Daftness in scheduling

Scheduling has been worse than usual this week. EVERYONE’S schedule has changed at least once, and some more. My schedule changed once on Monday, once on Tuesday and FOUR times today!

After the fourth time, I had to do something to release the stress of all the idiocy so I walked into the teachers' room, declared myself the King of Schedule Changes and told the peasants to bow down before my greatness.

Absolute Chaos!

We had absolute chaos in the teachers’ room this morning.

• Smileroid was complaining loudly about having to work this Saturday;


• WhingeBag and Pompous Ponce were (literally) shouting at each other;


• Young Secretary was fuming because of her failed attempt to order people around;


• I was frustrated because a few hours had been taken from me and given to New Girl;


• New Girl was frustrated because she had more hours;


• Bossman was indifferent to all that was going on.

So, I did the only logical thing – I came home for lunch to escape the madness.

We’re teachers, not mind-readers

Old Secretary ran into the teachers’ room at 9:40 this morning and saw Smileroid, Pompous Ponce and me preparing lessons. She frantically said, ‘I need a teacher right now. Who can teach?’ When asked why she needed one, she said that Clown was supposed to teach a new class that started at 9:30, but he was off on Friday (when it was put on his schedule) and no one had called him and told him about it (she called him at home this morning when he didn’t show up).

I burst out laughing.

She asked SR, who said he wouldn’t do it due to the fact that he had nothing prepared and for a class he didn’t know he would be asked to teach that had started ten minutes before, and she knew she couldn’t ask me because I had to teach at 10:00. She asked PP and he reluctantly agreed to do it.

Just another day at the office.

If you want something done right, do it yourself

From time to time we have to drive to various businesses for incompany classes. We have a few school cars and are pretty good at arranging the details among ourselves (the English teachers) rather than waiting for the office to screw it up at the last minute. Yesterday evening, Bossman came into the teachers’ room a bit panicky saying that we didn’t have enough cars for today and asked where certain teachers were so that he could sort it out.

MrTeacher: ‘Don’t worry, we’ve already sorted it out.’

BM: ‘Care to share?’

MrT: ‘Sure. New Girl has one car and will be taking it home. WhingeBag will bring the other car back to me this evening and I’ll take it home, pick her up in the morning and well go to Company together [we have classes at the same time at the same company], then I’ll bring her back and return to Company again for a second class. Smileroid will take the last car home and he’ll go to Company because his class starts when ours end, so there’s no way that he can get one of the cars that’s already out.’[Speaking quite rapidly because I had very little time before my next class].

BM: [Head spinning] ‘Let me sit down.’

MrT: ‘We didn’t wait for the office to sort it out because we wanted it to work.’

Playing their game

I teach outside of my city a few times each week (incompany lessons) and I use a car owned by our school to get there (I don't own a car) and get paid 'driving time'. A few weeks ago I scheduled two lessons at a certain company back to back for convenience reasons. After reviewing the payroll data, I found out that I didn't get paid 'driving time' for both of them because 'You were already there,' said Young Secretary.

Now, when I schedule those two classes (the times change weekly), I give myself an hour break between them in order to get 'driving time'. I only walk across the street for a cup of tea and read my book, but if that's the way they want it, then that's fine by me.

Pissed off

Bossman took me into a classroom ten minutes before the teachers’ meeting started yesterday to break some quite upsetting news to me. He told me that he had offered Pompous Ponce more responsibility the day before. PP will be interacting more with the students on an office level type thing in order to find out what they think of their lessons/materials/teachers. That's fine with me as he went to uni in the-country-that-won’t-be-named and speaks the language incredibly well (much better than I do). I honestly have no problem with that. Then the bomb dropped.

BM went on to tell me that PP will also be observing teachers, giving feedback, checking teachers’ lesson plans and doing other things of that nature, because he (BM) doesn’t have time. Basically, a Director of Studies type of position. You can only imagine my surprise. Apparently, my 3+ years of service to the school don’t mean anything to BM. To patronise me even more, he then said, ‘I hope that’s not a problem for you?’

I went on to ask him why I wasn't even being considered for the teacher development part, and he couldn’t give me an answer. I then told him that it wasn’t fair for me not to be involved due to the fact that PP and I are teachers of the same level (so we’ve been told by the bosses). I then went on to tell him that if there’s going to be a teacher development program then I should also be given an opportunity to participate in it. He reluctantly agreed to consider it.

We went into the meeting and he broke the news to the other teachers, but broke it as PP and possibly me. It turned out that WhingeBag had a zero beginner class starting today and is not good at teaching them, so BM told her that she should get together with PP before then. After comparing schedules and finding out that they wouldn’t be able to get together before the class, BM looked at her and said, ‘Then MrT.’ I agreed to do it, but am going to make it clear to BM that I WILL NOT PLAY SECOND FIDDLE TO PP!

Later in the day, I took PP into a classroom and confronted him on it. I told him that I wasn’t annoyed at him, but wanted him to know that I know and will be confronting Bossman on this in the near future. Apparently, two days ago wasn’t the only time that BM had talked top about that. It had been presented to him a while before that and then had been discussed a few other times. He made it perfectly clear to me that he doesn’t plan on observing my lessons or checking up on my preparation because he knows he doesn’t have to. I thanked him for that and told him that I still thought I was being treated unfairly by BM and was still going to talk to him.

Not sure what else to say, other than I’m more than slighly pissed off. I plan on having a few words with BM today.

Help!

Another bitch session waste of time teachers' meeting today! Oh the horror! WhingeBag told me yesterday that she's planning on hijacking the meeting and whinging about everything that's bothering her. If that happens, I'll be leaving early.

Details to follow.

**** Update 19:33 ****
How'd the meeting go? Let's just say this:

KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Not sure if I feel like writing the post right now.

I am evil (part whatever)

Smileroid has just SMSed me letting me know that he's called in sick to work due to having flu-like symptoms. The minute I received the message, I activated the profile on my mobile phone that blocks calls that are not on my SIM card, which includes the office, Bossman and Bosswoman. Knowing SR's schedule, they're probably trying to call me to cover some of his afternoon classes. I'll gladly substitute for him, but I'll let the office sweat it out for a while first.

The ever changing schedule

I walk into the office at 8h30.

Secretary from Hell: ‘Where have you been?’
MrT: ‘At home, why?’
SfH: ‘What about your 7h30 class?’
MrT: ‘I don’t have one today. According to my schedule [that the office printed out for me last week], it’s at 9h45 this morning.'
*shows SfH the schedule*
SfH: ‘Let me call the student’
*calls the (incompany) student, student says that the lesson was for 7h30, I tell her to see if we can reschedule for 9h45, we do*
SfH: 'It was at 7h30.'
MrT: ‘It says here 9h45 [points to schedule]. It’s not my fault, I don’t make the schedule. Talk to the people that do!’ [that includes her].

I'm glad I always get a copy of my schedule printed out.

A new record?

Bossman and Young Secretary managed to piss off four English teachers for completely different reasons before 10am!