Today I felt as if I was being called in to work to substitute for myself.

To understand this you have to understand that every now and then, at the school where I work, classes get cancelled because of trips and we end up teaching a reduced schedule. However, although I do a lot of planning at home, there’s no real reason for  me to be at the school on these days until I actually have a class.

This often leads to the strange act of going to work around lunch time. Now a colleague of mine insists that a day of work is a day of work and it doesn’t matter if you’re working in the morning or the eventing. I respectfully disagree. There’s a big difference between finishing at lunch time and starting after lunch.

In the case of the former, you can look forward to relaxing at home or at a coffee shop in the afternoon. In the case of the latter, you can’t relax because you have some place to be. In fact, at best, it feels as if you’re interrupting a day off because you’ve been called to work.

I once volunteered to teach extra classes if I could get all my classes in the morning. The person in charge of scheduling said it was impossible and ignored all pleading after that.

There’s also the problem of going to work during the hottest time of the day. I walk to the station and by the time I get there I I’m sweaty enough that might as well have not bothered to take a shower and/or suddenly desperately need one.

This schedule, however, is only a May phenomenon. By June we are back in the grind and the days come without mercy.

It’s almost like having a job.