Living in Japan has its fair share of communication highs and lows. This week has been a very low week at one of the schools I work at. Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I'll let you be the judge.
On Tuesday, I headed to one of my classes to teach when I was informed that from this week classrooms would change and I would be teaching in a different room. Gee, wouldn't that have been nice to know when I arrived at school, rather than right before class. Especially since there was a printed sheet that had been handed out (to other teachers, just not me) with all of the pertinent information on it. I headed to the room... which was empty! Nice. Tired of the run around and needing to get class started, I found the closest member of the English staff that I could and explained the problem. He told me to wait in the designated room... and then found out that my students were in the English conversation room (not the room that was actually assigned).
Argh! I took a few deep breaths and managed class just fine after that.
Then there was today. There is a typhoon passing by the Tokyo/Yokohama area today. The junior high students had classes in the morning while I taught a class (had a Halloween party) of elementary schoolers. After class, I checked my desk - no messages - and headed out to get ready for an afternoon class with my junior high school kids. I returned from the brief shopping mission to find a notice about classes being canceled in the afternoon and hoping I wouldn't be inconvenienced.
I confronted the author of the note and asked why I hadn't been told sooner since I'd already spent my own money on getting ready for a party that wouldn't actually be taking place. I came to find out that the decision to cancel classes had been made at 11am (my elementary class ended at noon, so there was ample time to leave some sort of notice on my desk!) and he just apologized.
Apologize only go so far. And in my way of thinking an apology means that the person will try not to repeat a mistake. This is not the first or even the second time that a situation like this has arisen. I'm just less willing to nicely nod my head and say "oh, it's alright" than I used to be.
Sorry for the vent!
2 comments:
How frustrating. I'm sorry that you had a lousy week. I hope the next one is better. :) I agree with you - when people don't communicate and it affects my job, or my ability to do my job well, it is infuriating.
Having a much better week this time around! :-)
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