hannah83
Joined: 10 Jan 2014 Posts: 4
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2014 4:47 pm Post subject: Association I-speak Riva Del Garda/ Dolomites/Trentino |
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I was approached by the director of this school asking if I would be interested in more information about a position with them. As I was in-between locations at the time I welcomed the information and then an interview which was to be held via Skype at a mutually agreed time.
The day of the interview came and I waited for twenty minutes for the Skype call to engage. I then proceeded to email the director asking if there was a connection problem. Over an hour later I received an email from the administrator informing me that the director had forgotten about the interview and was out of office.
I received an email from the director later that day claiming to have forgotten, but at no point offered an apology for wasting my time.
After a secondary attempt at an interview, which actually took place I was offered a position with the school, to start the following week this being the end of November. The pay was agreed, along with a travel subsidiary.
Upon arrival it was mutually agreed that I was to be paid the day before we were to break for the Christmas holidays for the work I had done to that date, this would total four weeks.
Staff at the school were lovely, very welcoming, even the administrator who turned out to be the wife of the director was extremely helpful and friendly. However the staff turnover was terrible. Between the months of September to November they had already lost three teachers.
My month passed relatively issue free. Some interesting fallacies came to my attention. I had supposedly approached the director for a job, not the other way around, and the director himself rubbished the Cambridge exam system and the examiners (knowing that I was an examiner myself) in favour of the Trinity system. All petty easily ignored biting. However when it came to my last working day I asked for confirmation that I was to be paid. With a surprised look on his face the director stated he had forgotten but he would get this sorted out before the end of my shift.
At the end of my working day; 4:30pm that afternoon, the director was nowhere to be found. I waited. He finally came back to the school a little after 6pm with a multitude of excuses as to where he had been, one of them was apparently the bank.
So… upon finally handing over my wages I find it was 100 Euros short (this is a lot in Italian TEFL wages) and that the agreed travel subsidiary was also missing which equated to another 100 Euros.. When asked why this was he stated that he had subbed another teacher, he even had the audacity to ask if this was ok! When I left him with out doubt it wasn’t acceptable to advance somebody from the earned wages of another, he merely shrugged and stated that the banks were now closed, that there was nothing he could do, and he would pay me on my return the following year.
When asked for this in writing, he waffled a lot and said he would email it to me that night as the school was now closed. Nothing received.
I have since emailed countless times for a bank transfer of the money owed to me, all correspondence has been ignored.
So if you like being paid….. avoid this school. |
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