When you actually get a job with a more normal working culture your quality life is going to explode.
You’re clearly very good at what you do, but hopefully eventually you get to put that to use in a 9-5 that doesn’t take the piss out of you.
How’s the sun tan coming? Must be summer down there (and fucking hot?)
In this market everybody should be going for jobs they're barely qualified for.
I don't know if this comes across in my posts (mostly I write them as a means of organising my own thoughts), but I actually enjoy aspects of this job. I mean, how many of you have been to Ecuador on company dollar?
I am also highly rated by and get along well with the guy who has just been appointed sales director, so unless things go south in the next while there's no need to go through the stress of looking elsewhere. Adult life is mainly about reducing stress where possible. There are people who thrive on spontaneity and chaos and constant change; I am not one of them.
Aye, if you don't hate it and the money suits, why bother doing anything else.
I'm a twit
You’ve led us to believe it’s fuck all company dollar though. Going to anywhere on company ‘dollar’ should make you money, a lot of it.Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
A literal ladder? You working in the warehouse.
As if to illustrate the point, I just bought 2 bottles of water and a mask in the airport while waiting for a flight to Lima, and the old fella says I won't get the expenses approved for that. Now, I am 98% sure that I will, but it shows you how the 'traditional' company man thinks. Also explains why he's only eating once a day and seething when the flight doesn't offer free food, though that could also be because he's from Yorkshire.
Now then, now then.
I'm a twit
How much is 2L of water anyway? 60p?
I liked Colombia and Ecuador, but Bolivia is a dump. Loads of weird communist type images of subsistence farmers everywhere, dreadful roads, and a real Papers Please vibe at the border.
This is my schedule the next few days
Tomorrow 5am: wake up some place in Bolivia
7am: flight to another place in Bolivia
10am-6pm: with customer
6pm-11pm: fuck knows
11pm: to airport
Thursday 1am: flight from Bolivia to Paraguay
3.30am: land in Paraguay
4.30am: arrive at hotel in Paraguay
8-9am: wake up
10am-5pm: with customer in Paraguay
5pm-6am: fuck knows, we don't have a hotel booked, when I questioned this he just said 'I've got it all under control mister', as he says every time I question his daft itinerary.
Friday 6am: flight from Paraguay to Uruguay
9am-5pm: with customer in Uruguay
Only then does the madness slightly abate.
The opportunity for whorehouses on this trip sounds like it's right up your gaffer's street, surprised he's not slipping off for some of that
Surely the more grandad indulges his lust the more chance Jim has flying back with his coffin.
Today we are selling a load of stuff to these lads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites_in_Bolivia
They're not quite as weird as the Amish but definitely in that ballpark. One of their rules is that if you have a tractor with a combustion engine, it's not allowed to use rubber tyres. Also is just plain odd to see all these blue eyed, blonde haired people in a country which is shoving indigenous rights down your throat as soon as you get into the airport.
Is it acceptable to work all day in a Starbucks while waiting for my car to have its service and MOT? I’ll be buying drinks, like.
I'm a twit
Yeah.
Cool. That’s tomorrow sorted.
I'm a twit
On strike again tomorrow. Joining the picket this time which will be an experience, I suppose. Don't expect it'll garner much attention.
Read the other day on Twitter that so far, primary teacher applications are down 15% on this time last year, secondary up 2%. Both horrendous figures that will lead to a crisis imminently (alternatively, will deepen the crisis that is already underway). Reason enough to strike on its own.
Teaching is absolutely fucked.
Has it not always been fucked?
It's just getting worse and worse. So many teachers are leaving and as Mo's stats point out, people have finally cottoned on to how shit it's got so there won't be enough fresh lambs to go to the slaughter to replace the burnt out ones.
It's a completely unmanageable and unsustainable job. My wife moved to be a teacher in a specialist school this year - which is marginally better - but she'll be out of the career within a couple more years. My auntie and uncle have both been teachers for 35+ years and are packing it in because it's by far the worst it's ever been.
Last edited by randomlegend; 01-03-2023 at 09:53 PM.
That's the thing that struck me. Plenty of people I went to school with went into teaching but they never, ever sounded happy with it.
My cousin was a teacher for 15 years and she left to be a private tutor a few months back. She didn't paint a pretty picture of the situation either.
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My observation of the several teachers I know is that to have any holistic satisfaction you have to go into it as a vocation (i.e. something you love beyond everything which also happens to pay you), because as a job it's fucking shit.
Also nursing.
A few times my wife has mentioned that some nurses on her ward are clearly there for whatever status it brings socially, because they clearly hate the job and have no intention of doing it well.
The problem with teaching as a vocation is that teachers are not even allowed to teach. New requirements are shoved their way every five minutes and every ill of society is then blamed on them.
Exactly. Easily more than 50% of a teachers workload is not teaching nor anything done in aid of teaching (like planning). It's bullshit form filling and producing data for Ofsted.
I would not recommend this.
Starbucks is expensive and they blast the aircon so it's also cold.
I'm a twit
We have one fire drill every term (so three a year) - we're already on five due to kids vaping in the bogs. Shit like that has been a massive drain on time because if you're mid-lesson, the rest is a write-off. Dealing with behaviour, punctuality etc takes up way too much of my time.
Good turnout for the picket today, 8 in total. 4 NEU members crossed, scabs. Couple of v signs from white van men, but more beeps/thumbs up, which was pleasing.
Got into Paraguay at 4am, got three hours's sleep, still sat in their office examining ancient John Deere spindle kits. Up at three in the morning and they're desperate to take us out for a beef dinner tonight.
Latin Americans are the most friendly and hospitable people I have ever come across. I just wish they weren't.
When you call the shots can you not fiddle the itinerary to account for this?
Yeah an old girlfriend of mine is a nurse but it's definitely a calling for her, every year she takes two weeks holiday and goes to Lordes to help the sick with their pilgrimage. Don't even bother asking me for a train time when I'm off the clock.
I assumed you knew the expensive bit, it's well known? If you go to a proper cafe (as in not a chain) they usually do half price refills etc and it's cheaper to start.
What sort of hours do teachers work? Genuinely interested if anyone is or lives with a teacher.
Hard to define. Their proper hours will be something like 8 - 3:30. So, what, 7 and a half hours with some breaks thrown in. But then there's lesson prep, homework marking, and bullshit forms to fill in which take as long as they take and have to be done in your own time.
The mental amout of holiday they get is the only positive.
Anyone working in their own time is a mug.
My wife was a teacher for years - she'd often work until 10pm to prep stuff for lessons/marking, parents evening etc. Often a sizeable portion of the holidays would be take up by the above as well, plus they don't get paid for the holiday (I think).
The unions are absolute pussies here. They should be on strike until some massive fundamental changes happen, or (like nurses) they'll just be guilted ever more into minuscule pay bumps for ridiculous hours. In any other job there would be people hired to take care of the admin guff/digitise it so the experts could focus on the thing of value
7:30am til 10pm with some weekend days wasn't unusual when she was in mainstream. She would also work plenty of days of her holidays. It's better now she's in specialist; probably 7:30am til 6pm or something.
They also end up having to spend loads of their own money on stuff for school as well.
If public sector workers all decided tomorrow they were going to stick to that then public services would fail immediately.
She literally never, ever has the opportunity to take a break.
Marking I can see, and keeping up with the latest Islamist sensibilities and tranny theory must take a bit of your free time up, but how much 'prep' goes into teaching kids? Surely once you're a few years into it you can recite your subject and lessons in your sleep.
Had a two hour teams in Starbucks today as the office is too noisy for that kind of shit. Was absolutely fine.
Curriculum constantly gets changed, you get moved to different years, you have to supply suitable work for the various different SEN kids you might have in your class, doing displays in the classroom, writing reports, doing parents evenings, producing the mountains of data Ofsted requires, filling out EHCP applications, running after school clubs, helping at the school disco, supervising at breaktimes. It is literally endless. Surprisingly enough it's not some big conspiracy that all teachers are in on. It's just a completely unmanageable workload.
Yeah my ex was a teacher it was a fucking nightmare.
I was in there 9-3.
Didn't mind really because a) they played Elliott Smith, b) the woman serving me was quite fit and c) the service and MOT were both free cos I'd bought my car from there.
I'll tell you what is rubbish though - Cheshire Oaks.
I'm a twit
Paperwork problems and having to bend over backwards for spastics notwithstanding (I am more than sympathetic there), I feel like if somebody knocked on my door right now and wanted some lessons covering in my particular subject (TTH History), I could do that without overly taxing myself. How much rapid curriculum change is going on to throw a teacher off a subject that they supposedly specialise in?
The people coming to your door wouldn't be kids.
Lol.
Maybe the sheer breadth of my TTH knowledge is blinding me a bit here, but if I think back to GCSE English (say), the teacher would read the stuff out along with you, and then offer/ask for analysis. If I have a relevant degree and a teaching qualification, I should be able to do that off the cuff with an entirely new text to a level that keeps me ahead of fifteen year olds. If I'm teaching it regularly and know the text[s] a bit better, how hard can it be?
To expand on the frustration behind that useless post, your starting point with regards to understanding teaching is just so far divorced from reality that it's futile trying to convince you, especially given you are reluctant to being convinced. Most of the general public are the same. They genuinely want to believe teaching is an easy job they could all do and teachers en masse are just lazy and useless.
There's a similar attitude towards other public sector workers, but it's by far the worst towards teachers.
What do you think happens to the teachers who leave teaching because it's unbearable? They go and work in private sector jobs. Where they do well. Because they are drastically less demanding.
I can only comment on primary school teaching, but if the lessons you are putting up are "read stuff along and ask for analysis" you'll be shitheaped pretty quickly.
Regardless, actually being a teacher (i.e planning and delivering lessons) is not what makes up the majority of the workload. If teachers were allowed to just be teachers I highly suspect the majority of them would be happy and staying in the career. But it isn't. There is basically a full time admin (+other stuff) job on top of being teacher.
Right, so now you've changed your nappy, the administrative burden is clearly the problem. I'm not saying they're lazy and useless. But knowing their actual subject, that I presume they have a degree in, to a level where they should be able to impart it to kids without having to expend that much pre-class effort (compared to the other shitty burdens) seems like a pretty basic expectation. That's all I've questioned.
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