Sick Day
As hard as I tried to avoid getting sick, it hit me anyway. I have been feeling this cold coming on for about a week and tried to fight it with vitamins and echinecea but it hit me anyway. I was feeling gross Wednesday night: tired, achey, sneezing, felt a running nose coming. And Thursday morning it was a full-blown cold. And yes, I'm sure you're finding this all very exciting. I called in for my first sick day, and hopefully one day off won't dent my record and keep me on probation for another month. It was the first time that I've called Nova and actually had someone who could speak English answer the phone. She was kind of surly though but I guess if you're manning the phones to take all the teachers' sick calls (aka too-hungover-to-come-to-work calls), you would be too. In order to call in and not get dinged with a deduction, it must be before 9am if you start before 1pm, or 11am if you start after. I called at 10 and started at 1, so I was pretty good. I think Alex had to come in and cover my shift. But its not like I was LYING about it, I'm still obviously sick so I have no sympathy for anyone. They should have sympathy for me. I still don't feel 100% but I can teach today. There was no way in hell I was going in with the possibility of getting stuck with Kids lessons yesterday. Over my dead body.
In other news... the Nova Rumor Mill has been churning like no other the last couple weeks. A whole bunch of smaller schools are closing (or being forced to close) and moving to larger branches. Makes sense especially if they are all like Jusco where I go on Sundays - only 1 teacher, and at least 2 of your lessons are free. How can they pay the rent like that? Teachers who are supposed to come aren't, and we don't know if its because they back out last minute or Nova is suddenly telling them they won't have a job when they get here. It is a little concerning, but I'm at the largest branch in my area so I'll be safe from closure. The Abiko school and Melaju Kashiwa (where Nikki works) are closing at the end of the month and 4 teachers from Abiko are coming to Kashiwa. Nik doesn't know where she's going yet, but really wants to come to Kashiwa. I don't know how that's going to work... we have empty classrooms coming out of our ass, but the teachers room is going to be a sardine can with more people. On our busiest day, with 8 teachers, its hard enough to move around as it is. I guess we'll find out next month... I'm not really too worried about my job, I'll wait until they start laying people off. But there will be an issue when I don't get paid. Rumor has it the AT's still haven't been paid. I don't know why, or if its true, but what the hell is going on? Of course we won't get a clear cut answer from anyone, being the peons of the corporation, but it would be nice to get some facts.
But Cerie has been asking me for overtime so it can't be that bad. She is the hardest woman to get a hold of though. I don't know why we can't get their personal numbers so we can reach them directly instead of hunting around Chiba, calling 3 different schools and then not have her return my calls because of miscommunication with J-staff. I hope she got the message from Arno saying I'll do overtime next week (it'll make up for my sick day at least) and faxed a cover form to Kashiwa. Otherwise, I suppose I could get one of the J-staff to hunt her down on the phone for me and leave a message for her to call me back.