nathandemick.com

my solution to a moral dilemma

I went into work today feeling the hatred towards mankind. Thursdays are long days for me, and I don’t have Friday to look forward to, since I also work on Saturday. I also managed to come down with a mild cold, which didn’t help my mood. It seems that my recent sicknesses have been stress-induced; this time, I think traveling across Japan for two days didn’t help my blood pressure at all. To top it all off, I went in today and discovered that I accidentally skipped teaching a class last week. Now, it’s not like I totally blew off some major class. I had 15 minutes of teaching time in a 1 and 1/2 hour class; they basically threw in that 15 minutes just to be tools. The Japanese teacher probably didn’t even KNOW I was supposed to be in there, and I sure forgot about it. However, the upshot of all this is that I left work 12 minutes early, which means that I have over 10 minutes of “lateness” for this month, the consequences of which is that I don’t get my 10,000 yen bonus for April. A few months ago, I resolved that if for any reason I lost my bonus, I would also take a few sick days that month. The rationale behind that is that if you use a sick day, you lose the bonus, but if the bonus is already lost, then sick days equal paid holidays.

If I wasn’t such a moral person, I would have walked right back out the door this morning, claiming sickness, because like I said, Thursdays suck. But I felt kinda guilty about all the students: there would be absolutely no one to take my place. I then decided to take Saturday off, because I really only teach one class that day, the rest of the time is filled with “office hours,” where I do absolutely nothing. Even after I decided that, however, I still felt guilty. I’d been reading bits of the Bible that talk about how you should basically suck it down when dealing with employers, even if they are morons. The idea, I guess, being that you show that you have a properly Christ-like attitude, you’ll eventually get your reward, etc. etc. So, deliberately screwing over my employer by calling in sick (even though they screw me every chance they get) seemed immoral.

At the same time, though, if I don’t skip work, I get nothing. I have to WORK! If I do skip, I get a nice, uninterrupted 7-day vacation, and there’s no downside because I already lost my monthly bonus. So, to solve this dilemma, here’s what I did. I decided that if I was accepted for that position in Osaka, I’d work on Saturday, because then I’d leave the darn school in two weeks. If I didn’t get it, then I would skip, because I’d be all bitter and whatnot, for not getting a technology-related job, again.

I’m skipping work on Saturday :P

5 comments · Written by Nathan at 9:26 pm ·

More ways to waste time

bash.org (I should be sleeping)
2channel (one of these days I’ll wade through this)

No comments · Written by Nathan at 1:26 am ·

LED Belt Buckle?

Here ya go, kids.

I’m almost, almost tempted to get one.

This would go great with my future Samuel L. Jackson t-shirt.

“English, mother****er! Do you speak it?”

(This page is rated PG! In production models, those asterisks would not be there, instead they would be replaced by letters which spell out a naughty word.)

No comments · Written by Nathan at 1:51 am ·