My wife quit her job recently. She was teaching in a public school system. We got her last paycheck tonight–and it’s over double the amount of her normal paychecks.
They pay statement offers no clues. It simply says, under “earnings,” the word “Teacher” followed by an amount which is more than double her usual earnings for a pay period.
We have to wait all the way til Monday to find out whether this is actually our money that we get to keep. (That is when we will be able to call HR to find out if there was an error.)
So, in the meanwhile, I invite speculation from those more versed in the ways of these things than we are. (Neither of us has grown up quit a grown up job as grown ups before this, you see.)
Is there something that would typically cause this? Is it a normal phenomenon that final paychecks are larger than normal paychecks? We speculate that it may have something to do with accumulated vacation hours–but she shouldn’t have many of those since she took an extended leave last year for childbirth. So we don’t know. We don’t even know if vacation hours would normally be “cashed out” like that. We think we’ve heard of that happening, but we aren’t really sure.
So anyway… Speculate! Can this be plausibly explained prior to the phone call on Monday? Or are we going to absolutely have to wait til Monday before we can even think we have a good idea what might have happened?
I think someone covertly assigned your wife as the beneficiary of the scheme from Superman III and Office Space, where all the fractions of cents from interest calculations done by a bank are deposited in one account, accumulating lots of money from myriad tiny deposits.
Payout of unused time off is the most likely cause. It could also be medical insurance premium. Most places deduct your share of the premium in the month before. In this case the October premiums would be withheld from the September checks. If you quit at the end of September they return the October premium to the employee.
She quit just after the beginning of the school year? Doesn’t that mess up the kids a bit, losing their teacher just after they’ve gotten into a routine?
Unused vacation and sick leave, possibly a tax readjustment, return of credits. Usually when I leave a job my final check is bigger but I take a big tax hit.
Teacher quitting at a strange time of the year, quietly receiving extra money for doing so… hmm… If you start to get calls from the news stations I might get worried.
Reminds me of a man in an antique store who was admiring a dressing table, and the shopkeeper came over and told him it was a magic dressing table that could do mathematics. “For instance,” he said, "you can ask it ‘What is two times three?’ ". And the dressing table door opened and shut six times.
“Amazing!” said the customer. “Does it know how old I am?” “Sure, go ahead and ask,” said the shopkeeper; and the door opened and shut forty-seven times.
“Wow!” said the customer. “How many dollars do I have in my wallet?” And the door quickly opened and shut one hundred and sixty-two times.
“Astonishing! And how much money does my wife have in her shopping account?” asked the customer. The door began flapping open and shut like crazy and the two men could hardly keep up, until it eventually stopped on about fifty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety-one. The customer stood open-mouthed in amazement. “What? Where’n’hell did she get that sort of money from?”
And the dressing table’s drawers fell off and its legs flew apart.
It is a wonderful idea to make judgments about matters you are completely unfamiliar with.
“Oh but I was just asking a question!”
No, that is not how conversation works. That was not “just a question.” If you intended it as “just a question” then you have a lesson to learn about how conversation works.
Many school systems spread out the pay for teachers so that they receive a paycheck all year long. Even though they are only teaching 9 months of the year.
For a very simplistic example, assume your wife is paid at a rate of $90,000. per school year. Her monthly paychecks would gross $90,000./12 or about 7,800. per month.
She quits exactly one month into the school year. She has actually earned $90,000./9 or about 10,000. So at that point she would be owed the extra $2,200.
Basically the school system is always behind in its payments until the last day of the contract year. And before everyone screams - most teachers request this so they they recive paychecks all year long.
It is a reasonable question given the information you have provided. Why would a teacher quit shortly into a new school year when there was a whole summer of off time to do the same thing?
My colleague took a high school teaching job. She quit within weeks. They were making her teach outside her certification, which could cause her to loose her credentials. When she complained they said they just wouldn’t tell anyone! :rolleyes:
Another friend quit after a month (different school). The admins had blatantly lied to her about all sorts of issues and wouldn’t let her even send disruptive, fighting, aggressive 7th graders to the office (sent them back and chastised her in front of class).
Sometimes you don’t know the nightmare until you’re in it.
The question “why did she quit” is arguably reasonable.
The question “Doesn’t that mess the kids up?” is not reasonable. And, as I said before, it’s not really a question. It has the form of a question, but not the force of a question.
Her decision to quit, if you must know, was made over the course of several nights of abject weeping. The effect on her students was one of the foremost factors in her mind as she was deciding what to do.
To put it another way, it was a rhetorical question intended to imply that she was indeed messing the kids up and thus was a jerk for doing so. The intended answer was for him to apologize and make excuses, not to actually question whether or not it would screw up the kids.
I know it’s par for the course here, but that doesn’t mean someone has to treat it like a legitimate question.
Classes are increasing in size, teaching materials are nonexistent, administrators don’t administrate for the benefit of the children, budgets are slashed and slashed again, and many parents expect the school to take over the entire task of childrearing. Guns, knives, drugs, and electronics compete for the children’s attention, and the teachers are left dangling, like helpless pinatas, where everyone can take potshots at them.
