Hey all,
So I work with a dispatch company as an assistant language teacher. I teach English in a few junior high schools in the town I live in. Anyway, before my current assignment, I worked in a different city, and really hated it there. Due to issues with how contracts are handled in that city, I was moved to my current assignment, and now the company is making me go back to the one I had before. There is no way to change the location I go to, despite my protests to the company. They had the power to change it, and I asked them to at least look for a different location, but I doubt they even bothered to look and just fed me a line that there was nothing. In fact, I am almost positive of this because I have seen job listings for the company on different job search websites.
But yeah, over this time I have been looking for a way to get out of this company, for that reason, and also because it has a well-deserved bad reputation in this country for the way it treats its employees. I have managed to earn an interview with one potential employer that would be a nice step up for me in terms of both pay and career path. The problem is that in this last month of my contract, it seems all but impossible to be able to find a way to take a day off. My last teaching days at my schools are coming up fast, and this next week I already have to take a half-day off to go turn in my visa renewal papers, so I doubt they would give me another day off this week to do that. The company has already used that fact to try to trick me into signing the contract to go back to that city, but I caught them at their game and said I wasn't ready to sign it yet. So they know I'm looking, and I have a sinking feeling that if I request a day off, they will be vindictive and deny me the day out of spite. Something that, unfortunately, is not illegal to do. I can't call in sick either, as a doctor's note is required in order to do that (don't ask me how I'm supposed to get a doctor's note before I call in sick... it's just an asinine policy). The company I would like to interview with has told me they can only meet me on a work day during business hours, so I am forced to find some way to make it work. It is too far away to get there and back on the half-day I'm given. I have no idea what to do. I don't want to miss out on this opportunity because of my current employer's vindictive bullshit (and they have pulled MUCH worse on their employees than what I am describing now). I can't just "not show up" because the school will call the company wondering where I am. It would be dishonest to try to ask the school to let me go without telling the company, but at this point it seems to be the closest to a realistic option I have. How would you go about trying to get a day off in this situation?
So I work with a dispatch company as an assistant language teacher. I teach English in a few junior high schools in the town I live in. Anyway, before my current assignment, I worked in a different city, and really hated it there. Due to issues with how contracts are handled in that city, I was moved to my current assignment, and now the company is making me go back to the one I had before. There is no way to change the location I go to, despite my protests to the company. They had the power to change it, and I asked them to at least look for a different location, but I doubt they even bothered to look and just fed me a line that there was nothing. In fact, I am almost positive of this because I have seen job listings for the company on different job search websites.
But yeah, over this time I have been looking for a way to get out of this company, for that reason, and also because it has a well-deserved bad reputation in this country for the way it treats its employees. I have managed to earn an interview with one potential employer that would be a nice step up for me in terms of both pay and career path. The problem is that in this last month of my contract, it seems all but impossible to be able to find a way to take a day off. My last teaching days at my schools are coming up fast, and this next week I already have to take a half-day off to go turn in my visa renewal papers, so I doubt they would give me another day off this week to do that. The company has already used that fact to try to trick me into signing the contract to go back to that city, but I caught them at their game and said I wasn't ready to sign it yet. So they know I'm looking, and I have a sinking feeling that if I request a day off, they will be vindictive and deny me the day out of spite. Something that, unfortunately, is not illegal to do. I can't call in sick either, as a doctor's note is required in order to do that (don't ask me how I'm supposed to get a doctor's note before I call in sick... it's just an asinine policy). The company I would like to interview with has told me they can only meet me on a work day during business hours, so I am forced to find some way to make it work. It is too far away to get there and back on the half-day I'm given. I have no idea what to do. I don't want to miss out on this opportunity because of my current employer's vindictive bullshit (and they have pulled MUCH worse on their employees than what I am describing now). I can't just "not show up" because the school will call the company wondering where I am. It would be dishonest to try to ask the school to let me go without telling the company, but at this point it seems to be the closest to a realistic option I have. How would you go about trying to get a day off in this situation?