Arsehole

Out of the last 6 weeks, 4 of those weeks were spent working 6 days-a-week, 11 hours a day. Admittedly, my super-hardcore chef friend Andy could do this in a blink of an eye, but I think he likes pain.

I was knackered. I mean at a cellular level. I’ve never been as tired as this. I hope I never am again.

On the Tuesday I was exhausted and had a dicky tummy and so decided to phone in sick. However, because I had ummed and aahed about the ethics of this until about 9.45, all the sick-cover teachers had been used up.

“I’m sorry” said the bloke at Head Office “get through the day as best you can, and call your Director of Studies if you have any problems”

Er.....OK.

As it happened, my day wasn’t too bad. I loaded up on caffeine, and did my best. Highlight of my day was giving a lecture on the history of Bonfire Night to a load of housewives at only 30 minutes’ notice whilst off my tits on Nescafe and Coffee Mate.

I did it all from memory and I think I got most of it right: I told them Guy Fawkes lived on a houseboat in Leicester and invented the scone. That’s right, isn’t it?

So on Wednesday, still feeling like Guy Fawkes after a night on the rack, the cake rack that is, I thought I’d get my sick request in early.

The procedure is thus: you phone head office; they give you the number of the standby teacher; you phone the standby teacher and give them the details of your classes.

Except when I finally got in contact with the standby teacher, he abused me down the phone for having the audacity to call in sick.

“You better be fucking ill” he said in a tone which carried the snide pomposity of Paxman, but the dim-witted arrogant aggression of Liam Gallagher. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?” he added.

Who are you, The Evil Dr Finlay?

At this point I made the decision that I love my Wednesday classes so much I wasn’t going to have that twat teach my kids. So, indignant, I phoned back head office, told them that their standby teacher was an unspeakable dick, and that I was going in anyway.

20 minutes later I had a call from Jed, another Director of Studies:
“Yeah, how you doing, Phil? It’s Jed. I hear Lee’s been causing problems again”

Note the use of the word “again”. Turns out that I was right: he is really is an unspeakable dick, and one who is causing many problems for the Shane management team. Accordingly, I was asked to transcribe the conversation and fax it across to the head honchos.

So, no day-off Wednesday either, then.

“Gosh, this is fun isn’t it?” I thought.

Then I thought “No, it isn’t”