fragment of a conversation

(context: I had said to a friend that I find work degrading. He was surprised. He said--roughly--but Leftists--and yes I am a Leftist---are supposed to think that work gives a person dignity. My brief answer is that work should give us dignity, but under capitalism it rarely does. Below I go into detail about my personal experiences.....)

--only one example--but I could find more... When I worked at Institute CEF, for the first six months or so, I was scrupulous about arriving early for my lessons--even when I lived in Bratislava and had to travel for more than an hour. However, I soon found that it did not always pay to arrive fifteen minutes early, say to Uniqua. Often the classrooms were occupied when I arrived, and so I was forced to wait out in the hall. That meant that I could not do any sort of preparation or arranging of papers anyway. Nevertheless, I do find, in general, it is useful to be a bit early. But I am smart enough to know that sometimes, when I've got a good idea of what I am going to do, and am well prepared, it is really not necessary to arrive fifteen minutes early. Five minutes or less will do. Moreover, often students are late, and some classes were always predictably late. Now, when I was planning to return to the USA on account of my father's health I had a conversation with the manager at CEF. It went something like this. I told her that since she did not pay teachers for anything outside of the exact teaching time, she could not, strictly speaking or legally speaking, require teachers to be fifteen minutes early. She became outraged. Her attitude could be expressed in English by saying: How dare you say such a thing? In fact, what she said was: If I knew you thought like that I would have never hired you. In other words, if I knew that you had the ability to think about whether my rules and commands are fair or right, I would never have hired you....That is insulting, demagogic, fascistic or totalitarian....and it is insulting. But that is what one must endure in order to have a job.

And, now that I'm thinking about it: There is a further question about the money which was taken out of my paycheck, ostensibly for "taxes". I wonder if it was actually paid to the state. I never say any documentation verifying that it had wound up in the right place.....This is a doubt in my mind which is not in any way conclusive. However such things have been known to happen as that money does not wind up where it is supposed to....

LINK:

http://www.cef.at/v11/