Monday, October 24, 2005

I think I have a precarious situation at hand. Ok, maybe I exaggerate abit, but it is still quite bad.

Well, you people know what I do for a living. At peak, I have 14 students. There are times where students keep on knocking on doors requesting me, yes, yours truly to teach but I am forced to turn them down because I have no more time slots left. I then do recommendations to people I know and could do handy with a tutee.

Till now, I do not have any problems. For example, I share 2 tutees with Kaiqi, I hand one of my tutee to Zhihao, I recommend one student to Pauline, and the last, a student to He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named-Until-I-Confront-Him. Do take note that I am not gossiping behind his back. I am just feeling a little lost and thrown off balance and desperately needs an outlet for venting.

There's this sec 2 Catholic High student that approached me till the time when my grandma passed away. To be more exact, his mother called me. She was recommended by my ex tutor, Mr Gan. According to her, her son scored A1 in math, and a2 in science, and SHE THINKS IT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. From our first conversation, I knew she belongs to the 'like-to-talk-complain-too-much-haolian parent' category. I even saved her number as Trouble. Ooh, am I good in predicting a catastrophe ..This case proved to be a headache.

During that period, I was at my grandma's funeral almost everyday and I did not have the mood to take in any more students, even though I still have time slots. I approached 3 other tutors teaching at mr Gan's to teach, but they rejected it.

I am not supposed to recommend tutors outside of Mr Gan's circle since he found this student. But heck, I thought of You Know Who and I remember him saying that he wanted some extra money. Since I tried(ok i din try very hard) to ask other tutors, I decided to risk it and introduce You Know Who to the mother. Soon, You Know Who got the job, everything got settled and even wanted to give me a movie treat. So far so good.

Fast foward to 2 months later. The mother called to complain. Not to me, but to Mr Gan. According to him, she talked for 51 minutes about the atrocities You Know Who commited.

Crime No. 1
1) Going off 15 minutes earlier for one particular lesson
Actually this one still not that bad, because he only charged her $9 per hr(which she claims is expensive) But, tutors who are more responsible will definitely go through that full hour with the student.

Crime No. 2
2) Dismissing many chapters as irrelevant, which eventually came out for exam
Ok, I commit this crimes some time as well. I can say that You Know Who is suay also. But still, as tutors, it is normally better to go through all topics.

Crime No. 3
3) Resting his entire upper body on the table, thus initiating student to do as well.
Ok, maybe You Know Who is tired, but still, it is very bad for the student's attention span.

Crime No. 4
4) Putting his feet on the table and picking his toe
Ok, maybe he needs to stretch his muscles and maybe his ingrown toenail is coming up. But still, why during lesson?!

Crime No. 5
5) LYING ON THE SOFA WHILE TEACHING!
You got me into trouble!!

Crime No. 6
6) Ok, the mother ask him to teach her sec 1 son LIGHT, then according to her, he say the chapter is too difficult he do not know how to teach, so he do not want to teach
Basically, I do question the authenticity of this incident. But, if this is true. YOU SHALL DIE, Mr You Know Who!

Why am I so upset by the quality of my friend's tutoring? It is kind of like a quality control thingy. If I recommend this particular person to this parent and she takes him, it means that she trust my recommendation and respect my opinions. In a situation like that, if someone commit this type of crimes, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FACE THE PARENT ?! And in the case of this, I have to answer to Mr Gan as well, because I kinda steal his student over for my friend, which did a very irresponsible job, which in turns harms his reputation as a broker for tuition. Oh my.

I called to apologise to this parent this morning and she talked to me for about 90 minutes, wasting my perfect morning I could have spent fruitfully studying on my piano theory exam coming up this Saturday. I am still procrastinating on the call to Mr Gan to apologise.

Great. Just great. And what did I do wrong?! Ok perhaps I should have taken into more care to look into that person's character before I do a recommendation. I do know that he is a very lazy person whose motto in life is 'heck care'. Yes, I am fully aware of that. But why did he not do a good job? Ain't he aware that I am responsible because of my recommendation? Oh my god, at the thinking of this, I feel like strangling him.

Lesson of the day : I will never be kaypoh again.