I’m an online tutor with a great company. Started off in person, just transitioned to online about 4 months ago.
Been tutoring online for four months, and every day I have cancellations. It can be anywhere from one or two students cancelling, to even over half of my scheduled students. So if I’m scheduled to tutor 6 hours, I could very well work only two hours.
When working in person, I was instructed to charge half an hour (30 minutes) which would translate to half my pay ($10). When I went online, I stopped doing this. I would just leave the hour blank and not charge anything. I assumed the policy doesn’t carry over to online. To be honest, I didn’t want to jeopardize my awesome online position by asking. However now I’m much more senior here and so I just asked my boss if I’m supposed to charge half the hour like I did in person. He said yes.
Over the past 4 months I’ve probably had at least 50 cancellations. Probably more. This missed $10 for every half hour charge translates to probably well over $500+ if I go back and look through and then ask for a back charge. Problem is, this is a small, family owned company. Yes, I realize now the company still go paid for cancellations while I didn’t. But, they do play favoritism. I get a lot of great hours because I’ve been there awhile. I’m one of only a few tutors allowed to tutor exclusively online. I get to hand pick my students at this point, which means much much much easier hours for me because 1.) I know my students well 2.) I know their parents well so they don’t helicopter over me which is a huge stressor 3.) I know what subjects they need help on so we can get right in to instead of having to ask over and over 4.) I get to pick the grades I want, so I don’t have to get stuck with kindergarteners which is a HUGE pain especially over zoom.
So my worries are if I ask for back pay they probably will pay me because they are honest people. But I worry that it will rock the boat and they may not give me all these perks anymore. And, there’s a chance they won’t pay me (are they obligated to?) and I rock the boat for no reason.
Honestly, an extra $500 would be nice but not nearly worth it to lose my perks and good will with the schedulers and bosses. But should I ask for back pay?