The year that was 2022

The beginning of the year found me being employed on a zero-hour contract at a local university (there are two close to me). My job was to support hybrid teaching, making sure that online students were well looked after.

Because the students (as well as faculty) were logging in from very different time zones, I was working rather strange hours. 

Once we found ourselves being an hour late for lunch because the lecturer's "ten minutes" (he was in a totally different time zone) became a full "sixty minutes" by which time the catering staff were all anxious to leave. So, for the first time, as a zero-hour contract worker, I began to imagine what life might look like if employers simply change one's hours without warning. What protection do workers have?

If I had spent x amount of money travelling to work and then the employer says I was only needed for three hours instead of six, would that be fair? I'm still working and thinking through this, for a conference paper I hope to write.

(Meanwhile, we are now properly plugged into the solar panels and when the sun shines, we can see the above on our smart meter.)

I thought I had seen the last of this university as I headed back to the Midlands for my summer stint teaching EAP (English for Academic Purposes) to incoming Master's students at another university. By accident (she claims) I started a revolution.

I wrote to the VC to say how disappointed I was that we were not being given a "thank you payment" like full-time staff even though we worked through two torrid Covid years under very trying conditions with no admin support. One year we had to complete 127 forms, I kid you not.

Even a pro rata "thank you payment" would have gone some way to mitigate our reduced remuneration, I suggested. Then all hell broke loose. Turned out, seething underneath what appeared to be a sea of calm, my fellow tutors were pretty annoyed by the pay cut we had to suffer as a result of our notional hours being reduced. 

(We were paid 40 hours a week though working from 8am to 10pm every day is more than 40 hours a week. Our hours were reduced to 36.5 and we were still working long (if not longer) hours due to the nature of the beast called "Pre-Sessional English".)

We kind of agreed to the pay cut before coming to work, having been assured that all the materials required for teaching would be provided. Many of us had invested in drawing up lesson plans for six weeks and only tweak them as we go along the course, making them relevant to the particular cohort of students we were teaching.

We discovered that it wasn't true that all the materials were being supplied. Not only do we still have to find/prepare materials to teach, we had to teach to a new pedagogy which most of us did not quite understand. We could not turn to our previous tried and tested teaching strategies and PowerPoints. Worse, teaching linguistics theory to students only served to confuse and distract the students.

The end-result was extra one-on-one tutorials to bring students up to the required standards. 

Anyhow, I survived that. But that also means the shop had to close for seven weeks while I was away during which time something happened: I completely lost my SEO ranking.

I wasn't even aware of this until I realised that my only customers were returning ones. I'm always happy for customers to return. Clearly they found my products superior. But new and prospective customers now cannot 'discover' me in search results.

The next step? Sell in a marketplace like Etsy? But I am reluctant to raise my prices to make up the fees they charge. Get someone to write Page One SEO? I cannot afford such a person (unless they accept hankies as payment!), but volunteers are welcome. Sell only as wholesale? Hmm. Many options to mull over.

Meanwhile the local university has asked me back time and time again even though I was out of contract. They just keep making new contracts for me! Apparently I make the job of the programme managers much easier. That is a consolation!

Recently we had Toto Wolff online to take students' questions. I might just follow his example, study all there is need to know about something, SEO in my case, and try to steady my sinking ship. Meanwhile, I am praying for a miracle that, somehow, my shop will start floating nearer the top of the SEOcean with the help of existing customers. 

Would you be kind enough to share about Organic-Ally with all your friends?

PLEASE HELP!