This place annoys me sometimes. I was told a few weeks ago that today (Saturday) was going to be a day for setting up the classroom. I could come in any time and take care of it. Fine…that’s cool with me. I was planning on going in around noon-ish.
Then I wake up at 11 and there are a ton of missed phone calls on my cell (which I had on vibrate … thankfully) My school was calling and was upset because I was not there to help set up for a performance we have later tonight. What!!!
I run into stuff like this all the time. “Why aren’t you down here for this?” “Why didn’t you show up last night to this event?” I’ve been here 5 months and they still do it to me on a regular basis.
Is it in your contract that you have to do those things? If it isn’t, I strongly suggest being evasive, which is what worked for me. My contract says that I’m supposed to participate, but to me that does not mean I am responsible for hours of setup and prop creation. By telling the school manager what my setup will be like ahead of time and finding out the actual start time of the event (when I go on the clock) I manage never to show up early unless it’s to socialize with other teachers coming in from different branches of the school. A lot of the time they try to pressure me to come in early, up to three hours so, but of course they are never interested in paying me for that time. As a result, I say politely but firmly, that I will see them at X o’clock (when I start being paid). When they realized I was serious, a lot of the pressure lifted up. But…as I said in the beginning, it all depends on your contract situation.
I really didn’t have a problem with all the setup/takedown stuff, etc. They pay me well enough to do that stuff and I want to help out as much as I can with things like that. The school is fantastic overall. What bothered me more was the lack of communication about it. And really, this was just a straw breaking the camel’s back on that day. I’m sure a lot of people here, especially if they work in a small school, have run into this problem as well.
I think I am going to write up something where it says something like “if you want me to participate in work outside of my normal working time, you must let me know ____ days in advance by E-Mailing me.”
I did that with meetings. My boss is great but sometimes he forgets and will tell one teacher two times about a meeting, another teacher not at all. The number of times people are told always equals total teachers but doesn’t always equal one time for one teacher. It started to bug me a little when my roommate would come home and tell me approximately one hour ahead of time that I needed to come into work an hour early (in one hour’s time) to meet. Even though it was silly I asked him to email everyone when he remembered rather than have the other system. Too many canceled meetings with friends on Skype due to late notice just got frustrating.