Interviewing a physical anthropologist for a writing project, my line of questioning prompted this response: “Be careful not to anthropomorphize.” Though the subject at the time was chimpanzees, I now know firsthand that it is also dangerous to attribute human characteristics to businesspeople.
I spent two school years teaching for Park Century School, where I established rapport with coworkers and administration. In February 2019, I informed administration that I would be moving cities, and thus changing schools, effective August 25th, 2019. I wanted to be a good person and provide my friends in administration the opportunity to fill my position with a quality teacher. Park Century responded by “accelerating [my] termination” to June 30th. With aid from the legal team that tuition in the $60,000 per year ballpark affords, Park Century School found a loophole in an age-old problem wherein “paying employees eats into the bottom line.”
Park Century offered me my first contract July 7, 2017 for a teaching position with a yearly salary that the school dictated would take effect August 16, 2017. I outperformed my first position and my first annual salary by saving the school money on substitutes. I took on extra duties. I made friends with colleagues and received praise from the administration before being offered a promotion and a raise to take effect July 1, 2018.
Did you catch it? The business has a fiscal year that starts in July but mention of this fiscal year is conspicuously absent from contracts and handbooks. Based on the school’s chosen start date and their mysterious fiscal year, it was impossible to work a full year and therefore impossible earn the annual salary stated in bold in the contract. Park Century provided themselves one calendar year of teaching at the covertly discounted rate of 10-and-a-half months of a stated in bold annual salary. The cloak and dagger manipulation of Park Century deployed “at will” contract language while obscuring a “fiscal year” that only administration was aware of.
My excitement and ease with administration provided an ideal distraction as the business re-aligned my salary to coincide with the 2018-2019 fiscal year. The final month-and-a-half of my first “annual salary” disappeared before I knew it was gone. Nobody in administration mentioned the disappearance while I fought through a ruptured Achilles in January of 2019 to teach two days post-rupture. Nobody in administration mentioned my loss of income when I returned to teaching after taking one day off post-surgery despite my surgeon’s urging that I take two weeks off work (potentially jeopardizing my recovery). The administration smiled and told me how sad they were to see me go when I provided advanced notice to avoid leaving Park Century teacher-less in August 2019. My anthropomorphizing of administrators enabled the business to make more money by not paying for the full two years of work completed.
Abruptly, Human Resources called me in to discuss how I wanted to pay health insurance for July and August given that my school coverage would end June 30th. Achilles recovery included weekly physical therapy visits. I could no longer afford those visits as the school refused to pay my salary at the same time that it stripped my benefits. Terminating a teaching contract “at will” after the school year but before the teacher earns their full annual salary and benefits should be illegal. That it should be illegal is so abundantly obvious as to seem common sense. Such common sense proved immaterial to the Human Resources department. Be careful not to anthropomorphize.
I could have omitted the reality of my departure just as the business omitted their fiscal year. I could have received a raise and been paid through August and terminated my new contract “at will” on the first day of school. In that scenario, I would have received pay and benefits earned over the summer by still not working. It was summer and teachers don’t work over summer. Teachers earn their pay during the school year. The business would have been without an 8thgrade teacher but would have plugged someone into my position and rolled on. I imagine administrators would have been angry. I imagine parents would have been outraged. As an individual human, I imagine being ostracized, alienated, and vilified. Students excited to be in my class would have been crestfallen. I teach for the students, and I could not bear the burden of lying to them and walking away without saying goodbye.
Businesses do not hold themselves to the same moral standard as humans. Businesses do not hold themselves to any standard other than capital gain. Businesses do not care about children. Businesses rely on humans to perform the tasks that keep them operating, but in their duties they are businesspeople and therefore should not be presumed human.
Park Century is a business. Interacting with the humans operating the business of Park Century School, I anthropomorphized them when I heard kind words coming out of their mouths and saw emotions on their faces. A powerful person inviting me to their home for Thanksgiving seemed to mean that the business wanted me to feel appreciated during my first holiday season in a new city, but of course Park Century did not care if I liked the homemade cranberry sauce. An administrator and softball teammate giving me a t-shirt did not signify that the business cared about my Achilles rupture and would provide physical therapy despite policies designed to make the business money at the expense of employees.
Los Angeles small claims Judge Lisa K. Sepe-Wiesenfeld found that Park Century did not owe me anything. Judge Lisa K. Sepe-Wiesenfeld was right to judge as she did. A business does not appreciate your hard work and sacrifice. A business has no interest in returning kindness by paying employees in contradiction to malicious, misleading, Machiavellian, but totally legal policies. A business doesn’t owe anyone anything. Businesses aren’t people. Businesses exist to earn money for people. So next time remember, your job is to take money when money is available, and you would do well to remember that two week’s notice is optional even if you won’t get invited back next Thanksgiving.
