I had been working at a college that teaches music. I won’t say where due to privacy.
Anywho, I had been teaching there for almost 4 years. I spearheaded our new online program when the pandemic hit, but little did I know how intensive it would be. I would be building all curriculum, quizzes, resources, assets, and rebuilding the outdated PowerPoints. This is all fine however, I was doing all of this with only one day before I had to teach it.
Fast forward, we get our first online class of 36 students and I begin waking up at 5am to build they’re 2 quizzes for the day. I’m updating the power point for the first course while they take their quiz, then I teach the lesson and build out a lab for them to complete with a submission page. While they’re doing the first section, I begin rebuilding the next PowerPoint and lab, and I lecture that. This was rinse and repeat daily for me for a year and a half at 40 hours a week (typically a 7am-5:30pm work day) but oh contraire – in order for me to have allllllllllll this stuff built out by the time I had to teach, I would wake up at 5am and fall asleep with my laptop in bed until midnight….. every week…
I mean don’t get me wrong, I felt grateful to be working during the pandemic, but damn.. it was getting to be a lot for one teacher to do and with only a 45 cent raise wooo $19.45 an hour. These were also roles typically given to our program directors. So I was getting burnt at both ends. I end up bringing this up to my manager and he tells me they are hiring two more trainees to help with the work load. Here’s the thing, these trainees weren’t really up to date in the industry, both of them had previous jobs that weren’t as emerged in the music education side of things and they didn’t know all of the curriculum I was writing. Neither here nor their, I begin training them and the 3 of us became close friends.
Fast forward a month and I find out that they were hired at $20.50. To say I was PISSED was an understatement. I typed a detailed list in document form of all the things I had been doing and marched into the owners office. I didn’t tell my boss, just went right in, crying at that. I had a bald patch from stress on my head I was so overworked and to only get 45 cents? The owner heard me, and ended up raising my hourly to $22.50 so I was extatique!
Fast forward a year and half, there was a program position open for the program I had built. I was excited, but shouldn’t have been because previously my manager told me I was the only one he was going to put in the pot to receive that position. Ever since the raise thing happened my manager acted like I didn’t exist. I was passed up on the opportunity twice, it’s safe to say I felt under appreciated. And a little sad because both people who received the position were the trainees I trained.
Fast forward again, the guy I trained had turned into an egotistical maniac in the office. He ended up being more of a snake than a friend and had managed to make several people turn their resignations in. The final straw for me was when I had requested a day off two weeks in advance for an out of state contract (it was a fly date on a weekend and others call out all the time the day of for personal days). The first thing I was told was to find someone to cover (we were short staffed due to high turnover) so I did. One of my collègues offered to work a double shift and cover my class. I message the managers and let them know and even suggested that if there was any issues one of them could also cover it since I had seen them cover other classes before.
Next thing I know the egoistical maniac walks into my private room while I’m teaching online (luckily the mic was muted) he even made sure to ask before what happened next. He begins yelling at me….I have never in my life been yelled at by a manager in any job, I had never been yelled at in the music industry with all the venues and bands I work with either as I’ve spent so many hours in this profession at this point. He begins by insulting me calling me entitled for thinking they would cover my class and that it’s not up to me to make those decisions, then he says he’s upset at how our friendship has turned out, he told me I was taking advantage of him and the other trainee because we were all friends and had the audacity to yell at me about the teacher I found to cover for me due to the owners not wanting to pay overtime. Basically they denied my day off even though I had coverage and a plane ticket purchased.
So I let him go off. I sat there and gritted my teeth (oh how I wanted to rip him a new asshole) but I didn’t. He finally walked out, I ended my class, packed my things, got my hard drive with all the assets and curriculum I had built, deleted my files from the cloud, and left. I messaged both of them and said I will not tolerate to ever be treated that way and that you can consider this my last day. So now one day that I requested off had turned into two weeks until my class graduated. And the best thing was, one of them had to cover my class those last two weeks. As I was walking to my car, I felt the biggest weight come off my shoulders. I was smiling ear to ear and I blared drum and bass the entire way home.
Now a few months later, I make about $3,000 a week working for myself and egotistical maniac watches every Instagram story I post. It’s been hands down the best decision I’ve ever made 🙂