Near the end of August, I found out that my August 3rd paycheck from the school where I’d taught since January had bounced. Not only was the full amount of the check taken out of my account, but I was charged more than $40 in fees, my account was in the red, and checks that should have been covered started to bounce.
I found out on a Saturday. I called my old principal that day, told her what had happened, and asked her to call me back. She called on Sunday and promised me she would call again on Monday to tell me how she was going to handle this. Monday passed without a call. Tuesday, I left another voicemail with her and emailed her as well. Tuesday passed and so did Wednesday, both without a call from her. Thursday, I left another message and email. Same thing Saturday. No answer from her. The following Monday, now officially September, I called her, got her voicemail and said that I would stop by the school that afternoon to discuss things with her.
She called and emailed me back within an hour to say that wouldn’t be necessary. She was waiting for a large deposit to clear, and she would have my paycheck money plus the cost of all the fees for me on the 10th. She would even bring to my new school where I worked until five p.m. On the 10th, five o’clock came and went without a sign of her. No phone call, no email. Nothing. So, I drove over to my old school, rang the doorbell and got her husband, who is the jack-of-all-trades at the school.
Oh, her husband had no idea my paycheck had bounced. She hadn’t said anything to him about it. In fact, she had left to run errands two hours ago and was going to go home after that. Now, I was raised not to call someone a liar to their face. Didn’t stop me from thinking it, though. By ten o’clock that night, plenty long enough for her husband to confront her, the errands to have been run, and her to have gotten her fraudulent ass back home, I still hadn’t heard from her.
That’s fine. I know how this game is played. I got online and looked up the basic state law on fraudulent checks. Tuesday, I sent her an email quoting Section, Chapter, and Subchapter. I explained that if I didn’t have my money by Wednesday, five o’clock, I would pursue civil and criminal action against her, and that would include informing the school’s board of trustees about her financial clusterfuck. I got back a terse email saying she had every intention of paying me back. Five o’clock came and went without another word from her.
I call bullshit.
Listen, honey, for eight months, I was your trusted employee and friend. I pulled whatever class you felt like throwing at me. I worked with those kids and worked them up without a science lab, without a budget, without anything but a DVD player and a TV and whatever I felt like buying with my own money. I wrote your damn Science curriculum. I kicked in Art classes when I didn’t have to. I taught Math with one week’s prep because you asked me to.
I confided in you. You knew I’d been laid off from my full time job. You knew my COBRA payments were eating me alive and that this part time job and my unemployment pay were the only things keeping me afloat. You heard me celebrate the fact that I was keeping my head above water and would be able to start paying friends back the money I owed as soon as my first paycheck from the new job came in.
You knew the only reason I wasn’t staying was that I had to have a full-time job with decent pay and health insurance. You couldn’t offer that. You watched me claw my way out of bout of depression, deal with my father’s stroke, tackle the loss of my full-time job, implode with stress and migraines, and worry about my precarious financial state. You knew all this and you still chose to fuck me over.
Fuck you, cunt. Fuck you for betraying the most basic standard of the employer-employee relationship – payment for work. Fuck you for insisting on high standards for the teachers’ and students’ behavior and then pulling a borderline personality disorder parade on my life. Fuck you for acting like my friend and mentor until the moment I needed you to own up to your problems, treat me like a human being, and make good on your debts. Fuck you for putting your husband out there to lie to me and cowering in your office like a whipped dog when I have only ever praised you, thanked you, and hoped for the best for you.
Fuck you for the miserable opportunity of going to my housemates and my brother and asking them to help me with groceries, gas, and prescription medications when I’d told them a month ago I would be able to start paying them back for previous loans. Fuck you for leaving me dangling for a week while you ignored my pleas for arrangements or even just news. Fuck you for leaving me to talk to collection agencies for the checks I wrote in good faith. Fuck you for forcing me to watch my first paycheck of the school year evaporate when I dropped it into the gaping maw of a checking account that you left me with.
I hope it was worth it, bitch. I have a good teaching position with a great school that is financially sound, but I was willing to leave it to return to your school if you’d been able to offer me full time work with health insurance. Even at a sizeable cut in pay. Because I trusted you, and I loved your school. I hope it’s worth the loss of my friendship, my respect, and our professional relationship.
Kiss your sweet position goodbye, you fucking heartless shrike. I didn’t threaten a damn thing. I promised. Not only will I see you in civil court. Not only will I ask the district attorney to pursue criminal charges. Not only will I contact every member of your precious school’s Board of Trustees. I will warn my friends remaining on the faculty there of your treachery. I will contact the parents of the students who still attend and who were heartbroken to see me go and tell them that whatever else became of their tuition money, it sure as hell didn’t go to the teachers. I will contact the state educational credentialing board and report your unethical behavior. I will contact the state’s chartering agency and speak with the grant officer handling your application.
I will fucking bury you, whore. And when I drop the last shovelful of earth on your metaphorical coffin, I will walk away without a drop of pity in my soul, and you will be dead to me.
Yikes.