One afternoon the very troubled boy who had butlers and drivers and also had the disturbing habit of throwing himself on the floor I guess got bored with the pizza and the movies. So he took a plastic bag, put it over his head, and then started tying a knot. Two other adults were in the room with me while this happened. Neither of them blinked an eye. I freaked out, screamed and ripped the bag off his head. I then suggested that his parents know about this. “Oh no we can’t tell them.” Then the owner said I needed to “calm down.” “He’s just playing,” she said. I pointed out that this “playing” could have killed him, and had he gotten hurt, I would have been responsible. “Well, that’s why you’re here,” she said cheerfully.
The owner had a very relaxed attitude towards everything but teachers talking to parents. If we even hinted we wanted that, she freaked out. But about other things, she was blasé. One day I was working on the SAT course and I walked upstairs. A girl was crying hysterically on the floor. What happened? Two boys had picked her up and smashed her head into the wall. The secretary sighed. “We can’t tell the parents about this,” she said.
Anyway as the week wore on I worked more and more on the SAT online course. The person who worked with me on it told me flatly that he was leaving at the end of the month. Finally by the end of last week I had worked enough that there was a semblance of an online SAT course. The owner thanked me, then sheepishly told me some “bad news.” “We had very low enrollment so … “ She didn’t have to say any more. I knew that the place was closing up shop for the summer, and let’s face it, probably forever. It made sense now why she wanted an online SAT course. That way she could “stay open” without really staying open.
She meticulously counted my wages, and paid me in $20 bills. It was a little weird being paid in $20 bills but you know, no taxes. The thought kind of floated through my head that maybe there was another reason she was so terrified of telling the parents bad news. I came up with a few ideas, but decided to let those thoughts lie. I was frankly glad she paid me at all.
And that was it. I walked out. I was never so happy to be unemployed again.
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