Payday!

I feel rich today. It’s payday! Here at my school we get paid on a “nine month contract.” Since we begin our fall semester in August, and end the spring one in May, it’s actually a ten month nine month contract. But wait! We get paid in twelve equal checks, one at the end of each month except July. The July paycheck we get at the end of June. Additionally, we’re allowed to teach one or two extra classes in the spring and fall and get paid about $2000 for each we teach. The checks for the extra classes appear separately at the end of each month, with the exception of August and January, when no extra checks are cut. In the summer we’re allowed to teach up to three classes, and we get paid 7% of our base ten month nine month salary for each of those. Logically, if logic was involved, a class that’s worth $2000 in the spring or fall would be worth $2000 in the summer, or a fall or spring class should be worth 7% of one’s base ten month nine month base; but no, for those of us earning $30,000 or more on our ten month nine month salary, each class in the summer is worth more.

So today, I got my June check from my ten month nine month salary, my July check from my ten month nine month salary, and half of the 21% of my ten month nine month salary for summer. I have to be careful though, because I won’t have a ten month nine month paycheck at the end of July, and even though I’ll probably teach two additional classes in the fall, beginning in August, the first check for those won’t appear in my pay until the end of September.

“Can’t we get nine payments instead of twelve?”

“No, that would require a new line of code in the program, but we’ll give you June and July at the same time. How’s that?”

Were these arrangements devised by a psychotic orangutan on acid? A Bush economics adviser?

And administrators wonder why we laugh at Dilbert.