Work: An Explanation

I am still employed. Nothing happened today to encourage me out the door. At least, nothing out of the ordinary happened today. But just so you have some background on my previous post, I would like to give you a little run down of a few of my interactions at work. Please, feel free to laugh. I recognize the comedy in the situations I describe to you. I am not laughing yet, simply beacuse I am in the middle of it. But I guarantee that once I find a new job I will have a hearty laugh at the ridiculous-ness of the situation. I will snicker at the idea that grown women can act this way. I will even guffaw at the memory of the images being burned into my mind right now. But I will only begin to chuckle and chortle once the images are a memory.

As I sit typing this blog post, two very fascinating things are happening. The first is one that I shall describe to you in as much detail as I can stomach. My co-workers have decided to have a "Biggest Loser" weight loss challenge. I have never watched the show, but from what I gather from the commercials, it is about publicly humiliating overweight people into losing weight at an unhealthy pace. They are shamed into a "healthier" lifestyle by being forced to wear spandex on national television and fight with their loved ones about their eating habits in front of millions of viewers. If these are accurate descriptions, then my co-workers have indeed hit the proverbial nail on the head. During their lunch hour each day, they push the furniture in our lobby out of the way and turn on an excercise tape associated with the show. They run off and change into their spandex and track pants and tank tops and sports bras and begin bouncing around for their forty five minute boob-tube inspired fitness challenge. I should note here that our lobby is in fact a true lobby. It is at the entrance to the center. It is the receiving area for tours of potential clients and parents with children and corporate visits and liscensing and, well the list goes on. The fact that they refer to it as the "multi-purpose room" does not lessen the publicity of its location. I wondered when they began this process if they wouldn't be deterred by the potential for exposure that they were inflicting upon themselves. Several times now I have seen people come through the lobby only to have to step around the weights and bodies strewn about. THey have not been deterred in the least. On my own lunch break I have to dodge various limbs, flailing about during the aerobic portion of their tape, just to get out the door. Skinny or not (most of them are not) I do not have any desire to be knocked in the face by arms or legs while I am trying to escape. Add to my irritation that they are doing this during our lunch breaks, or in other words, naptime for the kids. Every classroom is just off from the lobby. They are bouncing around and hollerin at each other over the generic excercise beat while I am trying to convince 20 kindergarteners to sleep. Not helpful. Not professional. Not classy. Not respectful, to themselves or to the people around them. I could go on.

But while I am sitting here typing, another thing happened. I just recieved an email from corporate. It is the announcement that we once again made Fortune 500's list of the top 100 companies to work for. I don't entirely disagree, since the center I worked for in Minnesota was one of the two best jobs I have ever had in my life. But in this case, I was reading the email announcement just as my boss, the center director, flopped past my doorway, laughing that loud laugh that you generally only hear in bars, and yelling into my roomful of sleeping children, that I had better join them today on my break or I would be the fattest person there. Fattest maybe, trashiest, not even close. It took every ounce or restraint to not push the reply button and send off a chain of profanities and opinions that would not only make most preschool teachers blush, they would have taken care of my desire to walk out.

Please do not think I am being nit-picky about this whole thing. Remember how these are the same people that were worried about me cleaning the chairs? It was a while back, but I posted about how I had to stop cleaning chairs because it was unprofessional to be seen doing menial tasks when children were present. Can we talk about professionalism now? Or how about the time that my class was quietly walking out the door to recess when Boss decided to stop them and teach them "the sprinkler", "the lawn mower" and "the shopping cart". They got noisy, the teachers from the baby room came out and shushed us, I asked boss to stop disrupting my class, and she laughed at me and said "Like you had any classroom control". Let's talk about professionalism now. Let's talk about openly mocking your employee in front of 20 pre-schoolers. Let's talk about how she hasn't spent enough time in my classroom to know just how much control I have. Let alone the fact that she assumed I hadn't already taught them those dances. What kind of a slacker do you take me for? Not only can I singlehandedly manage a room of 75 kindergarteners, I can teach them a broadway number while I do it. You think these 20 kids can't groove? Spend 3 minutes in my class and watch them perform any one of the 4 musical numbers I have taught them, along with reading writing and 'rithmatic.

The thing is, just a few days ago I was coming back from my lunch break about 10 minutes early, when I was greeted at the door by 3 Admin staff. Director, Assistant Director, and Lead Teacher. As soon as they caught sight of me, Boss said "There she is, It took you long enough. You didn't clock in or out. So we have been waiting for you." I informed her that since the computer wasn't working, I had followed policy and written my in and out times on the time sheet next to the computer. "No you didn't, I checked there and entered everyone who came in while the computer was down"
I reached over to the desk, handed her the sheet and walked back to the break room.

At first I thought perhaps I was wrong about the chairs. And then I wondered if I was being too sensitive about the "class disruption" incident. I kept telling myself "maybe they are joking or making an effort to be my friend" in regards to the ridiculous aerobic efforts. "Maybe," I think to myself, "they are just that clueless about the way their behavior affects the people around them."

But then Monday happened. Yes, Monday when the rest of the nation had a day off and I was supposed to be in California. Monday when they required me to be present for a training meeting in which we would take care of "important housekeeping issues" for 8 hours. Monday, they wasted my entire day. They decided to spend the first two hours of the day reading an agenda for the rest of the day. Next we split into groups to work in our classrooms. My group is the lead team and each member of my group was assigned to assist a different group, except for me. My assignement was to move furniture so the carpet cleaners could come. Which I did. It took me 25 minutes, and I still had an hour and a half to fill. Eventually, it became time for us to meet up again, this time to renew our CPR certification. Mine was just renewed in November, so I didn't have to take the course. I just had to re-test. Which took me 10 minutes. The final training of the day included a lecture on not going into overtime, because there simply was not enough room in the budget for it. (please note, by now all 20 of the staff were going into overtime.) And finally, we had to fill out a survey on our job satisfaction. Here is a little advice for all you bosses out there: Do not hand your employees a "satisfaction" survey after you have run them through 8 hours of useless training on a national holiday. That was when I snapped. That was when I finally clued in to the fact that I am not the clueless here.

And so you see why I was terribly frustrated at the thought of going in to work today. It's why I have been frustrated with it every day. I have only had one other job in which the prospect of attending my shift made me cry. And that was the window factory. And frankly, I haven't had to sit alone at the lunch table since junior high. Even the window factory wasn't that bad. (Plus at the window factory, I wasn't subjected to such a lunchtime smorgasborg of visual voluptupsity.)