Girls Behaving Badly

Not too many years ago I had my own language academy in the south of Spain. Our main activity was going to Spanish state schools to teach English to students on an extra-curricular basis. In other words, we did after-school English classes.

One of the biggest problems I had to deal with was finding the right staff. A lot of people who wanted a job weren't really interested in the job, they just wanted or needed some extra money to extend their stay in Spain.

At times I had to interview people who didn't have any qualifications or experience in teaching. Often they had a background in banking or advertising. One gentleman who came to see me was an ex-military man whose experience was being a SWAT team security detail to some Royal Family in the Middle East. I had visions of him coming into a classroom full of small children, armed to the teeth, complete with an AK47, hand grenades, and a Bazooka, dressed in army-issue jackboots and camouflage fatigues.

I have to say that mostly I got it right due to having a very finely tuned sense of intuition gained from many decades of dealing with all manner of people from a wide variety of occupational, personal, and social backgrounds. What I wasn't prepared to accept was people who would just be clueless passengers. I got that one mostly right, except for the day I took on a couple of young ladies from somewhere in the United States.

In reality, my intention was not to take on two girls, as I only had one more position to fill. However, on the day of the interview, the girl I invited to my office brought a friend. She told me that she would only accept my offer if I agreed to let her do the job with her friend. As I had nobody else lined up to take the position I agreed to the request, but only on the understanding that I would only be paying one salary. If she wanted her friend along and was prepared to split the salary, that was fine by me. The deal was done and we were now ready to start on the following Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday my secretary went to the school where I placed the two girls whilst I went to check on the staffing in two other schools I had been contracted to service. Later on, back at my office, my secretary Maria told me that when she got to the school, she found three girls in the room at the same time. I began to feel like these girls were trying to dictate what they wanted, without even bothering to ask me.

When I asked about the third girl I was told that her family dog back home in the USA had just died and the girl was so cut up about it she needed to be with her two friends. Not wanting to appear unsympathetic I accepted the third girl.

Come Friday I decided to invite all new members of staff out for lunch as a type of induction-cum-social event. In fact, it was a requisite that all staff attended to get their final orders. For that reason, I was prepared to cover the cost of lunch and to make a payment for their time.

When I let the girls from the USA know about the event by email, they actually declined, saying that they had better things to do. I told them that I was covering the cost of lunch and time and I really needed them to be present. What happened next completely shocked me.

The first of the two girls sent an email to the other two, but she cc'd the message, without thinking to delete my name before she sent what was a very insulting personal message about me to her friends.

"Listen, girls, this stupid fool insists that we go, and since he is paying for all of our food, let's agree to go and invite our other friends over. We can have a wild old time at this idiot's expense."

As you can imagine I was furious. Who on Earth did these girls think they were? Are all young girls from the USA so bloody self-entitled and downright rude? I knew they weren't as I had had some great people from the USA.

I immediately told the girls I had canceled the event and told them that I needed to see them the next day and to bring all the school books I had given them.

When the girls came in it was clear they had no idea what was coming next. "Hi Ralphy...." they sang happily in unison. I sat them down and said "Okay, I saw what you wrote about me to your friends by email yesterday. I actually thought it was quite disgusting. In fact, that is the rudest heap of crap I have ever heard from any employee."

You could have cut the air with a knife. Those cheesy, girly smiles vanished in a nano-second as they looked down at the floor. I paid the one salary for the week worked and told them all to get out of my office and take their incredibly bad manners elsewhere, I would rather fold the company than be spoken about in that way by three jumped-up little vipers like that. They took their money and slunk out of my office as if it was no big deal.

I hope those ladies, or girls, learned their lesson from that experience and changed the way they spoke about people who were trying to help them.