Have had lovely fun with MSP's. Enjoy a story. Not looking for sympathy, just wanting to share.

Didn't have to pay MSP years as an adult; I was in university, with brief breaks, from 2002 (including a post-grad program) until 2009, which is a pretty recent end. Didn't start actual 'work' for real in my field (education) until 2011. I've been a substitute teacher for those years - a pretty shitty job, to be honest. The money is terrible - for a career that takes a bare minimum of five years of education, having to hope the phone rings every day is a stress level most people wouldn't want to cope with, and then you look at teachers' crappy salaries in BC...

I digress.

I don't get benefits as a substitute - we get paid for the days we work, nothing else, and no guarantee of minimum weekly hours or any such thing. This is par for the course; everyone seems to assume teaching is a cushy job you get handed, when really there's more work every year, fewer jobs, and worse conditions. I question, daily, why I still do it.

One year, I did very well (for a sub); turn-over in subs is very high due to the aforementioned shit pay and unreliability of work, and so one year my district ended up with not enough subs to cover all the jobs. I basically worked full-time, and ended up making (for a sub) a pretty large amount of money, pushing me to the max grid for MSPs (which I wasn't aware of).

Five months into 2014, a year where my district hired too many subs in order to try to make up for the dearth of them the previous year, and I'm barely squeaking by, working a day or two per week at most; I can't take a second day job due to needing to be available at literal last-minute notice for subbing, and no evening-related job was interested in me. One fine May evening, I get a call, asking me why I haven't paid my MSPs. I had received no notification I owed on them. I had received no prior communication. I was told I was 'in arrears', and owed hundreds of dollars. I explained I was a sub, and that my income had dropped sharply that year (I'd only made about $15,000 in the whole school year by that point and was on Employment Insurance on top). Their reaction? Pay up. I sent them copies of my bank balance. A letter from my bank manager explaining I was on EI, that I was not a contracted teacher, that I was literally below the poverty line. Pay up, they said. I was able to give them perhaps $50 per month to try to deal with the issue, which I had to get from my dad. Really

I'm still resolving the issue, over a year later. Th