People, in general, are selfish. When you sign up for lessons at E's studio, you sign a contract. Part of the contract states that if you are sick, please do not come to your lesson because you may infect those that are around you in close quarters (like your teacher for one).
Last week, 2 students came that were sick, sick, sick. One of them a child of a general practitioner. I will grant you that the doctor was away and the child was being driven around by friends and family, but when the child can not see due to the eyes watering or breathe due to the nose running, it's a good clue that the child should not be going out in public as a whole and should be in bed! But no...these people bring the child to her private piano lesson (with me) and a group vocal lesson (with E & 5 other kids)!! Come on!! Morons!!
Then on Tuesdays my first student is a 4 year old. A 4 year old who can't blow his own nose. A 4 year old who, like all other 4 year olds don't know the warning signs of a sneeze. Again, the kids eyes were puffy and watery from a miserable cold and his nose was running like a tap, but because it was the 2nd lesson ever, the mother didn't want him to miss it and appear like a slacker! OMG!! Instead, the kid who at 4 doesn't know what signs he has before he sneezes, sneezes all over me!!!
Oh yeah...I hate kids at the best of time, but having a kid sneeze all over me REALLY doesn't do anyone any good.
Thursday morning at 5:10am, I woke up with a burning sore throat and a stuffed up nose. I have a husband who is immune deficient and I have a concert on jan. 31st to sing for and we are suppossed to be rehearsing actively. Oh! I am also slef-employed without medical coverage, so I do not get sick time.
People, in general, are selfish. When you bring your child to their lesson with them being sick, they are endangering those around them in tight quarters (like other students, but mainly the teacher) and I'd bet money that these people are not withotu sick day or sick pay like I am/we are. It is very selfish of people to put their interests above the interests of the whole studio, especially after being asked not to do that exact thing.
The main reason they do this, I beleive is two-fold. 1) The parent doesn't want to deal with the sick child and if they ignore the illness or make them continue to do their scheduled things then the parent's life is not disrupted and 2) the missed lesson due to the child being sick is forfeited (sp?) in that studio. If you are sick, you still pay for the lesson and a make-up lesson is not offered.
I would rather offer a make up lesson than to be putting myself or my husband or my income at risk by selfish people!
2 comments:
Amen.
Being another who is immune compromised, I hated it when I would go into the office and would see people walking around with damp hankies and tissues boxes due to the amount of crap they were spewing from their orifices. And I always wondered, how much work did they really get done those days? Besides the work of getting all those germs into the enclosed environmental systems so they could navigate throughout the building and make everyone else sick, I mean.
In Japan, if you are the least bit sick, you are expected to stay home or to at least take precautions like wearing a surgical mask so you will not infect others, as that would be disrespectful. I think this is a great plan.
And if more people would stay home the one day when they first start feeling sick, more would find that they actually get over it faster.
or 3) the parent thinks, "oh, the kid's just got a small cold, it's been going around, everyone has it." People who are rarely sick simply cannot relate to someone who is immuno-compromised. It's not even in their realm of comprehension. They're selfish, yes, but they also just cannot even fathom such a situation. That doesn't excuse them, but it's an explanation for why it doesn't occur to them the extent to which they may be hurting others.
It has been so ingrained in our society that you're a lazy ass if you stay home with "just a cold". Most people care about what others think, so they drug themselves up and head in to the office/school/etc. There is no incentive to fix yourself and protect others. This is the current culture, and would take a lot of effort to change.
There is also the argument of rampant abuse. Some regard sick days as "owed" to them, basically extra vacation days. I have never taken a sick day unless I was actually sick, but I think I am in the minority.
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