19 March, 2006

School’s are turning out to be really odd places. I guess it’s been a while since I worked with this many people and I’ve never worked in such a large organisation so maybe it’s not surprising that things seem strange. I think every conversation I’ve had so far has ended in someone skipping around the issue and being overly polite. I’m not used to that as in the past most of my customers and colleagues who disagreed with me were quite blunt about it. I’m not sure which I prefer actually.

I have just been through a salary assessment which involves listing all my work experience to date and getting credit for the relevant stuff by going up the pay scale accordingly. Now, I didn’t go into teaching for the money, it’d take more naivety than even I have but when it came back with my time as an employee acknowledged and my time running a design business ignored my eyebrows were somewhat raised. I remember the bank having trouble with me when I went to talk about a mortgage a few years back. Being a Director of a company (that is making pretty good money I might add) is seen as less stable than being employed by a company. Financially I couldn’t see their logic: being paid by around six different sources each month is less stable than being paid by one? If I lost a customer I still had five sources of income, if I lose my ‘customer’ now I don’t have any income (especially if you discount my company the way the Ministry of Education have). Will have another go at this and make sure they aren’t just being obtuse. On a positive note it provided some content for discussion about running a company with my Computing College students. I’ll have my army of political and social activists yet.

I was struck this week by the number of people who use the word ‘boss’ to describe their employer or, even worse, anyone who supervises them. I’m not a big fan of the word as it seems to me to be loaded with connotations of control, ownership and slavery. It was worse when I heard it used on the TV news to describe ‘media bosses’. That’s just scary. I can’t imagine what kind of person would use language that describes them as less or lower somehow than someone else. I realise it wasn’t that long ago that New Zealand was blatantly socialist and we were all told where and how to buy fridges and unions were all the rage but surely we have pulled enough control back now to not have to refer to the people who employ us as ‘bosses’. For those of us who run a company and work as an employee it’s just plain confusing…though it does explain some fun, if odd conversations I’ve had with the principal.