’m also covering for a friend of mine at another school during the evenings, while she’s away for her Christmas holiday, and this led me to discover that a lot of teachers charge a little more per hour than my own dear company pays.

The other day my boss asked me whether I’d be willing to teach a twelve-year-old boy for an hour and a half, five days a week, for two weeks—the poor lad is being packed off to boarding school in the UK and his parents want him to have a crash course in English. I thought about it for a couple of hours—my main concern was leaving myself enough time to actually study the Chinese I’m being taught in class—and, armed with my new-found knowledge about other part-time pay rates, gave my answer: yes, but only if she rounds up the pay to two hours, to cover preparation time and generally make it worth my while. This is against what they usually do, but I figured “don’t ask, don’t get”, and since the course was due to start in two days time, I thought they might be a little desperate. But no, of course they wouldn’t consider changing the pay rate: instead they threatened to assign it to another teacher [for the first week, before he goes on holiday], then pull a second teacher out of thin air to cover the second week.

Go right ahead, I said, as I sauntered away, nonchalantly, John Wayne stylee [not quite as cool as I was aiming for though, since this was all happening over email]. Also, I’m fairly sure I’ve never actually seen a John Wayne film. Did he saunter? And was it nonchalantly?

When I arrived at work later that day to teach a class, she asked me to reconsider—except of course there was no offer to compromise over the requested increased pay rate. So, at her request, I said I’d think about it for another day, fully intending to stick to my guns—but my plan was later scuppered by the news that the parents had decided to take their business elsewhere, for whatever reason. I’m disappointed that I won’t get a little Christmas bonus from some extra work, but at the same time, I’m glad not to be doing any more favours for that particular company.

#1

felicity | 2006 / 12 / 21 – 18:26

hmm, principles over money eh? the eternal struggle. well done for sticking to yours!

#2

David | 2006 / 12 / 22 – 08:47

Re #1: Cool, I made it sound as though I have principles even though I was actually wanting to extract more money from them. ;)

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