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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