Summer In The City

Sum­mer usu­ally brings the worse stu­dents, along with those to 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 weirdos…

Morning Glory

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.

The Interviews From Hell

How many inter­views have I been to ? I’d say about thirty in Canada so far, ¾ of them in my first year in Ottawa. I was des­per­ate for a job but the odds seemed to be against me. At 20 years old, my resume was pretty short. I had no pre­vi­ous work expe­ri­ence in Canada. I had no ref­er­ences but abroad. My Eng­lish wasn’t that great and I wasn’t a Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent yet.

Dirty Little Secrets

How­ever, I soon dis­cov­ered that work­places bore some resem­blance with the world I was used to. Con­trary to my naive opin­ion, peo­ple don’t auto­mat­i­cally become smarter and well-behaved nor that they turn into hard-working knowl­edge­able pro­fes­sion­als once they get a job. Quite the oppo­site actu­ally. I also dis­cov­ered that every job had its dirty lit­tle secrets that only insid­ers know. And some­times, I was one of them.

Overtime Work And The Overreactive Alarm

I’ve never been a morn­ing per­son. Even though my high school days mem­o­ries are slowly start­ing to fade, I still remem­ber my last year. We had to attend classes Mon­day through Sat­ur­day start­ing at 8:00 am, and every­day was a strug­gle to get up.

The Teacher And The Test Dilemna

My stu­dents are office work­ers. I’m not — and their field of work and the arcane of the ubiq­ui­tous bureau­cracy can be bewil­der­ing for a rookie like me. Like when I was fil­ing up for another teacher last week for a Canada Rev­enue Agency class. So I came into the class, intro­duced myself and asked the stu­dents to do the same, one by one.

It's Been a Hard Day's Night

I’m a young office worker. The world is mine. As soon as I’ll fin­ish my cig­a­rette, I’ll go deal with the com­mis­sioner, a weekly task to which I excel. That’s life when you go teach at the government.

- Hi/ bon­jour, what’s your name ?

Great. A spelling bee con­test at 8:55. I must say that I love my name, but really, does it have to have 4 “i” and sev­eral con­so­nants peo­ple never know in which order to arrange ?

Us And Them

Office work­ers have always fas­ci­nated me. I used to see them in pub­lic trans­porta­tion, early in the morn­ing : guys drink­ing their daily shot of black java in some kind of fancy spill proof cup; women awk­wardly apply­ing another layer of make-up on their face. They looked busy. They looked like they had a goal and shared a com­mon cul­ture of which other were excluded.