Gizza Job

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An interview for a smallish language school.

I arrive at 0900 for the interview. A man greets me, reads my CV and asks a few informal questions, before handing me over to a second man four feet away, who reads the CV and asks the same questions. He then asks me to come back in five hours for the "real" interview, and spends half an hour trying to print out the application form so I can apply for the interview we've just arranged.

He wanders off to find the first man to ask him why his printer isn't working. The first man wanders in, fixes the printer and I take away the form to copy the CV they've already got onto, and bring back later.

I arrive at 1430, to find the second man still out to lunch. He arrives, doesn't even ask for the form I've filled out, but produces his own form of prepared questions. But first, there's a preliminary question:

Interviewer: I understand you know about computers.

Kapitano's Mind: Oh fuck.

Kapitano: Yes....

Int: I was wondering if you could tell me why my printer isn't working.

Kapitano's Mind: Here we go again. Here we fucking go again.

Kapitano: Probably a network or a driver problem. Let me see....

It was indeed a driver problem.

Then there was the list of prepared questions:

Interviewer: Many of your students would be Arabs. Do you have a problem with that?

Kapitano's Mind: Arabs? You mean Muslims don't you. You're asking me whether I hate Muslims. Not foreigners in general, not immigrants, not people with darker skin than me. Muslims.

Kapitano: No of course not.

Interviewer: Should a lesson be teacher oriented or student oriented?

Kapitano's Mind: Oh what a difficult question. Oh I can't possibly guess what the right answer is. Anyone who understands the question knows what to say, as you and I know perfectly well, so what's the point in asking?

Kapitano: It should be student oriented.

Interviewer: How much time should be student talking time, and how much teacher talking time?

Kapitano's Mind: What a fuckwitted thing to ask. It's not like I'm going to stand in the lesson timing my sentences with a stopwatch and failing to explain something because I've gone over my quota of seconds.

Kapitano: Well...pulling a figure out of the air, I'd say 70% should be student talking time.

Interviewer: What sort of relationship should you have with your colleagues?

Kapitano's Mind: Five of them will be mindbogglingly mediocre at their jobs, two borderline incompetent, one staggeringly incompetent, two pretty good and one absolutely brilliant. I've got absolutely no interest in these people outside of the basic courtesies of working together. Apart from the really cute but completely straight one, and the insecure one I have the brief fling with.

Kapitano: Friendly but not friends.

Interviewer: Should you allow students to speak in their native language during lessons?

Kapitano's Mind: Oh Jesus H fucking Christ on a shitty trike. Is this man one of those managerial imbeciles who read once in a book that all lessons should be entirely in the target language, or is he an actual teacher who knows the books are wrong? Hmmm.

Kapitano: If students are quickly helping each other out, that's fine. If they're having conversations, it's not.

Interviewer: What areas of your teaching do you feel you could improve on?

Kapitano's Mind: I'm virtually a beginner, you great twonk. It all needs improving. As you already know 'cos I told you this morning.

Kapitano: I need to improve my teaching of basics to beginners.

I start on Monday.

Exactly what I start on Monday is a little unclear, because they won't know till then how many students they've actually got, and so won't know whether they need a full time teacher, a part timer, or someone to fill in when someone else is ill.

But...I do have a job. Of some kind, And it's five minutes walk from home. So I didn't actually need to go to Bulgaria at all.

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