Wednesday, January 22, 2014

... and right back where we started

Wombatologist
Nearby town
Double the usual salary

This is how it began. My SO forwarded me that job posting which looked scammish but I figured what the hay?  Within a day, learned it was from a temp agency placing staff at a government facility for failed wombats. Two days after that, I was interviewing. The next week work began.

Now, I should add that upon learning about the nature of the placement, I made inquires of The Google and discovered a rich and troubling past at this government department. (The sort of trouble where agencies get disbanded and people get fined/jailed.) But, I was promised house had been cleaned, leaves had been turned ... it was a brand new day.

Yeah, you can fill in the rest.

A few weeks in, it became clear that it was business as usual, just with a fresh coat of paint and a spanky new mission statement.

But, I'm an idealistic idiot and thought, as long as I'm here, I should do my part to make things better.

Of course, once I was identified as unfriendly to the status quo, I went from leading candidate for the permanent position to someone who needed to be made gone in a heartbeat.

Meanwhile ...

This all happened so fast, I was still maintaining a Herculean (read: sustenance paying) online adjunct load. I immediately made plans to sharply reduce my load for the upcoming term, but I still had to finish a 2 FTE course load I started while now working a literal full-time job. Adding to the fun, due to the nature of the work, there was precious little opportunity to sneak in bits-and-pieces of academic work to help keep up.

So, of course, students who asked for extensions and accommodations began complaining that their work wasn't being returned fast enough. Now, I have to beg bosses to permit me some of the same latitude the students seem to believe is their Dog-given right.

Oh, and did I mention the family health emergency that cropped up in the middle of all this?

The brief, but well-paying job did permit some debts to (finally) be paid, but tomorrow I'm looking at a reduced course load which might disappear altogether if I can't sing-and-dance to soothe the bosses.

I am so tired ...

2 comments:

  1. Oy! my sympathies! (and so much for "just leave the academy and head for the government/private sector; you'll do much better." I fear that contingency is more and more common in more and more sectors. Aargh.)

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  2. This is why it should be illegal to pay adjuncts less than a full time person would earn for doing the same amount of work. Even if benefits cannot be given, why the discrepancy in pay???

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