This week saw me doing more work than I have had for many a year as Ambrose was still on holiday and he left me in charge of the tutoring centre at Dudley: “for the blind shall lead the blind...” He had left me some scribbled notes about what I needed to do and who to expect and the two girl assistants were supposed to be doing all the planing so I was more playing the role of cash collector and trouble shooter than anything. To be fair I did not take much notice of the notes or overly worry apart from the Saturday early start at 0900 hours.
I had a phone call from Chi (top girl) Sunday asking if I needed my planning doing for Monday as they were both in the centre planning for Ambrose’s students. This I thought was above and beyond the call of duty and told them to go home and that I’d plan my own, knowing full well I am a master of making things up on the spot and it was unlikely everyone would turn up the first week back after Christmas break.
So I made my way in for the first opening and noticed immediately that the phone was still on divert to Ambrose’s phone so we had no communication with the outside world. Quite a mistake I think as at least two parents complained they had tried ringing and only brought their children in on speck. The place was freezing cold and my first task was to turn all the heaters on and thaw everything out. Had trouble booting up the main computer than found he had left a memory stick plugged in and windows was trying to start from that; remove stick and stay calm.
Found the register to be useless as it had many names I recognised as having left months previously and was missing most of the children that did turn up. In the end I made my own daily list and kept tabs on who paid and how much they paid. Here was a big problem as the gaffer seems to work to his own system here. They are all supposed to pay £25 a session, but I found many were paying £23 or even £22 per child. This isn’t too bad for regulars with more that two children I suppose but, those rob dogs at Kip Mcgrath still charge a full amount per head as a term of the franchise.
Things went more or less smoothly through the week, I even remembered to buy newspapers for the waiting room that were completely ignored by the parents and apart from the phones and running out of inks we had no problems. The next major task I had was banking the cash. This Ambrose had not really thought out as he does the weekly bank on a Friday and the weekend just before they close Saturday, but as I had no intention of going to Duldley just to bank cash on a Friday I had to sort it out for the Thursday. Of course the Thursday night session turned out to be one of the bigger turn outs and I had a wallet full of cash again which I decided to bank Saturday when I did the weekend payments. This turned out to be a mistake as I was half asleep when people started throwing money at me and I mixed up the cash.
So one way or another, despite sitting up to watch Wayne’s World until after 0100 hours I managed to get into the centre before 0900 and I was told Mervette (other teacher) would be waiting for me, but what I actually found was the damn security door on the stairwell wouldn’t open despite many attempts and I was faced with scaling over the banister to open it from the inside.
Now I don’t know why, but ever since it had been installed I had weighed up this method of entry so I was not unduly concerned. However, with he first children waiting to get in I realised I would now have an audience. As I was wearing leather soled shoes I did not even consider trying to balance on the metal hand rail but, rather sensibly used the points where the handrail joined the banisters as balancing points. This worked very well and I was soon over and safely behind the door much to the disappointment of the two kids who were probably expecting me to plummet to my death. 🙂 All this and still no sign of their teacher.
The day went well and despite the lack of sleep I found I could cope quite well until it came time to balance the books. I had got all the banking in successfully but, as on the Thursday there were a lot of payments that fell after the banks had closed. I also forgot to enter the exact amount I’d paid into the one bank (yes I know two banks?) so I had to guess as best I could. It must have took me best part of two hours to sort through the cocked up register and odd payments but I finally got a balance with a £1.20 deficit that I felt I could live with. Chi was still finishing some Monday planning for next week so I composed a report for Ambrose and copied up my scribbled accounts into a legible order.
It was after 16:00 by now and the traffic had picked up so it took me best part of an hour to get home. I was pretty knackered by then and badly in need of a cuppa. I made sure the stair door was working before leaving so hopefully I won’t find Ambrose lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs Monday.
I now know the turnover is roughly £28000 per annum but, I know the franchise eats deeply into this, more than I would be prepared to pay them. I even managed to find some work for a new student that nobody seemed to be aware of. I quite enjoyed it overall but, the bus travel did my head in. The Thursday bus was fifteen minutes late and only left Bilston five minutes before the next bus was due. I could quite cheerfully never use public transport again.
By the way, I realised the 11th January was the date I had cheated death in 2013 😉