Schools are Not Business Friendly

This morning was a very proud moment for me because my youngest son Bradley, aged 9, was giving a prepared speech to his whole grade and my wife and I were invited to hear him. What a thrill!

I usually get to work at around 6.45 a.m. Bradley was speaking at 9 a.m. Thursday night was a sleepless venture for me as I tossed and turned deciding whether to go to work first and then go to the school or arrive with my wife at 8.55 a.m after a leisurely morning at home. My boss is away in California and one other co-worker called in sick with Fridayitus, leaving our desk as lean as one of the cows in biblical Joseph's second dream.

I decided to go to work for a couple of hours and then scramble from Midtown East to the Upper West side where the school is located. If work became too busy I would have to forfeit the speech and slump at my desk and act miserable all day annoying my colleagues. I am an expert at that and so when I announced at the morning meeting that I had to leave for a couple of hours mid morning, it was greeted with astonishment and despair, which quickly turned to tacit agreement and compassion. My contemporaries had known me long enough to realize that if I were unable to attend my son's big moment, reverberations would be felt across the whole city, with its epicenter temporarily implanted on my desk to my immediate left and right.

I arose from my desk at 8.30am bemoaning the school's timetable. Don't the organizers of these events realize that parents actually have to work to pay for the tuition at these private schools? If I am not at my desk trading then I cant possibly make any money so in essence it was costing me money attending my son's event at school. I walked towards the subway station contemplating a conversation with the Principal of the school that I would have shortly after "The big event." I would demand a refund for this mornings tuition claiming that my attendance left me in no position to earn the money to pay. Of course in reality life doesn't work in this way. Schools are not business friendly. This event would be much easier to attend if it were at 7 o'clock at night but good luck in finding any teachers willing to stay late to accommodate working parents. It's not as if we pay their wages? Hold on a second. We do pay their salaries and give them holiday presents and give a donation to the school on top of that, which I hope trickles down in some manner to the teachers.

I arrived at school with all these thoughts whizzing around my head. I managed to compose myself for the sixty seconds that Bradley spoke. It was one of the finest minutes of my life. He was fabulous. I had huge pangs of pride that lifted my spirits and erased all negative feelings towards the school timetable. I returned to work full of optimism about the human spirit and about the virtues of fatherhood. It lasted until I sat down at my desk and looked at my screen that showed seas of red. The school trip had cost me fortunes and I am now writing to the school with a very detailed explanation of why I am asking for a one day tuition refund!