So since I finished graduate school I had been mostly poking around in the non-existent job market here (especially non-existent after the oil crash). I signed up to work for a tutoring company in April and it's generally been pretty shitty, with a boss who is utterly incompetent and completely disregards any sort of basic sensibility. First, I was hired and immediately not scheduled for three weeks, even though I was told he had 12 hours a week of work for me (I have never worked 12 hours in my entire time there). When I go to work I never know exactly when I will be working. For example, he sprang on me yesterday that he was tacking an extra hour onto my work, which I hadn't planned for. Great. Work has also been really inconsistent, and sometimes I will be called in to work for one hour! It cost me like half my pay to bus there and back. And he loves to blame things that are his fault on me, like letting students go on too long when I wasn't told how long students are scheduled for. The job is also about an hour of transit away. After my graduate school experience being godawful, I was starting to feel my faith in humanity, and specifically bosses, was pretty much into the negatives.
With that in mind, I decided to look for a job that would not directly conflict with the job I had, because I want the reference from the tutoring center for my teaching application even though it is pretty bad, so I applied to some retail stuff to mostly work mornings. After a few months I ended up getting hired at a Starbucks as primarily a morning worker. I really didn't know what to expect, but it's been so great so far. My boss is really nice and accommodating (and is even a geek girl), and all of my coworkers are super chill and friendly. It's largely situated in a neighborhood filled with old people, who are largely nice and enjoy interacting with young people. Also... so much free coffee.
I have been balancing the multiple jobs pretty well, although the days I work at both jobs can be pretty difficult. But yesterday, at my tutoring job, I was confronted by my boss, who said a parent had called and complained that his daughter didn't get all the answers right on her homework and that he wasn't impressed. Of course, at the tutoring center I have three students at once for an hour or so, so you allocate relatively smaller amounts of time to every student, so you can't really thoroughly check everyone's homework, and that essentially my job is to outline how to get to the right answer, not to do a student's homework. Which of course my boss is aware of. The format just doesn't work that well for a student who needs a lots of attention.
At this point I start to wonder if the job is really worth it, especially since I have a second job to fall back on. The extra income is obviously really nice, but the commute is really long and the job isn't very enjoyable (and doesn't pay so well that I would feel horrible quitting).
