Yet another Annie Lennox song and I'm in the mood again. This year hasn't started out all right, I'm telling you. It all started with an email from one of my students bombarding me with desperate questions. I couldn't get much meaning out of it except that the language school had called her to modify the contract and that our group might be cancelled. This was between Christmas and New Year's Eve. There goes your peace and inner strength and whatever. Turned out it's all about the school changing its name due to the new accreditation. Each and every student and teacher has to end the contract and sign a new one with the language school's new name on. Fine. As a result my classes were cancelled for the first week, which entailed that I had only a company class that week, which puts me nowhere money-wise.
Already half of my monthly income and Christmas spirit had been gone when last week I got another confusing email from the other school I work for, saying that one of the three company courses will end immediately due to the single student's work overload or something like that. Period. Now you see me now you don't. And not a single syllable from the guy I've been struggling with for over a year now. There goes 20% of your monthly income, babe.
Because of this transition and contract administration stuff I had to go into the office last week. Then on another day I had to go in again to hand in the monthly attendance sheet. This was on Friday. Then in the evening I got an email from the very same school that I'll have to go in today as well to get the new hyper-super attendance sheets, which have no special traits except for the new name, and the students' name having been written on it by Miss Bossy (or should I say boszi?). And I'll have to go in this Friday as well to get my salary for November and December. Much ado about nothing.
You know the thing I hate in it is not only the time and energy it takes to travel in and out the city and stand in line in that overheated room with a bunch of teachers and students buzzing in all directions. That's part of it. But what I hate is the general feeling of inefficiency in all this. And there's one more thing. The way the boss is telling some people off is a shame. She doesn't only tell people that all right, you made a mistake here, or don't keep the queue, or I don't agree with you. She tells to fuck off and stuff. Even to clients, because that's what students are, as I see it. And it must be so humiliating to stand there spoken to like that in the middle of the crowd, and I don't like to hear it, either. For one thing, who wants to work for a company where they talk like that? In addition, meanwhile I keep praying I'll never do anything to trigger this behavior. I keep doing everything all right, meeting deadlines, being nice to everyone, keeping quite, and all, but it's just so embarrassing.
You can't imagine what a fuss I made the other day over this guy not resuming the course, and especially because of the money. I managed to have 20 lessons a week at last (for about three months straight), and now back to 16 (back to black). And I know it's ridiculous that one has to deal with such pitiful issues while others are losing their jobs out there (e.g. one's father), but is it a crime to want to make a living? And what does Mom say to all this? "I'd told you right when you chose that university." Thanks for the verdict, live like a miserable piece of shit the rest of your life for not choosing money. She now tells me to be a good girl and take a secretary job where language is a requirement and be content with the money. Nice prospects.
Meanwhile my not-so-loved sister-in-law is leaving for a year to work in Amsterdam, saying she wants work experience abroad. I don't know if she's right because I don't know the details and the family acts as if she was breaking the heart of the young guy, which in a way she is, but on the other hand that's the time of her life, and I understand that she wants to make the best out of it. I guess she has a real prospect there and not some au pair or scullery-maid job, otherwise she wouldn't go and that is a point in the play when Hamlet could follow the good example and do something, especially because everyone knows by now that students just come and go and you shouldn't count on them, feel loyal to them, or have plans of any kind with them.
And just today the bossy told me to become an entrepreneur otherwise she can't sign the contract with me starting this year. Fine. Thanks for the government or whoever is responsible for my pitiful life.
P.S. First read of the year completed: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road. Here's to account for my moodiness.
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