Shooting himself in the foot

I do a bit of extra work for Bossman that the rest of our teachers don’t know about. It’s totally legal (I pay taxes on it), but has been a well kept secret for quite a while now. Or at least it used to be.

I give Bossman a separate invoice every month for it, which he prints out and submits to Old Secretary, our payroll clerk, by leaving it on her desk. It just so happened that Smileroid went into the office, saw an invoice on OS' desk with my name on it and read it. The invoice he read had my name in large type and the rest of it was in small print. So, couldn’t have just glanced at it for a second and read it, he had to have made a conscious effort to read it. When he came back into the teachers’ room, he told me that I shouldn’t leave my invoices lying around, so I went to the office, got the invoice and handed it to OS. She then played innocent and said, ‘I don’t know where that came from. It must be for BM,’ and picked it up and started walking to his office. I said to her, ‘It’s FROM BM and it’s for you to pay! I don’t want other teachers knowing my personal business!’ and walked off after she put it in her stack of invoices to pay.

When I returned to the teachers’ room, SR started questioning me about it. I thanked him for informing me of the situation and ignored his questions. He pursued, so I gave him a stern look and said in a firm (but quiet) tone, ‘Forget you’ve ever seen that invoice!’ and the questions stopped.

BM’s has most likely just shot himself in the foot by his carelessness. SR is notorious for not being able to keep a secret, so he’ll probably either ask BM for extra work of the kind that I’m doing (which BM and I have agreed is exclusive to me), or tell the others about the invoice.

I’ll let BM take the heat for this and will enjoy watching him squirm his way out of it.