One Party, Two Party, Third Party in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

I just finished a corporate gig teaching English at an import company here in Bangkok. I’m sitting at this incredibly fancy restaurant, having an overpriced drink and just wondering about things.

My mother posted on Facebook. I think she’s only posted 4 things on Facebook ever in over 10 years and it was this long diatribe about the one year anniversary of my grandfather’s passing. Which means that tomorrow is 2 years since I moved to Bangkok. I’m always inclined to reflection, but honestly I can’t be bothered right now.

In some ways, I feel like not much has changed in the last year. I’m still working the same job, which sounds crazy but I was a gig worker for years, so constantly changing jobs is basically a pre-requisite. People think it’s flighty, but when a job is temporary by design, you can’t look down on me for having 20 employers in 1 year.

Speaking of which, I got insulted at work… but it was in a really weird way. The head teacher of the senior class is very strange and meticulous about things that make no sense. Whenever I try to engage her in polite conversation, she goes off on a tangent and then things get weird. I wanted to warn her that the grades were really low for the writing project in my Advanced Composition course.

She had been upset with me in June because I didn’t follow the textbook to the letter because my students missed over 2 weeks of classes due to holidays and school assemblies. So this unit, I followed the textbook to the letter, which included a whole portion on how the writing process works (brainstorm, drafting, peer review, final draft). I also did this because the students’ unit 1 writing project was awful. The instructions say “Write 5 paragraphs” and they write 3 sentences and expect full points?

So, I thought this was a great way to get them to do the writing process. However, the question she presented for the writing project was confusingly written and some of them wrote about the completely wrong topic.

When I tried to tell her this, she started inquiring as to why the other teacher who teaches the course hasn’t turned in his scores yet. I was confused so I asked her what she meant, and she said that she expected me to help him grade his papers. When I told her that we both assigned the assignment a bit differently (he didn’t require any of the draft work), she panicked and told me we needed to have a meeting. Once again, I was confused, so I asked why. She told me I should be teaching like he does.

Then she said, “For the last year, I’ve had a lot of complaints about you. They say you give them too much extra work.” I was absolutely flabbergasted, “I have to go, I have a meeting,” and she basically ran away from me.

When I showed Robert, my co-worker who teachers the other class, what I had done, he remarked that I had taken her earlier critique literally and that he should have done what I did. When I told him about what she had said, he looked as confused as I was.

So who knows, maybe I won’t be at this job for much longer.

I’ve definitely been getting in trouble quite a lot recently.

But that’s no different than other jobs I’ve had in my life. I’m just a difficult person, I guess. I’m thorough, make thoughtful, purposeful choices about my work that sometimes earn me ire amongst others.

Aren’t I saint?

No, but seriously, the only thing I can think is that she feels that her relationship with Robert and strangeness toward me entitles her to make hostile comments out of nowhere. I’ve already told the head of our department that I will not speak to her any longer without a third party present.

I’m sure that’ll go over well.