Frustrations

Last night, Stick predicted that I wouldn’t get paid on time, because the new shift in the state holiday calendar has led to an increase in mei you frustration. The holidays were rearranged to break up the long Golden Week holiday and give out more 3-day weekends throughout the year, which is actually a nice thought. I don’t know how this works in other fields, but for teachers, that means you need to make up an extra day’s worth of classes in your free time, because you have Monday off because Sunday is a holiday.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be paid on the tenth of every month, so I went to the financial office today to pick up my pay. It wasn’t there. A bunch of different reasons were discussed, I think it had something to do with someone along the way not submitting their timesheets to the school’s general payroll in time, apparently the deadline changed due to the holiday.

I went back to my boss and mentioned that today is payday, and I’d like to get paid. I was first told that there was no problem, then told that nobody else’s pay is ready, either.

Now, I don’t know what everyone else’s contracts promise, or whether everyone else would like to be paid on payday. But telling me that everyone else is also screwed doesn’t pay me OR increase my confidence in my school’s ability to solve this matter.

Also, there’s something my mom used to tell me about what everybody else is doing. Something about everybody else and jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge…

I argued with different people in different offices for a while, which started to make me feel like a demanding, entitled foreigner, until I remembered that I was arguing to get paid my agreed-on salary on my contract-specified date.

Then it was pointed out to me that it’s actually the tenth of the month all day long, so I really haven’t been screwed until the close of business today. And maybe if I wait, they’ll have it all straightened out by this afternoon. Maybe.

Related: Dragon Boat Day two years ago in Yantai