No, Really, I Am an American

It’s more that we’re a bit cynical and wary.

I’ve been back “teaching” for about a week now, and there have already been some interesting days at work. Perhaps the most prominent point of interest is the New Year’s Holiday. In years past, Nova has shut down operations for about ten days for the New Year break (it’s the big holiday here instead of Christmas). From what I understand, these days have always just been considered unpaid — we’re not working and all schools are closed anyway.

This year, with the new company, they are trying to keep things as “normal” as possible for us. I guess this includes the New Year Holiday. Here’s where things get a bit interesting…

Monday we were issued the dates of the holiday: Dec 28th - Jan 6. Three of these days would be New Year’s paid holidays (something that had never been done with the company before), but the others would not. So, depending on your weekend, you would have to make up the rest of the days via self-swap (which is usually restricted to green tags and higher ups), or by advancing your allotted paid holidays despite not working for the company for six months (which is undoubtedly a kindness since they don’t have to be that accommodating, so good on them). Also, the days you choose to swap must coincide with the month. So, for example, (holy smokes I’m using my teaching language in a post) my weekends are Thursday and Friday, Dec 29th falls on a Saturday, so if I want to use that day as a swap and not as a New Year paid holiday, then I have to make up that day in Dec. In my case, I would have to figure out four days I would want to self-swap or use an advanced paid holiday.

I went home that night trying to weigh my options.

Tuesday, when I came to work, the situation was still being talked about. Since it was posted late on Monday night, I don’t think many people really had a chance to look at the announcement carefully. Well, they did now. The general interpretation was that we weren’t being given a choice about the ten days and now we have to give up days in our weekend to make up for them. Yeah, it’s nice that they’re giving us these ten days off, but not when they weren’t really asked for. Giving us New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day would have sufficed. Sure, not ideal, but better than being forced to work extra in other months.

The other fellow working on the development stuff with me was quite vocal about his discontent in the smoking room, using quite colorful language and expletives regarding the people running the company. Little did he know that the new president of the company was in the smoking room at the time. Needless to say, he was a bit embarrassed, but unapologetic about his feelings. (He didn’t find out that the president was in the room until well after the incident.) Most of us teased him about it, and he wasn’t reprimanded or anything for it…but he has the feeling he will soon be fired.

All throughout the day, even though we were supposed to be proof reading, we were often interrupted by our own selves trying to suss out what we should do and argue a bit about whether or not it was fair what was happening. G. communication generally give three paid holidays at New Year, three for Golden Week, and three during Obon to its employees and are just trying to have the same standards for G.Nova (as we’ve been calling it, with hard “g” as in “Gawain”). Fair enough. But they’re also trying to keep things “normal” which didn’t quite work out the way they had hoped.

To add fuel to the fire, the pay day has changed from the 5th of every month back to the 15th of every month. Generally, not too bad…but when you’re trying to recover and make ends meet from the loss of two months’ worth of salaries not being paid to you and you were counting on that money on the 5th, those ten days make a huge difference. I’m not bad off, but I am slightly flustered by this turn of events — prior to this, there was a strong chance I was going to be able to make it to my next pay check without touching my savings…now, I’m not as confident.

People’s discontent was not nearly as bad as two months ago, but there was definitely some disgruntlement. Personally, I was irked, but I don’t generally kick up a huge fuss. I mean, look at what happened as the ship sank — I still went to work when everyone else I knew had given up on the sitch.

By the end of Tuesday, though, the situation changed a bit. Another announcement was put up saying that instead of three days, we would be given six. That made a significant difference in people’s situations. Heck, some people ended up not even needing to arrange a swap! (I only need one.)

As of Wednesday, another notice was put up asking instructor’s to not submit any requests until all dates and terms have been finalized — there was even rumor going around that they’d end up giving us seven paid days, which would mean everyone would be set.

Honestly, I think they’re better off just using the ten days as unpaid days. Then they don’t have to worry so much about giving us extra money like this.

So yeah, it may sound like we’re a bit ungrateful. We should just be happy to have our jobs back, etc. But, as some of my co-workers pointed out, if we let this kind of thing slide, who’s to say they won’t do something else worse than this? I think we’re all a bit more cynical and wary when it comes to this job…can you really blame us?