Oh The Tedium!

 I guess I'll start this post with a few updates. After being GUARANTEED that my Telus account has a balance of zero and I should not be getting billed, I'm still getting billed. The latest email begins with, "Do you want to keep your phone number?" It goes on to say, "Hi David allen. 😒 Your account is scheduled for cancellation Dec. 14, 2023. You need to act now! If we do not receive payment, your account will be cancelled and you will lose your phone number. The current balance owing is $213.22..." blah blah blah "We're here to help! If you want to speak with an agent, click below..." and we'll send you down an Olympian rabbit hole of telephone gymnastics Nadia Comaneci couldn't navigate. 

My phone number is with Koodo, not Telus. I never HAD a phone number with Telus, Only internet. But does THAT stop the scumbaggiest companies in the nation - the Telecommunists? Why, no, it doesn't. 

In fact, my original phone account was with Bell back when I got off the plane from Korea at the Vancouver airport in early March. Yeah, nine month ago. Guess who ELSE shot me off an email this past week. "Dear David Maccannell 😒(can NOBODY get my name right? Reminds me of Ernestine calling General Motors. "Hello, General? How is Mrs. Motors?" What's that? You don't know Ernestine?), Thank you for choosing Bell." I chose long ago to CANCEL Bell and that took me a couple months because they have the same non-existent cancellation policy as Telus. It goes on to say, "This email contains the details of the order you placed on Dec. 4. Please keep a copy for your records." The "details" are my name as the "account owner" and a monthly bill payment method of "regular (invoice)." They've cleverly included a big, blue box I could click on that says, "Complete your registration." This, I suppose, would legally represent voluntary sign-up for whatever they're not telling me I'm signing up for. But, "We are not subject to city, province, or federal regulations... we are omnipotent. That's potent with an omni in front of it." I can't believe you don't know Ernestine!

This is from 1971! I had it on a cassette tape called "Comedy Classics" that also included "Who's on First," "Fat Albert's Car," "Wonderful Wino Radio," <------ George Carlin, and some other oldy and moldy bits. But, still relevant. "We may be the only telephone company in town but we screw everybody." 

So now I have THAT to look forward to... In other news computers still SUCK! Apps, IT, hardware, and software are continuing to WARE me out. I'll only cover one day of issues. Any more than that might give one the impression that computers are not worth entrusting with our entire lives the way we have. (see previous post) I use the Tim Horton's app. They have this game where you pick hockey players and if they score goals you get Timmy's points that you can use to get Timmy's merchandise. I've been playing for a month and a half. At one point I got goals 8 days in a row. I got a week of free coffee for that. Yesterday TWO of my picks, Daniel Sprong and Mikko Rantanen scored. Today I got the message from Tim Horton's that "None of your picks were correct. Play again."

ADP and Outlook Express, both of which SUUUCK but seem to be popular with Canadian employers, are glitching this week. Trying to upload a photo to ADP before the deadline. Nobody can do it. Deadline has passed. Let's manufacture even MORE stress for our workers! We got a calendar on Outlook Express that is supposed to have important dates at the "school" on it. This past week we had a meeting and the handout from that says we have Wednesday, Dec. 13th off. Mark everybody present and claim the hours as "teaching" for that. So that's what I did. My Outlook calendar doesn't have ANY of the important upcoming dates highlighted or marked in any way on it. Like the 3-week Christmas holidays, the Christmas party... I saw the day classes resume marked as Jan. 6 which is a Saturday so I told my students to come Jan. 4, but I'm just going by what I heard IN PERSON. Computer's gotta be better, right? Sigh...

Then I get to my classroom. I have a smartboard. I go to show something on it and the touch function is not working. So we waste 5-10 minutes randomly inserting HDMI, USB, DMI, VGI, LMNOP cables and unplugging them until it finally works. Minutes later I try to do a listening exercise and the audio is not working. Same routine ensues. If people would only leave things plugged in... But I can't tell anyone or ask for help because I've already been backhandedly accused of computer illiteracy. I just go by what is written on the meeting handouts or what I can find out from other teachers. Which... also isn't the best. Sigh...

I remember something being written on the last LAST meeting's handout about binder check. I have no idea what the hell that is and in a building chock-o-block full of teachers I would think one of them would INSTRUCT, EDUCATE, SCHOOL, TUTOR, COACH, TRAIN, EDIFY, ENLIGHTEN, ILLUMINATE, or PREP me, and all the other new teachers who have never done binder check before. Nope. So at the last meeting after it was mentioned again as something we need to do without the courtesy of telling us how to do it (an all too common occurrence) I asked one of the nicest teachers there what we are supposed to do. She told me to just collect one of the student binders and submit it to Michael. Michael will check if I've been instructing my students in the proper binder maintenance, something ELSE nobody has informed me on how to do. So I get a binder from my best student and label it and put it in a box Michael had left in the resource room. A few days later I get an email (on the erstwhile useless Outlook Express) from Michael saying that Rabia is in charge of my binder support group and then one from Rabia asking me to please leave my binder in our classroom. We both use room 204. Well I don't HAVE the binder so now I have to hunt down Michael. Eventually I found him and got my student's binder from him and left it in my classroom. All this while never being officially told what the hell binder check is or what the hell I should be telling my students to keep in their binders, where it goes, what to check, what to sign... Rabia is going to have a FIELD DAY criticizing my inability to do the stuff I haven't been shown how to do! I am wondering if SHE is the one who keeps switching cables around. I DID notice at one meeting a glare from one of the supervisors when she mentioned she had found a LOT of scissors in ONE room and that we should be sharing the supplies with other teachers. Just before that meeting I noticed the 20 or so pairs of scissors that had always been in Rabia and my classroom disappear. I can't be sure if I was blamed for that or if Rabia has been pulling plugs but I've been in "schools" before where teachers were in competition for jobs and I've seen worse.

I used to write on this blog about how Koreans seem to equate complicated with sophisticated. Like they haven't heard of the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle. That principle strongly implies that if you complicate things, you are stupid. I've been told it takes at least 2 years for a teacher to get used to doing things the way they want them to be done at this "school" and now I'm beginning to understand why. Everything is unnecessarily complicated. And we have meetings where it seems only ONE of the speakers is interested in uncomplicating some things while the others are stroking their egos and regaling us with their business acumen while enjoying the sounds of their own voices. Meanwhile there are legitimate issues that go uninvestigated. I'll give you an example: There are several part time teachers. Many of us work at night (7-9 PM). We have keys to our classrooms but have not been given fobs that allow us entry into the "school" after hours. There are people at the reception desk until 5 PM. I usually get there around that time and the main entrance doors are promptly locked at precisely 5 PM. People without fobs have to go to the side door and knock and wait for someone to answer. Usually it is the security guard, but he has other stuff to do I'm sure like rounds and is not always near the door. I have spent 15-20 minutes waiting a few times. It's getting cold. Employing the KISS principle here, maybe keep the doors of the place open while it's open? Now they have nametags for everyone and are super strict about the wearing of them ostensibly (because we are only told wear them or else, not why) due to some security threat. Maybe there are people who disagree with immigration laws and want to harm immigrants or refugees that get Canadian tax payer money or something like that. Okay, understandable. So have the friggin guard sit behind the desk where the receptionist sits. We show HIM the ID's instead of the receptionist. Is this rocket surgery? Brain science?

I talked to one of the receptionists, a nice Filipina who let me in while I was knocking a couple of times, and said it's getting too cold to keep this system up. We need to do something. Well, something was done. Now they have a little desk by the side door that the guard sits in and waits for someone to knock on it. Main doors are still locked so all the students and teachers at night have to use that side door. There was even something brought up at a meeting asking teachers to inform their students about the courtesy of not just letting the door go when exiting but keeping it from smashing the next exiter in the face. This, believe it or not, has become a problem. It seems the simple solution is being avoided here, and in so many other areas! Are there stupid people in charge or do they believe in the concept of complication being equivalent to sophistication? I'll just say it's too early to tell as yet. 

It does seem a lot like quasi-intellectualism focusing on appearance not substance. "So much style without substance! So much stuff without style. It's hard to recognize the real thing but it comes along once in a while." Good old Neal Peart! He nailed that one! Let's make things complicated so we can use a lot of jargon, big words, abbreviations, and acronyms so we can impress people. What? Teach? Educate? What on earth for? Eduardo Galeano the Uruguayan writer... I can forgive you if you don't know him, but Lily Tomlin's telephone operator... sheesh! Anyway, his famous quote was brought to mind by a colleague of mine in the ESL racket. 

“We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content.”

Maybe I should just increase my hours at Richelieu, the warehouse I work in. Although, we've just moved everything from one huge warehouse to another even huger warehouse in town and those were some of the hardest shifts I've ever done. I've worked as a tree planter and a diamond driller and those are tough, but I was young then and had boots and clothes that fit properly. I'm using the work boots that I bought in Trail for the Teck security job. I did 12-hour shifts there too but it was mostly sitting down in a chair watching the cameras. I did some 8-hour shifts with Marty in Richelieu receiving and even that, not walking much but standing all day, was hard on the feet. Then I got two shifts on cleanup. Just wandering the warehouse picking up boxes, sweeping, emptying garbages, etc. That was even harder on the feet. But 12 hour shifts of lifting boxes from pallet to pallet is a killer! I was worried about my back, knees, hands, wrists, arms... no problem. But my dogs were barking! By the end of my second shift I had blisters on my blisters but you know what? In some ways I would rather do that than work at this highly regulated, micromanaged, and overcomplicated "school." Besides, it's a 2-hour bus/train trip there and an even longer train/bus/walk trip home so it has only been worth it to me for the exercise I'm getting. 

Ah but who knows? I just had a classroom observation done when a supervisor sat in; I am having my binder check done as I type this; I also have a monthly report due day after tomorrow (parenthetically and superfluously, I haven't been taught how to do THAT either); and I had an interview with the supervisor who observed me telling me I'm still on probation and asked how my class aligned with the CLB standardized curriculum and the mandate from on high... I'm not a big fan of this job to be honest and wouldn't mind getting sacked and working full time at the warehouse. At least until I find a GOOD teaching job though I've been trying for, what, 25 years? Sigh...

On the bright side I DID get extra hours at the warehouse and will be getting some more before Christmas that will allow me to pay for Christmas and another three-week-layoff from my teaching job. Honestly if I last till April and am offered more hours I will either have figured out a way around all the crap there or will be so sick of it I'll just refuse. I think Dec. 21 will give me a good indication of which way to go. That will be our Christmas party. Of course it's not on the Outlook Express calendar either and we've been informed that we'll be paid for three hours of work but have NOT been told how to enter that into ADP. Should we call it teaching or a meeting? There is no "party" designation on the program. Endless tedium and pedantry. 

I am SOOOO looking forward to Dec. 21 actually! That will be the start of Christmas for me. I will still be studying (course # 9 of 12 is halfway through and am nailing it) but I'll have time (and money) for Christmas shopping and a bit of celebration, not to mention the World Jr. Hockey Championships!!! I can't wait for that! It's in Sweden this year so I'll STILL be getting up at weird hours to watch but that's nothing new. I thought being home in Canada would change that, but it's not in N. America this year. 

Being home in Canada WILL have one big advantage though: I can visit family over the holidays. At least I hope... That hasn't been as easy to do as I'd hoped. STILL haven't seen brother Jeff. But I hope to spend some time with Mark and Sheri-Lynn and their giant clan, maybe a check-in with Rob and Terri, and some nice holiday spirit with Marty and Jenn and the two adolescents I am living with. Who knows, maybe a cameo by Mom and Art, Andy and Linda, Tyler, Dylan. That would be nice but it'll just be nice to have an actual Canadian Christmas! It's something I've been looking forward to since getting back and Jenn and Marty do a good Christmas. 

So there you have it. Social life: projection positive. Work: not so much. Canada: expensive and tedious. 

More news as events warrant.