All in all, it wasn’t a bad day, until things got annoying.

I’ve mentioned before how I’m in an odd place where I work for one company but have been assigned at the same school for a long time. I therefore have to distinguish between the company I work for and the school where I work.

Today the two worlds clashed. Sort of.

I’d just finished a decent day of classes (even my low level class was pretty good) and I’d brought some audio editing work home so that I could use an English language version of the software. After completing the listening files for the final exam, I was just about to start a nice, relaxing break when I got an email from the company I work for.

They “asked” me to “teach” three days during the summer at a kindergarten in my town. It is, as near as I can tell, the definition of shit work: summer vacation plus kindergartners plus difficult to reach location plus Japan summer heat and humidity plus every other Monday plus the fact in all the years I’ve been teaching, I’ve never taught at a kindergarten. I am therefore the least qualified person in the company to “teach” the assignment (which will be nothing more than glorified babysitting).

Oh, and I’m babysitting our youngest on those days as those are days She Who Must Be Obeyed works.

I pointed out that I’d prefer not to teach on those days as I’d be using a paid holiday on one of them and had to babysit on the other two.

I then got a response telling me to take paid holidays for the other two.

At this point I got salty. I said I wasn’t going to take paid holidays for the other two days as I’d been with the company 18 years and hoped to get a little respect and consideration from it. If they couldn’t give me that they should just give man an official order to report to the shit work and send me the materials I need to do it. They should also stop wasting my time pretending I actually had a choice.

I haven’t heard back yet, but I expect a phone call tomorrow. I hope it’s not the new guy. We haven’t met yet and I’m afraid I’ll leave a really bad pre-impression.