Take this job and shove it: part deux.
To recap thus far: I and three other teachers are forced to attend a mandatory, unpaid Sunday School event taking place on Friday night (my only night off). We are required to plan games and songs for the event, even though the Belinskys clearly didn't feel required to pay us on time. The Friday Night Live event quickly becomes a debacle of epic proportions as we teachers are yelled at, not given seating, reduced to babysitters, not acknowledged at all, starved and then insulted before we finally got to trudge home alone, with the Belinskys showing no regard for our personal safety, eating pie with our hands as G-d Himself cried for our plight in the form of rain.
Thankfully, G-d decided to just take a few deep breathes and blink back most of the tears, because after a minor sprinkling, it stopped. I guess even G-d figured a walk home in the pouring rain would be just too pathetic. And it would soak our pie. Which, if you'll recall was the only thing we had eaten all night, unless you count the one bite of bread we generously received at the beginning.
Friday night when I finally got home (having been on my feet since 7:00 that morning, without food or rest), I totally broke down. All I could think about was how the night had gone and I just kept reliving it over and over again. Even when I actively tried to distract myself, I couldn't. I just kept thinking about it and getting angrier and angrier.
On the walk home, the two teacher who were with me and I talked about what to do. One of them said, "The whole night was totally humiliating." And I thought...she's exactly right. It hadn't even occurred to me to use that word. I had been using words like horrible, disgusting, catastrophe, disaster. But those didn't even come close to describing it. The minute she said the word humiliating, I knew that's exactly what they had done. Spent the night degrading and humiliating us. And you just can not allow people to do that without consequence. So we talked about what to do, and decided that we needed to have a meeting with them in which we would outline all the things that had been wrong with the evening and then demand to be paid. And if they refused to pay us, we would quit. I commented that I might very well quit anyway, but felt like it was definitely worth taking a shot to get paid for the night. So I told them I'd make up a list we could go in with to be prepared.
And then we all just traded stories about all the little annoying things the Belinskys had done over the year and I told them about how S. (did I mention that the Belinskys daughter is in my weekday preschool class? Yeah. Awkward!) always leaves her 18 month old twins in the car when she comes to pick up her three year old, and then stays to chat, leaving the babies in the car alone for anywhere from five to forty-five minutes at a time. And one of the other teachers, Gitty, told us how S. had asked her if she knew anyone who could babysit her kids while she was doing Sunday School each week. Gitty suggested someone and S. asked how much she charged and Gitty said, "Usually around six dollars an hour, but if she's going to be driving out to you every week, you should probably pay her extra." So Gitty's friend took the job and a while later when Gitty asked her friend how it was going, the friend told her that the first few times, S. had paid her six dollars an hour and extra for driving and for cleaning her house (!!!) but after the first few times, she stopped paying her extra and just paid her the six an hour. Unsurprisingly, the friend quit soon after that.
We continued on in that vein for a while, and a pretty clear pattern of the Belinskys being cheap, unreasonable, blind to other people's needs and annoying emerged. Which should have been a clue to us...but sadly, we missed the very obvious foreshadowing.
Saturday night, I called and IMed everyone I could to tell them what happened. Without fail, before I had even gotten halfway through the story every one of them said something like, "That's insane!" or "I can't believe this!" or "I would have quit right there." So I knew I hadn't overreacted or anything. But as a final litmus test of my objectivity in the matter, I called my parents. Who have the annoying trait of telling me the truth, even when it's not at all what I want to hear. I spilled out the entire story to my mother, who, bless her, used words like; reprehensible, appalling, inexcusable, unforgivable and my personal favorite, "it was a slap in the face and a kick in the groin." (Hee! Love you, Mom! Sorry for all the cursing!) Anyway, Mom totally backed me up on quitting and was properly horrified to hear what trials her eldest daughter had undergone.
So when I finished IMing and calling everyone, I sat down and wrote up a list to give the Belinskys the next day. Goes a little something like this:
I. The event was poorly organized.
• An hour was too long for davening given the age of the children and the lateness of the hour.
• Seating for the dinner was haphazard and did not require children to be sitting with their parents.
• Kiddush and washing for hamotzei were chaotic, no system or announcements were in place to help things run smoothly.
• Not enough seating.
• The game portion of the evening was scheduled to go too long, given the lateness of the hour, the age and state of hunger of the children.
• Following the scheduled half hour, no one arrived to inform the teachers to take children back to the tables resulting in the children and teachers missing an entire course of the meal.
II. Lack of respect for the teachers.
• There were no seats at the table for the teachers.
• Upon realizing there were no seats, instead of attempting to remedy the situation, the teachers were spoken to in an extremely rude and patronizing manner, in full view of the parents and children.
• There was absolutely no recognition of the teachers’ presence at the event.
• The teachers were reduced to what was essentially slave labor as they were informed that their responsibility was to keep the children quiet and under control, even though every child had at least one parent there.
• It is wrong to put teachers and parents in the same place and expect the teachers to be the disciplinarians.
• The teachers missed the first course due to lack of seating, the second course due to the fact that it was served without their presence, resulting in the fact that the teachers did not have a Shabbos meal, which is inexcusable given the fact that it not only dishonored the teachers, it dishonored Shabbos and left teachers hungry.
• It is unacceptable to offer to remedy the fact that the teachers had no meal by offering them a chance to eat leftovers in the kitchen or take leftovers home.
• No apology was made for any of the items listed above.
• Even though the teachers were shown an appalling lack of respect, they still behaved as professionals, entertaining the children to the best of their ability given the difficult circumstances (the boredom, hunger and age of the children), not losing their temper when spoken to rudely, not allowing the parents or children to see the extent of their distress and following through until the end of the event.
III. Lack of consideration for the teachers’ safety.
• It is absolutely unconscionable that no arrangements were made to assure the safety of the teachers on their walk home.
• There was no offer made to walk the teachers home, or find someone to walk them home.
• It is a long walk for young women to take, by themselves, at night.
In light of all these facts, and given the fact that we were there in service of the Sunday School, even on a Friday evening, we believe it is only fair that we be compensated for our time accordingly.
Sunday morning, I picked up a voice mail message from my mother. It said, "I just told Dad the whole story and he thinks that what they did was so unconscionable that you shouldn't even give them two weeks notice." Now, what you have to understand is that my parents are like the poster children of Good Work Ethics, Maturity, Reliability and Responsibility. My father suggesting I walk out without giving notice was like a wolf suggesting to the pack they all become vegetarians. But I still hadn't made any decision on what I was going to do. I still thought the Belinskys could fix things if they just apologized, acknowledged our feelings and offered to pay us. So I was willing to wait and see.
I was the first teacher to arrive. I walked in and before I could ask for a meeting, or hand them my outline, S. handed me a letter. A letter, I thought optimistically, maybe it's an apology, or a check or even both! Of course...you guys already know where this is going, right? You're thinking, "Oh, Bea. You're so naive." And you're right. All hopes of repairing the damage were dashed as soon as I read the letter. (Which I read away from the Belinskys, again, luckily for them.) Here is the letter, verbatim (except for the parts in italics, which are clearly my own thoughts:
Dear Bea,
Since the beginning of the year, we see the hard work you put in to your teaching. We notice that you come prepared and are a responsible teacher. We really appreciate your dedication to your class. It is a pleasure to have a reliable teacher on our staff.
This Friday night, we noticed some discontent and tension. (Oh, really? Did you, really? Did you REALLY? Do you also notice that water is wet and the sky is blue and fire is hot and getting kicked in the balls hurts like hell? Because those are some finely honed observation skills you have there!) It was noticeable to us as well as to people around. (Which...bullshit. While I agree it may have been noticeable to them, as I was making no effort to hide it from them, I'm not buying that other people noticed. The parents were too busy ignoring us, and the kids were too busy bouncing off the walls and in either case I was careful not to treat the parents or kids any differently than I normally do, because I am a professional.) At the time when a teacher is around her students, expressing feelings of this sort is unacceptable. These expressions of discontent can put any organized (Organized!!!) program at risk. (So, essentially, I am being blamed for ruining the event with my attitude. It had nothing to do with poor organization! Nothing!) They bring along the possibility of losing control of the students as well as a negative atmosphere. (Because losing control of the kids had nothing to do with the fact that the kids had been made to sit for extended periods of time, or were bored and hungry. Nothing!)
Being an experienced teacher, you are looked up to by our younger staff. It was unpleasant for us to notice how their negative attitudes were influenced by your example. (You know what's also unpleasant? Starving for five hours. And being treated like shit. I'm just saying. Oh, and also, catch how I'm being blamed for other people's attitudes? Sure, they're younger than me, but they're certainly old enough to form their own opinions and make up their own minds. I didn't shove magic kool-aid down their throats.)
We are looking forward to continue working together during the months ahead. We appreciate what you contribute to our school and hope to see hatzlacha (luck, success) in our work together. (You know what I hope to see? Your heads exploding. You know...just saying. Oh yeah, and bite me.)
Sincerely,
Rabbi (Rabbi my ass) Velvel and S. Belinsky
Breathe people!!! It's important to breathe through the rage!
Are you breathing? Ok, good.
So, that was pretty much the last straw. I waited for the two teachers I walked home with to arrive and I showed them the letter and told them that regardless of payment, I was quitting. They still wanted to have a meeting, but I was done. I gave them copies of the outline I had made, encouraged them to use it in the meeting. And then I marched upstairs, back to the office where I handed S. a copy of the outline and said, "I just want you to know, I will not be back next week." To which she said, "Oh, um, ok, well, according to the contract you signed you have to give us two weeks notice." And I just shrugged and said, "sorry" and walked out.
To be continued...again....
Thankfully, G-d decided to just take a few deep breathes and blink back most of the tears, because after a minor sprinkling, it stopped. I guess even G-d figured a walk home in the pouring rain would be just too pathetic. And it would soak our pie. Which, if you'll recall was the only thing we had eaten all night, unless you count the one bite of bread we generously received at the beginning.
Friday night when I finally got home (having been on my feet since 7:00 that morning, without food or rest), I totally broke down. All I could think about was how the night had gone and I just kept reliving it over and over again. Even when I actively tried to distract myself, I couldn't. I just kept thinking about it and getting angrier and angrier.
On the walk home, the two teacher who were with me and I talked about what to do. One of them said, "The whole night was totally humiliating." And I thought...she's exactly right. It hadn't even occurred to me to use that word. I had been using words like horrible, disgusting, catastrophe, disaster. But those didn't even come close to describing it. The minute she said the word humiliating, I knew that's exactly what they had done. Spent the night degrading and humiliating us. And you just can not allow people to do that without consequence. So we talked about what to do, and decided that we needed to have a meeting with them in which we would outline all the things that had been wrong with the evening and then demand to be paid. And if they refused to pay us, we would quit. I commented that I might very well quit anyway, but felt like it was definitely worth taking a shot to get paid for the night. So I told them I'd make up a list we could go in with to be prepared.
And then we all just traded stories about all the little annoying things the Belinskys had done over the year and I told them about how S. (did I mention that the Belinskys daughter is in my weekday preschool class? Yeah. Awkward!) always leaves her 18 month old twins in the car when she comes to pick up her three year old, and then stays to chat, leaving the babies in the car alone for anywhere from five to forty-five minutes at a time. And one of the other teachers, Gitty, told us how S. had asked her if she knew anyone who could babysit her kids while she was doing Sunday School each week. Gitty suggested someone and S. asked how much she charged and Gitty said, "Usually around six dollars an hour, but if she's going to be driving out to you every week, you should probably pay her extra." So Gitty's friend took the job and a while later when Gitty asked her friend how it was going, the friend told her that the first few times, S. had paid her six dollars an hour and extra for driving and for cleaning her house (!!!) but after the first few times, she stopped paying her extra and just paid her the six an hour. Unsurprisingly, the friend quit soon after that.
We continued on in that vein for a while, and a pretty clear pattern of the Belinskys being cheap, unreasonable, blind to other people's needs and annoying emerged. Which should have been a clue to us...but sadly, we missed the very obvious foreshadowing.
Saturday night, I called and IMed everyone I could to tell them what happened. Without fail, before I had even gotten halfway through the story every one of them said something like, "That's insane!" or "I can't believe this!" or "I would have quit right there." So I knew I hadn't overreacted or anything. But as a final litmus test of my objectivity in the matter, I called my parents. Who have the annoying trait of telling me the truth, even when it's not at all what I want to hear. I spilled out the entire story to my mother, who, bless her, used words like; reprehensible, appalling, inexcusable, unforgivable and my personal favorite, "it was a slap in the face and a kick in the groin." (Hee! Love you, Mom! Sorry for all the cursing!) Anyway, Mom totally backed me up on quitting and was properly horrified to hear what trials her eldest daughter had undergone.
So when I finished IMing and calling everyone, I sat down and wrote up a list to give the Belinskys the next day. Goes a little something like this:
I. The event was poorly organized.
• An hour was too long for davening given the age of the children and the lateness of the hour.
• Seating for the dinner was haphazard and did not require children to be sitting with their parents.
• Kiddush and washing for hamotzei were chaotic, no system or announcements were in place to help things run smoothly.
• Not enough seating.
• The game portion of the evening was scheduled to go too long, given the lateness of the hour, the age and state of hunger of the children.
• Following the scheduled half hour, no one arrived to inform the teachers to take children back to the tables resulting in the children and teachers missing an entire course of the meal.
II. Lack of respect for the teachers.
• There were no seats at the table for the teachers.
• Upon realizing there were no seats, instead of attempting to remedy the situation, the teachers were spoken to in an extremely rude and patronizing manner, in full view of the parents and children.
• There was absolutely no recognition of the teachers’ presence at the event.
• The teachers were reduced to what was essentially slave labor as they were informed that their responsibility was to keep the children quiet and under control, even though every child had at least one parent there.
• It is wrong to put teachers and parents in the same place and expect the teachers to be the disciplinarians.
• The teachers missed the first course due to lack of seating, the second course due to the fact that it was served without their presence, resulting in the fact that the teachers did not have a Shabbos meal, which is inexcusable given the fact that it not only dishonored the teachers, it dishonored Shabbos and left teachers hungry.
• It is unacceptable to offer to remedy the fact that the teachers had no meal by offering them a chance to eat leftovers in the kitchen or take leftovers home.
• No apology was made for any of the items listed above.
• Even though the teachers were shown an appalling lack of respect, they still behaved as professionals, entertaining the children to the best of their ability given the difficult circumstances (the boredom, hunger and age of the children), not losing their temper when spoken to rudely, not allowing the parents or children to see the extent of their distress and following through until the end of the event.
III. Lack of consideration for the teachers’ safety.
• It is absolutely unconscionable that no arrangements were made to assure the safety of the teachers on their walk home.
• There was no offer made to walk the teachers home, or find someone to walk them home.
• It is a long walk for young women to take, by themselves, at night.
In light of all these facts, and given the fact that we were there in service of the Sunday School, even on a Friday evening, we believe it is only fair that we be compensated for our time accordingly.
Sunday morning, I picked up a voice mail message from my mother. It said, "I just told Dad the whole story and he thinks that what they did was so unconscionable that you shouldn't even give them two weeks notice." Now, what you have to understand is that my parents are like the poster children of Good Work Ethics, Maturity, Reliability and Responsibility. My father suggesting I walk out without giving notice was like a wolf suggesting to the pack they all become vegetarians. But I still hadn't made any decision on what I was going to do. I still thought the Belinskys could fix things if they just apologized, acknowledged our feelings and offered to pay us. So I was willing to wait and see.
I was the first teacher to arrive. I walked in and before I could ask for a meeting, or hand them my outline, S. handed me a letter. A letter, I thought optimistically, maybe it's an apology, or a check or even both! Of course...you guys already know where this is going, right? You're thinking, "Oh, Bea. You're so naive." And you're right. All hopes of repairing the damage were dashed as soon as I read the letter. (Which I read away from the Belinskys, again, luckily for them.) Here is the letter, verbatim (except for the parts in italics, which are clearly my own thoughts:
Dear Bea,
Since the beginning of the year, we see the hard work you put in to your teaching. We notice that you come prepared and are a responsible teacher. We really appreciate your dedication to your class. It is a pleasure to have a reliable teacher on our staff.
This Friday night, we noticed some discontent and tension. (Oh, really? Did you, really? Did you REALLY? Do you also notice that water is wet and the sky is blue and fire is hot and getting kicked in the balls hurts like hell? Because those are some finely honed observation skills you have there!) It was noticeable to us as well as to people around. (Which...bullshit. While I agree it may have been noticeable to them, as I was making no effort to hide it from them, I'm not buying that other people noticed. The parents were too busy ignoring us, and the kids were too busy bouncing off the walls and in either case I was careful not to treat the parents or kids any differently than I normally do, because I am a professional.) At the time when a teacher is around her students, expressing feelings of this sort is unacceptable. These expressions of discontent can put any organized (Organized!!!) program at risk. (So, essentially, I am being blamed for ruining the event with my attitude. It had nothing to do with poor organization! Nothing!) They bring along the possibility of losing control of the students as well as a negative atmosphere. (Because losing control of the kids had nothing to do with the fact that the kids had been made to sit for extended periods of time, or were bored and hungry. Nothing!)
Being an experienced teacher, you are looked up to by our younger staff. It was unpleasant for us to notice how their negative attitudes were influenced by your example. (You know what's also unpleasant? Starving for five hours. And being treated like shit. I'm just saying. Oh, and also, catch how I'm being blamed for other people's attitudes? Sure, they're younger than me, but they're certainly old enough to form their own opinions and make up their own minds. I didn't shove magic kool-aid down their throats.)
We are looking forward to continue working together during the months ahead. We appreciate what you contribute to our school and hope to see hatzlacha (luck, success) in our work together. (You know what I hope to see? Your heads exploding. You know...just saying. Oh yeah, and bite me.)
Sincerely,
Rabbi (Rabbi my ass) Velvel and S. Belinsky
Breathe people!!! It's important to breathe through the rage!
Are you breathing? Ok, good.
So, that was pretty much the last straw. I waited for the two teachers I walked home with to arrive and I showed them the letter and told them that regardless of payment, I was quitting. They still wanted to have a meeting, but I was done. I gave them copies of the outline I had made, encouraged them to use it in the meeting. And then I marched upstairs, back to the office where I handed S. a copy of the outline and said, "I just want you to know, I will not be back next week." To which she said, "Oh, um, ok, well, according to the contract you signed you have to give us two weeks notice." And I just shrugged and said, "sorry" and walked out.
To be continued...again....