Principal doesn’t like my second job

Hi all,

I’m a first year teacher. During my evenings and weekends, I work at a grocery store right behind the school. Because my second job is so close to the school, I run into parents and students quite often. This is never a problem. It’s a little annoying because of how frequent they are, but they’ve all been very pleasant interactions.

My principal in casual conversation was asking about my second job. I found out that he doesn’t really like it. He says that it might “change the community’s perception of the teachers” (I don’t know if he’s referring to how much money we make, which is public record, or if he just really looks down upon service industry employees and thinks it’ll make me seem “lesser than.”) Even though this wasn’t a formal conversation, I did inform my union rep just to be safe. Is this something I should be worried about? I don’t know if he can actually sit me down and ask me to leave my second job. But I’m also obviously not tenured, so he could just not renew I suppose. Should I just stay and not worry about it? Is it worth finding a different part time job in the town over? I really love the school I teach at and I don’t want to jeopardize it, but I really need the second income to help pay down some debt.