The cavalcade of the bizarre continues.

So work was interesting today. They essentially asked me to teach extra classes they have started on a Monday and Thursday at academy A. This misses the point that I teach at Academy B three days a week. The request to teach on my day was off was annoying, but less bizarre than the request to teach when I am actually teaching somewhere else. I essentially dug in my heels and pointed no I can't and no I won't to each day. So they turn and ask the other person I work with Valicia, if she can do it. Now Valicia is already being seriously overworked and also has a friend visiting. So I stepped in and grudingly said I would teach tomorrow. Then I asked what the class was. Was it a debate class? Was it a scholars cup? (Another type of class they teach.) They did not know. They said they did not know. So, with one days notice, on my day off, they expected to me to teach a class whose purpose they did not seem to know. As they told me this, they grinned apologetically at the requests they were making. However, I don't care how much you grin. The sheer absurd incompetence of it all is frustrating beyond belief.

So I went home read a sizeable portion of Animal Farm. Identified the allegorical elements, reviewed some themes, important sentences etc. (All intellectual muscles I have not properly flexed since Higher English.) I then went into work early to do the photocopying and finalise my lesson plan. All in all, I had managed to put something fairly decent together in a short time. Class time comes and one student turns up. One student. He came ready to be taught about Herman Hesse's Siddartha. I have not even read the book, let alone prepared any materials for it. The wee lad, and he really was a wee lad, politely excused himself, ostensibly to visit the gents. Shortly, his mother came in to explain he really did not want to be taught on his own. Understandable, he was supposed to be taught, not tutored. So off he went and my breakneck attempts to get something together on my day off were for nowt.

Off home I trudged, to my apartment that currently had no hot water and heating. I had not showered in a couple of days. This final Dickensian twist to events had me burst out in laughter. The job is shit and indeed my odour reflected this.