btw, I forgot my Dull Club community was a thing - join it! It's for all the bits and bobs that you find fascinating but others may not, simply because they don't get it yet. Dull does not mean boring!
Now, I get general laziness, or people not doing their job because they're sick of it, underpaid, in over their heads after faking their qualifications or something like that. All these things have some general kind of explanation that, though not necessarily justifiable, at least make some sense.
But there is a certain incomprehensible level of ineptitude I have to deal with every day at this job that I just... I don't get it.
Thankfully 95% of my time is either by myself or with students, so I'm relatively sheltered. But for F**k's sake, every encounter is raising my blood pressure.
I mean, how is it that I have to literally spell out the most basic instructions time and time again, to an adult with real qualifications? And do they honestly think they can piss on my back and tell me it's raining? Come on, give me some credit. Stop trying to worm out of trouble like a child being chastised by a parent.
As Head of several departments, I have to oversee the sports sector of this school. As a basketball coach with I think 2 kids, who has in the past entered many competitions with classes internationally, you'd think this guy would understand that a student probably shouldn't be balancing a plate of food on one hand while he plays basketball on the court.
Then he tells me he sent them away as soon as he saw it, even though I watched once, and then again 5 minutes later, and both times he was just staring at them play the game, with the food being balanced like a frickin' plate spinner.
Yeah, can't wait to see a basketball smash that thing into his hand and face and have parents pull their students out of the school and post low reputation reviews online for all to see for eternity. At least you have a little excuse that you send him away even though there's CCTV footage of everything.
And that's not even the worst of it. Countless classes now, 80% of students have decided to simply not turn up, because they are uncomfortable; too cold, too hot, too windy yadda yadda. Ok, so mark them absent. Ask in the appropriate groups where the missing students are. Don't just play basketball with 2 kids and a dinner plate like it's a normal situation. where are the others? Find out ffs.
He informs me that another admin told him to report the names, and if there's no reply, mark them absent.
He took that to mean 'report students being absent ONE TIME EVER on this one particular day, and if you don't get a reply, never report it again'. Wtf?
Since September, this guy has come up to me about 30 times wafting his innocence around like 'Nobody told me this, I had no idea about that, nobody showed me how to do this'.
First, yes they did, because I'm one of them and we have chat history if nothing else proving that I did tell you these things.
Second, these things are common f**king sense issues, not some nuanced company-specific contrafibularity (congrats if you get that reference).
Third, take some f**king initiative instead of just sitting around all day twiddling your thumbs thinking just because nobody has explicitly instructed you to do a very specific and obvious thing, your hands are clean and need to do nothing at all.
Do you need to be told to chew every bite of food, too? Christ.
Even little things, like fixing the layout of a document. It's such a tiny thing and doesn't mean anything really. But the fact they have left a document layout all messed up for weeks - a document which needs updating every day - without doing the single click & drag motion to fix it before releasing it to the groups to review... it really paints a picture of somebody. How can you look at that, shrug and just accept it??
And the worst thing is, he's not even the worst one, it's just the others are in other departments. But even in my department, I'm playing a constant game of whack-a-mole trying to correct everything. And these aren't things they lacked in training or something. They're often things they apparently lacked in upbringing as a child.
Literally, things like speaking to students inappropriately. Obviously the policy is clear not to do that, but to what specific extent you deem 'inappropriate' is a blurry line, especially if you personally think it's fine. So you read the damn room and notice students might be uncomfortable with the way you're speaking or your tone, and adjust.
How can I be expected to have a training manual on every single tiny nuance like that?
Do I need to be like "So if you say this with an upward inflection, it's more like a question, but if you say it with a drop, it's more like a statement".
I mean come on. COME ON people. How did you even get through the interview stage (not my doing for sure).
To be fair, a lot of this isn't something that would come up in an interview. Still. There'd be signs.
Just... If you're not happy but you can't quit, at least do the bare minimum. Don't put the burden on people like me to push food down your throat so you don't starve.
God. I hate being a leader. I never asked for it. I specifically refused it for 2 years and then they did it by default in my contract against my will. And I've asked them to strip me of the title ever since.
But in fairness to them, nobody can take my place. Not because I'm good - I'm really not. I actively do this part of my job at a bare minimum because they're essentially forcing it on me. But there's nobody else in this department competent enough.
Another one I've had to remind, every single quarter, for 2 years at least now, to update the students grades. They just... don't do it. They 'forget', for weeks upon weeks until I remind them in my routine checks every few weeks. So then they have to make stuff up because they didn't bother keeping track of anything. Wtf even is your job if not to keep track of student progress??
At least a couple of others in my department - but not unique to mine, I've noticed - just copy & paste lesson plans and curriculum from other teachers in other subjects. Like, they don't even change the text sometimes so for example the Physics lesson plan documents just has weeks and weeks of lessons describing Economy classes or something.
And don't get me started on how unappealing and chaotically ugly the documents in other departments are. I'm the only one who sat for 5 minutes to make them look professional, and the only reason others in my department have that too is because they copy-pasted my work and I had to remind them to CHANGE the content!! Argh!!
These aren't Asians btw, it's about 50/50 split between Chinese & Europeans.
Anyway this is my final year at this place and I'll be glad to see the end of this crap even though I enjoy the majority of the actual work I get to do on my own terms.
Hopefully I never have to get another job full of such insufferable potatoes, but that might be the way the world is going. From what I've heard, businesspeople hiring from the Gen-Z pool are expressing similar despair worldwide.
What have we done to ourselves? facepalm...
Ok
/rant
Some good news though: New Dragonball anime officially announced!