Job Discussion Forums

[Sweetsee]

Ditto.

[Justin Trullinger]

Just read this one through, finally.

Not going to get into the career vs horrible inescapable trap argument.


But I have a student, on a scholarship, who's been working at Kentucky Fried, and I just wanted to mention- They only pay your social security in the first world, where there's no way around it. Here, where the rules are looser, they screw their employees even worse than back home.

If you're comparing EFL to KFC, I think even thrifty would wind up choosing EFL. Here in Quito, where a decent apartment costs from $200 up, KFC pays a whopping $1.05 an hour. Overtime, which is not optional, pays $1.45. After tax earning on a sixty hour week, around $260. Beer costs a dollar, lunch in a cheap restaurant 2 dollars. Lunch in KFC costs 6 dollars. May I rot in hell if I'm ever heard to complain that my salary is hard to live on.

People who complain about EFL salaries here make me a bit sick to my stomach- here they are wondering whether they can afford to eat out every night and still travel, while most families of four would be happy to take home half their salaries. If you wanted a first world lifestyle, with it's overtime, stress, heart disease, etc, then for god's sake go look for it in the first world. Don't complain about being where you are.


Best,
Justin

[leavingonajetplane]

[thrifty]

The Uk is the first world?

They got their jobs because they were native speakers willing to work for a pittance with no benefits.

[Sweetsee]

Didn't you know?
This is the Interet's meeting place for unhappy people.

[Will.]

The reason we teach is that it allows us to coimmunicate with a rather large quantity of fellow disgruntled teachers and we all love to whinge more than we like to teach. That is why there are teacher's rooms in the scholls and universities we teach in so we can go in there and moan. what other so called "profession" has this extra room just for the workers.
The barrister retires to his chambers to prepare the next case and the housewife retires to the withdrawing room but we even have a room within a room for the smokers.
Oh what lucky folks we are. We have a job and can whinge about it too.
It is the luck of the draw where you land in TEFL. In ELT it is a little better.
ESOL is becoming, has become, a little too controlled and regimented. EAL little better, EAP offers us a decent wage and serious students. ESP abounds for bookworms and MA candidates, teacher training or trainer training is an apogee for most of us or back to the dole queue.

BUT,

While we are waiting and hoping for that liucky strike to hit home and the emailed latter of application to be selected from among the thousands of others and advance us to our just and merited place in hierarchy of the chosen, among the few well-paid ingrates in the sinecures of EFL, we whinge, and we do it best online and in anonymity.
I am sure Thrifty would agree.

Unhappy?

Not at all. There is little better than a good whinge and a well aimed kick at the system plus the occasional observation of the well placed taking a tumble to cheer everyone up even the unhappy ones.
Sometimes you get stuck in a career move that backfires and want to see out your contract with no hassles...sometimes not. so people let off steam and vent spleen and frustration online, this is like the smoker's room of TEFL. You walk out of the room until you need another F>A>G. ( B.L.OO..DY interfering santionising little mechanical uselesss piece of...I know what I mean! Don't try and interprete my meaning because there is more than one meaning to the word that has been disallowed) F.A.G. in this case means cigarette, why can't you teach this programme to learn to distiunguish the difference? Heavens above!
Then you come back in and let off some more or make a more positive contribution

[Sweetsee]

The types of people you refer to, how did they let off steam before the Internet? And as the Internet becomes more and more a part of daily life, will people become more isolated, will social interaction change as we know it?

[Will.]

Hiya Sweetsee,
There once was a time when there were no flickering screens and they had not invaded our lives to the extent of breeding in all the corners and occupying pride of place in every room of the house/workplace and pub. We waited for the weekly journal to be published and arrive at the newsstand or in the office or staffroom, to be then perused for the letter we had sent to the editor in the faint hope of seeing it published. Congratiulatory adulation fell upon those who succeeded and the whinge became legendary in the surrounding area, a situation calling for ritual imbibing of the sacred beverage: beer in praise of The "published whinge".
In those far off halcyon days we would also gather in small cliques to suffer endless cliches and repetitiously trite banality while inhaling the cremated by products of the tobacco plant and whingeing for the sake of it and patiently waiting the opening of the pub after school and whingeing about that too. The health and safety factor finally got to us all, and only a few sad smokers remain in the endangered species preserves of the smoking room impregnating their clothes and skin with toxic fumes and odours or banished to the nether regions of the street. Society has already alienated them. Be like us! Join the healthy ones or remain outside! Or go to the cafe..y'know Dave's?
Some of us do actually come and say what a wonderful world it is too but when you want a whinge..... Can't smoke, pub has a telly, world cup is always on,
i think you can see the picture i am aiming at....I actually have a lot to do but am distracting myself from doing it.

[Fishy]

To sweetsee and superfrank, I'm an Irish man, living in Yorkshire for the past ten years, and will hopefully be living in Jakarta by this time next week