Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Elaborate hoax

Yesterday, I met my first unreasonable parent. I've been fortunate enough to have dealt only with parents who have their heads screwed on right and who do not blame us when their child fools around too much and fails.

Unfortunately, that luck ran out yesterday. Granted this wasn't a parent of a student in school. It was a tuition kid's mom. I knew she was trouble to begin with because when she rang me, the first thing she said to me was " I like the way you talk" which is really the last thing you look for in a tutor. Anyway, the girl's really sweet and I do feel like I can help her. But the mother...that's another story.

When I took the assignment, the agent told me that I had to bring my name card to prove that I actually taught at the school that I teach at. In case I was lying. That was worthy of eye rolling as it was. Then yesterday, she comes down on the one and a half hour dot (when I was supposed to finish the session)- almost as if she had a stop watch running from the time I rang the door bell, freaky. Anyway, she asks to see my teacher training cert saying it would prove my authenticity. I give her a very puzzled look and say that it'll only announce my completion of a course that well, did little to prepare me for any of the teaching I've done in the last year or so. I tell her as politely as I can, without the aforementioned rolling of eyes that I had given her daughter my name card the previous week for the purposes of her verification. She claims that she cannot accept the name card because I could have printed it myself.

Yes, I would go to all the trouble of creating a name card for myself with a school's crest on it. And if I really wanted to be fake, I could have picked a nearer school to my home instead of one the other end of Singapore. Why would people want to pretend teaching in my school when there are far more glamourous ones around? And on top of that, I would have had to go to this school that I do not teach in to a) steal a parking label b) steal workbooks to give her daughter c) steal exam papers to give her precious daughter and d) create an entire persona of someone who teaches there.

Paranoid much?

At the end of it all, I manage to convince her that I did not print the card for myself and she's still reluctant to believe it. She tries to justify it by saying it's necessary since she's paying me so much. In my crooked, scheming mind, I'm thinking if that's the case, then I should really have said I came from a top school and make buckets more.

Seriously, there's a fine line between making sure your child has the best and you're paying for what you get and insane paranoia. I think the Merz driving, koi breeding lady who lives in a big 3 storeyed house with only her daughter has crossed that line, so much that the line is a dot to her.

She may be paying me but I refuse to be her butt monkey.

Some people. *throws hands up in exasperation*

Ondine tossed this thought in at 12:09

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