2 Down

After a short meeting in the center of town this morning, I accepted a job teaching English 10 hours/week. The meeting was a second interview of sorts. What it felt like, though, was an interrogation. In fact, I left feeling as if I'd just been paroled by a prison board.

The issue was that the boss felt I was being flaky. She wanted to be sure that I wasn't going to quit after a few days or take something better that came along. And she said it in a way that was kind of accusatory, as if this had been my plan all along. She sighted my insistence on hearing back from other job opportunities as evidence for my lack of interest in the job.

Ok, so she was right to be a little suspicious. The job is not extremely important to me. The pay is more or less equivalent to U.S. minimum wage and the possibility that I might have to travel to different locations every week to work for only a few hours at a time does not excite me. The two reasons I am interested in this job are 1. To learn more about teaching English as a second language and 2. Meet more Argentinians. Further, as it turns out, I will have an opportunity to prepare Argentine students for the writing sections of the GRE and GMAT.

Going back to the interrogation, errr, meeting. Here's how it went down....

Interviewer: So Patrick

Me: Yes

Interviewer: (She closes the door) I sense that you are not very serious about this position. I question your level of commitment. You keep saying that you are waiting to hear about other jobs. To me that means that we must be a last resort or something that you plan to do if you can't find another job. Is that true?

Me: No. The reason I'm waiting to hear back about the other jobs is that I want to know what my options are in general and then make a decision as to which jobs I want and how much I would like to or can work for each.

Interviewer: So these other jobs, they are for teaching English as well?

Me: No, the job I'm waiting to hear about is as a tour guide and writer for a travel website.

Interviewer: So the other jobs are not for teaching English.

Me: No

Interviewer: (Sternly) So Patrick

Me: Yes

Interviewer: If you accept this job, do you give me your word that you will work to the end of the year and not just quit when something you want to do more comes along?

Me: (Commitment, Gulp) 10 hours a week

Interviewer: Because we are dealing with people here. And if we schedule with these people, we will tell them that Patrick is going to be the teacher and what happens if Patrick is not the teacher?

Me: I understand

After the meeting, I made a list of when I could and could not work and gave it to the folks at the front desk so that they could prepare my schedule for the coming week. I noticed that everyone in the office seemed happy and friendly with each other except when I was around. I was the kid who had just left the Principal's office after having been given a stern talking to. No one dared even make eye contact with me out of fear of my new boss's peripheral wrath. I didn't quite know what to make of it. Hadn't I just been given a job? Not only that, hadn't I just been offered one of the high paying test prep positions normally reserved for the vets? And instead of being treated like a new member of the family, I was treated as a tenderfoot whom the Colonel had reluctantly dropped into a platoon of Battle hardened green berets.

Normally, when you greet and later leave Argentinians, it is customary to embrace and kiss each other on the cheek. Men too. There were no smooches on the way out today. Ni smiles. I was the bad new boyfriend who had brought the daughter home past curfew and mom was now scornfully seeing me out the door.

Out on the street again, walking quickly, annoyed and bothered by the meeting, I thought of all the things I could have said. It was as if I had just been in a heated political argument or a spat with a significant other. After the fact, you think of a gazillion things you wished you'd have said that, had you said them, would have left you feeling less victimized. For example:

'With all due respect, I just got here a week ago. You wanted me to make a year long commitment on the first day I was here. Would you make a year long commitment after one day of searching for a job? That's almost like deciding you're going to marry after the first date. Do you really want to hire someone who would make such a hasty decision?'

or

'Look, I ate ramen for over 7 years so that I could have a bit of leverage in the job world. Shortly, you're going to begin making an easy 30% profit from me and you're giving me a hard time? Maybe you could at least say, 'Thanks for deciding to work with us''.

My guess is that my new boss has been burned before. There are a ton of English language schools in Buenos Aires. Educated folks from English speaking countries have their choice, more or less, of where to work. Yes, it would be easy to drop one job and move on to something with a few more perks or pesos/hour, especially if you're going back to your home country and don't care about having created a flaky reputation in Buenos Aires. To combat this, my interviewer now employer seems to have taken the approach of treating new job applicants, or at least me, as guilty until proven innocent. The effect I suppose is that I will be shamed into sticking with this job. If I quit, I will feel that I have gone back on my word and may in addition incur her disapproval.

But the strategy backfired. I left the office today with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling far less loyal to my employer than I might have if she had treated me kindly, with respect, as a new member of the family. My new boss could take a lesson from one of the best employers I've ever had, Ron Wehner, the owner of the Great Harvest in Upper Arlington. Ron has employed many people in his bakery over the course of 10 years and has likely been burned. Nevertheless, he still continues to treat new employees as new family members, makes a special effort to get to know each one, and to be generous in any way he can. After a few months of working for Ron, I no longer needed the extra money for which I had originally taken the job. However, I didn't want to quit because I respected Ron so much and wanted to honor my commitment to him. So, every Saturday morning for 9 or so months, I woke up at about 3 a.m. and hauled my you know what into his bakery to prepare the sweets and later knead dough until I was slap happy. Ron is genuinely a great guy, but he's also smart enough to know that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I believe that's one reason he has not only been successful at retaining employees, but also why he has been able to run a successful bakery in the era of the South Beach and Adkins Diets.

Clearly, I start my second job with reservations, but also with the understanding that my employer is smart to be wary of footloose travelers. My hope is that when I fail to confirm her initial suspicions, we can be friends....