The Right Thing To Do
I have been struggling with a moral or ethical issue these days.
Like millions of people in this world, my income has been hit fairly hard due to COVID. My wife and I have been digging ourselves out of an Everest sized mountain of debt. We basically live check to check because we are trying to pay off the debt, pay our regular expenses, and enjoy life as much as we can. We do make a lot of sacrifices but I sometimes think that we need to make more.
I am a teacher and I have a totally flexible schedule. There are no limits or requirements. I can open as many or as few lessons as I want. If the students like my lessons, they will book me. If they don’t, they won’t. This is because the company only hires teachers as independent contractors.
I used to have a 93+% booking rate but since a lot of people are still concerned about going out, my booking rate dropped though the floor. In order to make sure we don’t sink in these hard times, I really opened my schedule up as much as possible. I opened 300 lessons this month. It’s the most I have ever opened since I started working with my company. For reference, I try to open 210-250 per month. I shoot for 180-240 booked lessons. That is a really hard schedule. To put it into perspective, I think 160-170 provides a livable salary and is a very doable schedule.
This leads me to my dilemma. I learned that the government of Japan is supporting contractors. If an independent worker has lost 50% or more of their income, they qualify for a subsidy payment of ¥1,000,000 (or around $9400 USD). So, if I had cut the number of lessons instead of piling them on, I could have received about 3 months salary.
For about a week and I half now, I have been wondering why I worked so hard and held myself back from all my other projects just to try and stay off of public support. I think I am crazy. If I had cut the number of lessons, I could have stayed home and worked on the other things that I can never finish because I never have enough time. I also could have gotten enough money to pay my bills, and my taxes, and my health care and had a little left over to catch up on some debt. As far as I know, I only needed to be impacted for one month to get the whole stimulus payment.
My question to anyone that might read this? Was the ethical choice of working for it the best route? Is it OK to work on those things that don’t bring in immediate money and rely on the subsidy? What would you have done?
Moving forward, I still think about the same thing. At 300 opened, I am still at only 57% as of now. I am barely making enough to make ends meet. I can cut my schedule down dramatically next month and make less than 50% of my pay. That would qualify me. I worry that they will close that program. As far as I know, the government did not announce an ending date for the program. If the program closes before I get paid, I would be up a creek. I would not have enough money to live.
At the end of the day, I don’t think I am lazy. I have gotten unemployment benefits in the past. I have used them as long as possible. I am not perfect. For the most part tough, I do work for the money that I make. I do want to earn everything that I make. I don’t usually look for easy money or free money. I work hard and do my best the whole time!
To wrap this whole thing up, I chose the image at the top because that is how I feel. I am taking the first steps into a dark tunnel. I am not sure if I will make it through the tunnel or if I will be mauled by a monster or animal in the dark. I had stability pre-COVID. I know I am not alone, but it’s getting dark.
I wrote the above to get it off my chest. I didn’t write it to ask for anything. That being said, I did setup a “Support Us” button below. If there is something I can do to get a donation, let me know and I will do my best to make it happen.
