Not A Funny Place, Ottawa, Spring 2011

My work experience is France is fairly limited since I left when I was 18. I basically embraced the Canadian work culture—I didn’t really have a choice anyway. It’s only when I talk with my family or friends back home that I notice the many little differences that exist between the two cultures.

So, where are my two-hour long lunch break? My subsidized meal vouchers? Oh right, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean… That said, working in Canada also have advantages, and the unemployment rate is lower than in France.

Pay day is every two weeks — In France (and in most countries, as far as I know), you get paid once a month, usually towards the end or the very beginning of the month. Hence French sayings such as “boucler ses fins de mois”, literally “make ends meet at the end of the month”. But Canadian payroll employees apparently work harder than their French counterparts and you will likely get a cheque (or more a direct deposit) every two weeks.

People usually “brown bag” — In North America, the “brown bag” is a symbol for the meal you bring to lunch at work, typically in a brown paper bag. Lunch boxes are mostly used by schoolchildren to take packed lunch from home to school. In France, most large companies have their own cafeteria, where low-cost meals (usually subsidized by the company) are served to employees. Alternatively, French can use their “ticket restaurants”, company-subsidized meal vouchers. In Canada, no such luck. The best you can hope for is a non-subsidized vending-machine and if you don’t want to waste money and gain too much weight, you’d better start packing your own lunch!

You can be lost in translation — Canada is officially a bilingual country. But a “Jones” may not speak a word of English, and a “Tremblay” may not speak a word of French. In short, don’t assume anything about people’s official language’s abilities ! In Ottawa, we are regularly lost in translation, starting a conversation in English before we realize we both speak French. Since Canada is also an immigration country, people around you may also have various language abilities, various accent etc. It’s usually not a problem, Canadians are not as picky with their language as French are, communication is more important than perfect grammar.

Monday a suit, Friday jeans — Casual Fridays, where people are allowed to dress down, are always a popular tradition in North America. So don’t be surprised if the entire office wears denim on Friday to celebrate the upcoming end of the work week.

You’d better eat fast — Forget about the famous two-hour long French lunch break during which you can enjoy a cook meal, take a walk outside, run errands or go to an appointment. In Canada, you get 30 minutes to eat and that’s it! Even then, a lot of people simply eat at their desk while working. So when you brown bag, don’t bother making a three-course meal, unless you can chunk it fast.

Don’t expect to see a detailed work contract — A few years ago, I was working over 10 hours a day. I was exhausted and when I complained to my parents, they gave me this piece of French advice: “check your contract of employment!” However, as I soon realized, contracts are a bit on the light side here and are definitely not as detailed as in France. For instance, working in a “permanent” positions only means you are hired until further notice. Contracts may also be very vague, stipulating that your schedule may change without notice and that working hours are not guaranteed.

Work schedules can be flexible — In Canada, you can shop pretty much anytime including late at night and on Sundays. Most companies’ customer service is only a toll-free phone call away, even late at night. Remember, the customer is always right! The downside is that if you are working in a customer service position, you can expect a rather flexible schedule, including working late at night or during weekends. And no, you won’t get paid extra for that.

How about you? Did you notice any difference when you came to Canada?

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2. How To Work Temporarily In Canada (2/10)
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Lock in Alexandria Bay, NY State, U.S.A

I work in a cubicle and it’s fairly common to overhear phone conversations. When I first started working there, I would always hear my co-workers begging IT Services for help: “Can you reset my password?” “Seriously people”, I thought, “how hard is it to remember variations on your birth date?”

Well, it turned out that it is harder than it seems because at work, like at home, passwords rule our lives.

At work, I need an ID and a password to log into my computer, another one to check my voicemail, a third one to log into the employee portal, and a bunch of separate passwords to book a meeting room, to unlock my phone and to check the voicemail on my cell. Gone are the days when you could create one master password and use it everywhere: all of our passwords must be different. They also have to be at least 10-character long, have uppercase and lowercase, numbers and special characters such as “+” or “%”. Damn. I guess some variation on the name of my first crush is not going to work.

And not only you have to come up with these super strong passwords, but passwords expire every three months. And the new password must be drastically different from the old one, otherwise the system doesn’t accept it.

This is why we spend an insane amount of time either trying to get a password reset either banging on the keyboard with frustration.

I could memorize my IDs and passwords at work if I didn’t have an impressive numbers of passwords at home too. I have a PIN code for my debit card, another for my credit card, and two different passwords for online banking. Now, when I pay bills online, I also have to input my “personal verification code”, which is just another fancy name for a password. Last time I called my cell’s customer service line, I was asked to enter my “personal identification number”. “Which one is that”, I asked the customer representative. “Is it my four-digit PIN?” “Of course not! This is the number you set up the first time you call customer service”. “But I’ve never called customer service before”, I pleaded”. “Then I will leave a message on your voicemail with your new personal identification number. Wait, you DO have your personal code for your voicemail, right?”

I’m suffering from password overload. I know passwords are supposed to help me—after all, they protect my privacy and personal information. And there are solutions. At home, I have passwords for all the websites I regularly visit, as well as for my blog and my email—but thanks to a smart Firefox plugin, I save them on my personal laptop that no one else uses. I guess it’s not great security-wise but it beats writing down all of my passwords, something a lot of people do.

Indeed, this passwords overload is extremely confusing to the average user. Passwords expire on different schedules, and various computer systems have different requirements for the rendering and length of the passwords. Passwords are sometimes randomly assigned—good luck memorizing something like “765A&?%$b”!

And in addition to passwords, you sometimes have to decipher captcha and answer a previously set up security question. When I was abroad, Yahoo! insisted on making me type the security code displayed each time I logged into my emails. My bank required me to set up three security questions with unique answers and randomly prompt them to me when I check my account online. This is annoying. I feel like yelling “don’t you recognize me? This is me, hello!”

This irony of all these security measures is that the average human is not programmed to remember a gazillion of obscure passwords and IDs, and that sooner or later, we all tend to write them down. Besides, ideally, the best passwords (a random mix of upper — lowercase, numbers and special characters) are hard to remember. If given the choice, most people choose to use some bits of personal information—birth date, address, nickname—that are, in theory, easy to find out.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for technology and security. I’m just scared one day I’ll be locked out of my life, that’s all.

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When I was teaching, carrying lunch with me wasn’t a great option. First, I would often teach in various ministries throughout the day. I didn’t have access to a fridge nor a microwave. Plus, carrying my lunch around all day, going from one class to the other, wasn’t very practical. So I would often buy lunch, usually a sandwich or a soup.

But with my new job came an office, a proper kitchen, a fridge, a microwave and even a toaster. I can now bring my lunch to work and save money. Woohoo!

Not so fast. What to take for lunch? Left-overs are always an option, but even though we cook most evenings, we don’t always have some. If I were in France, I’d be bringing baguette sandwich, but I find sliced bread sandwiches a bit boring.

So I started to cook on Sunday nights. First, the quiche. For those who don’t know what it is, a quiche is a French baked dish. The custards is made off eggs and the filling can be basically anything from vegetable to meat. Quiches are expensive at the supermarket here, so I decided to make my own.

Here the recipe I use:
– One pie shell
– 4 eggs
– Ricotta cheese
– Cheese (grated cheese, feta, anything you like)
– Vegetables: zucchine, onions, red bell pepper, mushrooms

1. Mince the veggies and cook them in a pan
2. Meanwhile, mix  the 4 eggs and about 200 g of ricotta cheese in a bowl. Make sure it’s not lumpy and add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Put the veggies in the pie shell. Add a bit of cheese over the mix if you like. Pour the content of the bowl and decorate the top with mushrooms, red peppers etc.
4. Put in the oven for about 30 min, 400F.

Easy and good! I usually use non-fat ricotta cheese and a bit of feta cheese inside.

Ready to Bake!	In the Oven
Looks Ready…	Yummy!

I also make cool salads without lettuce. In a big bowl, I mix:

– Basmati rice (or any non-sticky type of rice)
– Corn
– Tuna
– Tomatoes
– Avocados
– Red Bell Peppers
– A bit of tofu

And I usually use some low-fat Balsamic Vinaigrette as dressing.

Salad

A Big Bowl of It!

So, now I’m curious. What are you eating at lunch? Do you have any easy recipes to share?

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The Office Essentials

I have my own office. An office with a door, a desk, a computer, a phone, a whiteboard and drawers. I also have a very cool magnetic pass to get around, one with my picture on it. I have a favorite lunch place and I hate Monday mornings. I got a new job, in the office. I feel like a lucky girl.

I loved teaching. Yet, after four years, I decided it was time for a change. Teaching is draining and doesn’t pay much, plus we always depended on various contracts and no contract equalled no pay — this isn’t great in the middle of the recession.

Teaching taught me a lot. I was 22 years old when I started and my students, who were all civil servants, were usually at least twice my age. I didn’t know much about Canada at the time and I knew even less about the government, politics or second language training for that matters. I learned as fast as I could because every morning, I was facing a class of executives who, for the most part, would have probably rather be swimming with sharks than learning French. Being taken seriously, both because I was an immigrant and a young woman, wasn’t easy. Trust me: I won’t ever be afraid to speak in public after this work experience.

I was terrified during my first classes. At the time, I had very little work experience. I had worked briefly in France as a student and then had a position in Hong Kong. After I arrived in Canada I went from small contracts to small contracts, usually in the customer service industry. I had no idea what I truly wanted to do nor did I know what I was able to do. University in France doesn’t exactly prepare you for the real world.

I kept on telling myself I should find something better but kept on postponing. Making barely enough to survive was good enough. I wasn’t picky: my generation grew up with the fear of unemployment and job insecurity.

One day, shortly after I got my permanent resident visa, the staffing agency I was working with called my for an assignment. When I asked for more specific information about the job, the woman on the phone was very noncommittal. Being my usually silly self, I wrote the address down and didn’t ask further questions. The following morning, I ended up in a warehouse and I learned my task consisted of stuffing envelopes. I was a fucking human envelope-stuffer and no a productive one, mind you. My hands were cold after a few hours and I kept on getting paper cuts. But I stood in the middle of the cold hangar all day, folding letters, opening envelops after envelops and putting — of all things! — firearms licenses applications in them. I was seething with frustration. What the hell was I doing there? Wasn’t it anything else better I would be good at?

This was my wake-up call. At the end of the day, I used the manager’s phone to call the staffing agency and let them know I wouldn’t be coming in the following day. They didn’t sound surprised — it was a shitty job. That night, I spent several hours writing a better resume and in the morning I left home with as many copies I was able to print. It was January and the weather was very cold. I started in one of Ottawa’s main street and dropped off my resumes at a few language schools. A couple of hours, cold and tired, I went back home. By the time I got there, the first school I had dropped my resume at had already called back and wanted to see me for an interview. I was hired, opn the spot and started the following day. I stayed there for almost four years. It was my first real job.

Looking back, it’s funny that I have never been formally trained for any of the positions I had. This is a huge difference between France and Canada. In France, you need to have a degree matching exactly the job offer, otherwise you have no chance. In Canada, being willing to learn and having the relevant skills from previous experiences means more than a degree.

So, I’m back to the office culture, which I only briefly experience when working in Hong Kong. It is less crazy and the work is more intellectually challenging. So far so good!

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In Bloom (Nantes, 2009)

When I showed up at work to pick up my last pay check, after coming back from South America, most of my co-workers stared at me, slightly bewildered:

– You look… different.

My boss even told me that “I looked healthier and happier than everybody even though I had just spent a few months traveling in third world countries”.

Sure, it might have been because I was still tanned. But I’m not anymore and yet, people keep on commenting on how happy I look.

I had time to think. A lot of time, if you consider we bused 13,000 km in total. I opened my eyes, I looked around me, I went wherever I wanted to go. We had ups and downs — it’s not like we were doing an all-inclusive trip. Hell, most of time, the only things included were mosquitoes and skipping meals. But we don’t travel to relax. We travel to see and experience the world.

When I left last December, I was tired: tired of my job, tired of Ottawa and tired of people in general. I had been working full-time for four years, since I graduated from university in 2005. And before 2005, I had been studying full-time for four years, basically since I graduated from high school. I can’t complain since we traveled a lot in between, but still — this doesn’t leave a lot of time to think.

So as we were traveling, I was thinking of my… my future. Oh, what a grown-up word!

I realized that even if I loved teaching, I just didn’t want to teach full time anymore. Teaching thirty of forty hours a week is crazy. But, since we are paid by the hour, it’s the only way to make an very average salary. So our classes are scheduled back to back and we are exhausted by the end of the week. In the worse case scenario, we don’t have any patience left, and no interest either since the work is quite repetitive (“je suis”, “tu es”, anyone, anyone?).

Before I left, I started thinking of another career. But I was just clueless. Should I aim for a career in the federal government, something everybody in Ottawa dream of because it’s steady and well-paid? Should I go back to university? My French university degrees usually leave all the potential employers perplex and confused (duh, I studied Chinese language and civilization, and my four years degree doesn’t exist anymore thanks to a reform!). Deep down my main problem was that I wasn’t sure what I would like to do. And even though I learn fast, I wasn’t really trained for anything specific, other than speaking foreign languages and talking about “farmers and communists during the Chinese revolution”.

I got most of my answers when sitting in long distance buses in Latin America. No, I didn’t feel like working in a small cubicle for the government, just because it was well-paid and steady. I wanted to do what I loved.

Writing. Taking Pictures. Creating. Seeing the world. Talking to people. Learning from the world.

Yeah, yeah, call me a dreamer.

As I have already mentioned, my father is an artist. Let me break the news gently: when you are a full time artist, you are not rich. In fact, you don’t even think about money. You just create, forget to eat and hope for the best. As my mother would say, you don’t choose to be an artist, you just are… and she would know, being an artist herself and a researcher.

Don’t get me wrong, my parents are not poor. But they aren’t rich either and I think their banker hate them. Most of the cutlery they have at home was stolen from the university refectory when they were both studying arts, just to give you an example. It’s also probably a good thing they are not very materialistic because they don’t own much. But they are relatively happy and satisfied with what they achieved.

I had sworn that I would be different (don’t we all be different from our parents, no matter how much we love them?). I would be down-to-earth, realistic and practical. Yeah, right.

My genes have caught up with me. I just want to create beautiful stuffs, write about the world and take pictures. Oh, I know I have a lot to learn… but I came to this conclusion. I want to do what makes me happy. Doesn’t mean I will live like a dreamer. But I will have my eyes wide open to every opportunity. I’m still teaching but only part-time, so that I am more relaxed. I can’t afford full-times studies now but I signed up for a class at the University of Ottawa this summer. I’m taking time to update my resume, to meet new people and consider opportunities. Little by little, I hope to do more things I love.

I sound like a hippie, yet so far, I’m happier.

Maybe it’s just the post-traveling withdrawal. Or maybe I’m just a little bit closer to find what I really like. Anyway, these long distance bus rides do wonder — you should try.

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I swear that’s the last time I fill in for the receptionist. I’m a bloody French teacher. NOT a receptionist. And it’s Friday morning and I haven’t had a chance to eat my muffin yet (lemon — cranberries) and if the woman can’t even remember if she’s supposed to be in a group or a private class I really don’t think she will do that great as a student. And.. and I hate the phone. Remember Call Me (Not), or how I became a crazy Malaysian woman’s slave in Hong Kong? I had vowed to never touch again. So far, I have only managed not to buy a cell phone.

Granted, I don’t use the phone that much as a teacher, since I’m in a classroom six hours a day. Unless I fill up for the receptionist at the last minute because my class has just been canceled. But this is the first time in my — very short — career that I’m staying away from the dreaded machine.

Flashback. Winter 2004-05. I have just gotten my first Canadian work visa and my first official job here. The future looks bright and when I showed up the next day in a office suite across the city, spirits were high — as high as they can be at 8:00 am. After a 5 minutes introduction on the job (at this point, I had no idea why I came for because the staffing agency didn’t give me much info), I understood I was to be chained to a phone + computer, answering inquiries about a point card for 8 hours a day. Sounds trivial said like that — I agree. But that’s because you haven’t enter the wonderful world of inbound call centers, and probably because you don’t realize how much fuss can be made around a point card.

I soon learned the basics. Customers could be divided in three groups:

• 10% of genuine callers, want an info and then happily hang up, saying “thank you” (the two words least heard in a cell center)
• 30% of lonely people living in the middle of nowhere, inventing all kind of troubles with their precious card just to hear the sound of a voice
• 60% of genuine asshole, creating all kind of trouble are very likely to ask to speak to the supervisor and threaten to fire you/ kick your ass/ kill you (we’re still talking of a point card, remember)

Genuine inquiries were a bliss to answer to. The computer would give us all the informations we needed to know and problems were most likely solved with a new card (“yes, after ten years it normal that your card doesn’t swipe as well, sir”), commonsense (“sir, using your card to scrape the ice from your windshield certainly isn’t recommended but it didn’t make your 100 000 points vanish in the air”), or some researches (“would you wife has been to the store on earlier this week? Because I see here 100 000 points have been used up just two days ago…”).

Lonely people were a bit harder to deal with. As much as we could understand them, we just weren’t allowed to make the conversation last too long. Our stats were sent to a big computer in the middle of the room and having too much calls in the queue could mean serious troubles. Like being the last one picked up to go to lunch. Yes… because we couldn’t all leave our workstations at the same time to go for lunch break, from 11 am to 2 pm, our supervisor would walk around and randomly select a few of us: “you, lunch break, 20 min.”. The worse thing was to be in the last batch, right before 2pm… since we usually started the day between 8 and 9 am.

Genuine assholes were tough to deal with. We weren’t allowed to be rude and taught to never ever lose control. Sounds easy like that, but how do you react after having being called a “stubborn bitch” for the third times in a day? You wouldn’t believe how much fuss can be made around a point card. People breaking up and splitting the points, people cheating and denying it even though the evidence is right there on the computer, people begging for favors…

I lasted a couple months, till the contract expired. I was offered a contract extension but I refused. I was tired of speaking over the phone, tired of been literally chained to a phone, tired of the whole pointless job. I moved on…

…and found a job as a receptionist for a wholesaler, where I was working under DOS (this was 2005 by the way) because the guy was too cheap to upgrade. If you’re nice, next time I’ll tell you how I survived for that contract!

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Comme Envie de Sang sur les Murs

a) Run towards the phone, dropping whatever was in your hands, and hope for a good conversation with a friend

b) Abruptly end the conversation you were having on your cell phone in order to pick up the landline — calls are a serious business here.

c) Bury your face in your hands and sight : “not again…”.

I’m clearly a “c”.

It all started in high school. Suddenly, the phone became more than a black plastic thing. Yet most of time I despised it. Why wasn’t it ringing ? Should I call him ? But he said he would call. Why wasn’t he calling then ? Was the phone broken ? Off the hook ? Power outage in the neighborhood maybe ? He did say he would ring, right ?

By the time I finished high school, he still hadn’t called and I had grown to dislike phones. Stupid useless objects if you want my opinion.

I then got my first job in Hong Kong. My biggest challenge wasn’t being an 18 years old lost in Tsimshatshui: it was to handle my daily duties at Takyi company. I was an office worker, a baby one. I could barely switch on a computer at that time but I had the language skills. So they let me learn.

One morning, Lia, my boss, came to me :

– Now you arrive at 8:00 and take care of the phone for Qingqing.

Qingqing was the receptionist, the only one in the office who was actually from mainland China. The others were from Macao, Hong Kong, Malaysia, or at least big Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai. But Qingqing was from the countryside — god knows what or who brought her to Hong Kong. As a result, she was the office’s poor little girl. The other receptionists, Isabella and Celia, made fun of the way she dressed, the way the talked and the food she ate. She could never get things right — and I could tell she tried hard. Like me. This was probably why I was paired up with Qingqing. In my manager’s mind, I was a total failure. I was too fat (by Chinese standards), too tall (by her standards), my nose and belly-button piercings made her cringe every time she looked at me and I wasn’t wearing enough make-up. My clothes were odd too: Lia had been to Paris twice and she clearly remembered French women wore Chanel dresses and carried Louis Vuitton handbags — not Levis’ jeans and handmade tote bag. All in all, I deserved to come earlier to work to cover for Qingqing.

The next morning, I got up before my two roommates and walked to work. I didn’t really feel like I was an hour early anyway, since Hong Kong looked busy 24/7. I picked up a couple of coconut bread on my way and arrived in front of the intimidating building in Tsimshatsui. I keyed the code in (was it 1–2-3–4 or 4–3-2–1 ? Can’t remember anymore…) and switched on the lights. A minute later, I was on front of my computer and the phone started to ring.

– Good morning, how can I help you ?

– …

– Hello ?

– …

Hung up. Oh well.

I ate my breads. Checked my emails. Went for a smoke in the hallway a couple of time. At 9:00, the phone had rang about twenty times but I had no messages. People kept on hanging up on me.

Bracing myself for my Lia’s lecture. If I didn’t have any message for Qingqing, then it must be because I didn’t show up at 8:00 as agreed but at 8:55.

But she surprised me. Instead of mentioning my laziness (because she clearly remember that when she visited Paris, French were less efficient than Japanese, therefore they were lazy — some kind of genetic problem that I must have had inherited because I was very French indeed — are you following me ?) , she blamed my English:

– What do you say on the phone ?

– Er… “Hi, how can I help you?”

– Dumb ! They don’t want to talk to English girls like you! They want Chinese, speak Chinese!

She actually made a point. Although I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly tagged as English, I should have spoken Chinese. Silly me… I had assumed since we mostly worked in English, I could speak it on the phone.

Lucky me, Qingqing hadn’t arrived yet, so I had a chance to make up for it.

– 喂、怎么可以帮助你吧?

– …

– Dumb, dumb !

What?

Oh yeah, that was my Lia behind me.

– I say Chinese, you speak pǔtōnghuà ! Chinese, I want you to say Hong Kong Chinese !

Right. Cantonese, guǎngdōnghuà. Another battle ahead…

– But I don’t speak Cantonese! I learned Mandarin! It says on my resume: Mandarin!

– Language is will. If you want to speak Cantonese, you speak Cantonese. But of course, you never try to speak Cantonese because your mind doesn’t want to speak Cantonese. Cantonese is more better. A lot.

Lia was from Malaysia. She has been living in Hong Kong for twenty years and although she spoke perfect Cantonese (as far I knew), she still couldn’t read any Chinese characters. I had to read her the menu every time we went to restaurant together. This was our biggest battle: I should speak Cantonese and I didn’t. I wasn’t even trying according to her.

Lia took a piece of paper and scribbled some pinyin (phonetic Cantonese) for me.

– This is what you say.

Good timing. Already, the phone was ringing:

– 我…点可以帮助你？

– Isabella 小姐系唔系口？

– er… 等一下啊！

Good news: people talked to me now. And my accent seemed alright. Bad news: outside the introduction, I still wasn’t speaking — or understanding for that matters — Cantonese. Fuck. I only got the name of the receptionist in the sentence that followed. Thanks Isabella for choosing a Western name. I pressed 1 to transfer the call.

The following months were misery. Every time the office had lunch, I was told to stay at my desk to take messages. My Cantonese didn’t improve but I quickly learned to spot names in the long sentences that usually followed my — now perfect — introduction line. Every time the phone rang, I felt like unplugging it and running away. I was still shy and I hated Lia for making me do that. I hated the phone for ringing that often.

When I arrived in Canada, I faced another problem. I spoke both official languages, which was already a good thing. Although it was taking me a lot of energy to understand English clearly over the phone. Without body language, I was often lost in the details. And come to think of it, Quebec accent didn’t work that well either. Words sounded distorted, I couldn’t tell whether the person was joking and numbers… well, numbers don’t usually agree with me, but accented numbers were worse.

Too bad I had secured a contract in a call center.

My phone was ringing almost non-stop, and I couldn’t use the pause button too much otherwise my supervisor was behind me back within seconds. But my head was constantly pounding. As soon as I was seeing the blue “French” button, I prayed that I’d get some big cities people, who usually spoke with less accent. English line? Please, not another guy from fucking middle of nowhere town with a bad connexion!

The misery last a few months. I then worked as a receptionist, a secretary, a salesperson and I finally got a job as a teacher. Best part of it is, I never ever have to answer the phone. I do everything by email and I usually tell phones lovers that I can’t be reached easily because I’m in a classroom 6 hours a day. They don’t always understand me : “why don’t you get a cell phone then?”. I guess I should have them to read this posts.

And you. Yes, you. Please don’t call me. Just write something below.

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– Paper, papier. Pen, crayon. Table, table. Chair, chaise. Black­board, tableau. Note­book, cah.…

I wish John would shut up. But you see, John is so enthu­si­as­tic about his French train­ing that he has to mum­ble vocab­u­lary on his way to class. For now, I’m try­ing to open the bloody class­room door. Stuck, as usual. Or… do I have the right set of keys?

– Keys, clés.

John added a new word to his vocab­u­lary. He’s already pulling his elec­tronic trans­la­tor out of his brief­case to check the trans­la­tion. John is fifty-something. He’s an exec­u­tive. His employees dread his well-known out­bursts — he’s your basic worka­holic. The guy is a bit short-tempered, indeed. But here, John is Jean and he learns French. No choice: his posi­tion was recently changed to bilin­gual imperative.

The door finally opens and I let John in. The class won’t start before another 30 min­utes and I just have the time to eat my sand­wich. Another day at work. I pull a brown paper bag out of my bag and grab a news­pa­per. Hope­fully, John will get the mes­sage. I’m just com­ing from a three hours class at the City Hall and the last thing I want to do right now is small talk. This is my san­ity time. Before another three hours class.

Thirty min­utes later, peo­ple are gath­er­ing in the hall­way. If I don’t open the door wide, they won’t come in. Despite the fact that the room has a huge glass door and they can see me sit­ting at the far end of the big meet­ing table. I won­der how long they would wait but I don’t feel like exper­i­ment­ing today. I get up and go open the door.

Stu­dents come in, chat­ting. A cou­ple of them are still hooked up to their Black­berry and all of them place their cell­phone on the table in front of them.

– Carla won’t come today, she’s sick. Mike will be thirty min­utes late. Greg won’t be here.

I some­times wish I could require a note from their par­ents. Unfor­tu­nately, it’s very unlikely my stu­dents will do it. After all, they are all between 30 and 60. I’m the baby of the class but they take me seri­ously. They’d bet­ter. I’m the teacher.

I let them chat for a cou­ple of min­utes while I pull out my fold­ers and my pens. I then raise my voice:

– Ça va bien aujourd’hui ?

I carry about thirty pho­to­copies with me. Time to lighten my bag: I dis­trib­ute them and try to bribe my stu­dents in tak­ing the absen­tees’ copy. No way I’m bring­ing them back next week, only to find out more peo­ple didn’t show up.

Alright, time to cor­rect the assign­ments. I asked them to write a let­ter, let’s see what they came up with. I love cor­rect­ing papers. Armed with my slightly leak­ing red pen, I read aloud and scrib­ble notes in the mar­gins. I dis­sect. I explain. Clear­ing up a spe­cific gram­mar point makes me happy. It’s like untan­gling a knot. I can tell whether my stu­dents under­stand just by look­ing at them. So far so good—they even take notes today. Such atten­tive­ness isn’t com­mon: the class­room is a place for drama, a place to vent a bit, to for­get the hier­ar­chy. I often com­pare the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment to the “1984″ novel: some words don’t make any sense (“account­abil­ity”, “person-month”…) nor do some politics.

This is a writ­ing class. Stu­dents have a pretty good French level but they need to prac­tice their writ­ing because they all hold bilin­gual posi­tions. Each class, I give them assign­ment: usu­ally writ­ing a short let­ter, an email, min­utes of a meet­ing etc. Prob­lem is, when they print out their paper at the office, a few of them reported it was mis­tak­enly sent to trans­la­tion. Indeed, Eng­lish speak­ers are required to have any­thing they write trans­lated by the trans­la­tion bureau. No mat­ter how good their French is. What’s the point of this class, then? Well, in the­ory, they have to be able to write in French. But it will never happen. So, when they print out their assign­ment, my stu­dents have to specify it’s for their French classes, oth­er­wise, it’s cor­rected and trans­lated auto­mat­i­cally. Stu­pid pol­i­tics, I said…

One of the stu­dents looks like she’s on the verge of tears. This is typ­i­cally a case of “I failed the com­pe­ti­tion for a new posi­tion”. What adds to her mis­ery is the fact that mum­bling John was sit­ting at the panel—I’ll learn that at the end of the class. Ouch. There’s more drama in my class­room than in the OC.

Take the woman sit­ting at the far left. She’s obvi­ously preg­nant. Very preg­nant as a mat­ter of fact. But she didn’t men­tion it, prob­a­bly because she can’t: her man­ager is sit­ting in front of her and she didn’t offi­cially tell him. So we all have to pre­tend she’s not preg­nant. Office pol­icy: she will tell him when she’s sure she can take her mater­nity leave and mean­while, we avoid look­ing at her nice rounded belly.

By the end of the class, I have usu­ally fin­ished my big bot­tle of water and I have red ink all over my hands. I let them go ten min­utes ear­lier—so that they get a chance to linger a bit. I pro­vided three hours of free­dom. Teach­ing 101: stay away from office politics.

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Summer usually brings the worse students, along with those too busy to take classes the rest of the year and whose only chance is to come to school when the Parliament isn’t in session. I don’t mind those ones. They’re usually focused on their studies because they’re desperate to pass their French test, which will entitle them to a promotion or a pay rise. But the weirdoes…

Some students are sent to French training only because no one wants them around at the office. Mentally unstable. Bossy. Slackers. Those who don’t give a damn about French and made it clear from day one. Those who are used to praise and can’t take criticisms—let alone basic grammar corrections. These are the ones we teach during the summer.

My Monday morning started off fine. I didn’t miss the bus and arrived early enough to grab a Coke and a muffin. I made my way to the classroom and met the school principal on the way. “Who are you teaching today? Oh… him?” I sensed something was up with the student I haven’t met yet but didn’t have time to inquire further. Oh well, we’ll see.

Once in the classroom, he looked normal enough. We started off with a general conversation, covering basic topics. The week-end, work etc. Two hours later, after we took a small break, I figured it was time to ask about his expectations so that we could make a plan for his upcoming exam, in September. I shouldn’t have said anything. He withdrawn and stared at the window for a couple of minutes. Then turned back to me: “you’re really pissing me off right now. Get out.”

And so I was kicked out of my own classroom. That’s the first time that ever happened to me, but why not? I went downstairs to see the principal. Turned out his majesty doesn’t like to cooperate with teachers much and would rather talk about himself non-stop. A study plan? Out of question! Lucky me, my boss usually takes us, the teachers, pretty seriously. I won’t work with him anymore and they gave him one last chance to behave (he was apparently kicked out of two schools already). None of my business anymore.

Yet, this month, I had to work with:

• A hyperactive student: by the time I arrived in the classroom at 9am, he already had 3 cups of coffee on the table. He also had to go out at 10am, 11am and 12pm to… well, to get a refill, what else!

• An emotional lady: I say something, she cries. I comfort her, she cries more. I test her, she cries. Very repetitive classes ahead but at least, she’s consistent.

• A blackberry addict: 9:01, reply to an email. 9:02, started checking his emails. 9:03, answer the phone because one employee didn’t reply to his 9:01 email. When asked to put his crackberry away said it had to keep it because he didn’t have a watch and he needed to know the time.

• The depressed: failed his exam 15 times, about to fail another 16th time. Not that he’s going to question himself anyway. It’s the teacher’s fault, the government’s fault and the FBI’s fault. I want to believe…

• The dysfunctional class: 50% male and 50% female. 50% employees and 50% executives & directors. 50% making more than 100 000$/ year, 50% on short term contract and belonging to a staffing agency. Good luck, heated work arguments ahead.

In September, the usual students will be back. Sure, they will complain non-stop about the fact learning French is useless, that the exam isn’t fair and the examiners are biased. I can deal with that.

Meanwhile, I’m a psychologist with a teacher’s salary and without the Dr. benefits.

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Morning Coffee

–What time do you finish ?
– I’ll be done at 4 pm.
– Alright, I’ll pick you up in front of the Supreme Court then.
– The Supreme Court ? Where is that ? We’ve never ate there, have we ?

Feng burst out laughing. Right. Not a Chinese restaurant but the actual Supreme Court of Canada, located right behind Industry Canada.

Oh crap. It’s 8:50 and my brain is still sleeping. I ought to wake up.

I extricate myself from the car, a task harder than usual considering I’m holding a can of Diet Coke and my handbag, slung across my shoulder, is bursting with colored folders, papers, photocopies and pens.

I step on the sidewalk and slam the car’s passenger door. I stand there and root around my handbag and pull out a lighter. Woohoo, first victory of the day, not a small one considering the mess in my bag.

I brace myself for my first class of the morning. Who, why, which floor, which room ? Names of students flash through my mind. Oh. Them.

I’m the teacher. What we will do today is up to me. For now, I’m just sitting on the concrete low wall in front of the Ministry, mentally preparing myself for the daily transition. From student to teacher, from traveler to office worker. From being bossed around to leading people. Seems like I’m going somewhere. But the change is brutal.

I get my pass from the security desk and head towards the elevators. We’re about twenty people on the main floor. Everyone is holding some kind of caffeine beverage and we’re all staring at the green elevator light. 20^th. 19^th. 18^th. I’d take the stairs but I can’t open the back door with my visitor pass. An elevator finally makes it to the main floor and everyone sight with relief.

We cram in the elevator. The woman on my left looks poorly.
– Are you going to the meeting at 10:00 ?
– No, I can’t. I have French.

– Oh.

Her co-worker nods bleakly. Everyone in the elevator nods when they hear the word “French” as if at some infinitely painful memory. I cower back and put my hand over my top folder’s title. “Grammaire”.
Patiently, I give advice, cheer up students who always cry in class before the exam, I explain, I dissect French language, I repeat again and again.

I got used to the teaching lingo. Like when we fill up the log book:

• “Morning : oral interaction, emphasize put on past tenses and describing.”
  Translation : “talked about shopping all morning without taking notes.”

• “Afternoon : cultural activity with the class.”
  Translation : “intended to go visit the Parliament again, was too hot, ended up in a nearby coffee shop”

• “John needs to focus on his conjugations and building up vocabulary.“
  Translation : “this idiot has been in training for 5 months and still can’t make a proper sentence by himself”.

• “Quizzed the class on various grammatical aspects of French.“
  Translation : “anyone ? Anyone ? Anyone ? No one would answer even the most basic question !”

I still sometimes wonder what I’m doing here. I love teaching. But do I belong here, between the cubicles and the coffee room ?

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