Hello,
I would like some opinions on this situation:
I'm a phd student/candidate (if you want to be specific) in my last year and was hired as a lab TA at the end of August. The instructor is another phd student/candidate. I found out that I was hired, not via an e-mail from the department or instructor, but from a friend who the instructor was trying to convince to take the job from me. I e-mail the instructor on August 31 asking for the syllabus, as I wanted to know the lab times. I don't get a response until Sept 4, at which I finally get the syllabus and realize that I would be away for 3 of the 10 labs. For two labs, I would be at home for a friend's wedding (flight booked months in advance, flying out on Sept 8), and another lab a month later, where I would be at a conference (also planned/booked months in advance). So as you can see, I get the course timetable about 4 days before I'm set to fly across the country.
So I ask the instructor, who was a lab TA for the course (2 TAs run the labs, but the other TA has class when my labs are going on) for the last 3 years, if he could sub in for me.
I get called in to a meeting, with him and the other TA, where he proceeds to tell me, for about 10 minutes, about how inappropriate and unprofessional it was for me to ask him, the instructor, to cover a TA's lab. He had asked several other people, and his own supervisor, and they all agree that it was inappropriate/unprofessional. He told me that he was really shocked by the request. He also said that I should have, before taking on the job, checked with him to make sure that it was OK for me to leave, and that if it wasn't, I shouldn't have taken the job (i.e. decline the TA ship). He emphasized that he hired/chose me (although the department pays my stipend, and as you can read above, I don't think I was really wanted??). Anyway, I ended up paying $150 to change my flight/bus so I would only miss 2 out of the 10 labs, of which one was the intro lab, the "hello, I am your TA, you can go now" kind.
Today, the instructor spent about 45 minutes with a literal printed list of grievances that he had with me. His major issue was what I mentioned above, that I missed 3 out of 10 labs - I actually only missed 2, but he was really set on me missing 3 (I don't think he believed me in the end when I told him that I changed my travel plans to make it to one of the labs). In addition, he said that I treated him as a phd student rather than my "boss" ... I'm not entirely sure what that meant, but I assume he's referring to him running a lab for me? He had a list of issues (the major one was missing the 2/10 labs), and he said that mostly because that I missed 2/10 labs, he was considering making a formal complaint against me.
So - my questions:
-was I inappropriate for asking the instructor to run a lab session for me?
-should I have declined the TA-ship (and miss out on about $6000), or keep the TA ship but cancel my trips?
-was his behavior appropriate? i.e., the 45 minute talk about how he was "dissatisifed with my performance as a TA"?
-did he have grounds for a formal complaint?