WARM AND FUZZY

I am barely five minutes into a meeting when my eyes glaze over and my brain shuts off.  This may be a new record even for me.

It starts when my supervisor announces that all the work we've busted our asses doing for the past two years is null and void, and we have to repeat the process all over again and produce something new.

I swear I can literally hear and feel the switch inside my brain just click into the off position.  Done.  Fin.  Over.

I remain like that for a few minutes while the supervisor drones on and on and on and on about this mandate and that norm and this standard and that outcome.  I remain comatose until she reawakens my brain with the words:  "…so you MUST sign up and do this work on your own outside of school.  But you'll get PDP's for it!"

Say what?

To whom does she think she's talking?  A moron?  I won't get shit for this work.  The guy who holds the purse strings purposefully sets it up so that we never actually do get paid for the extra work we do.

Then my superior puts the nails in her own coffin and says, "You will HAVE to do the work, anyway."  Like she's in on some cosmic joke the entire universe thinks it's playing on me.

Say frakkin' WHAAAAAT?  

I fell for this line two years ago and got burned.  I was strong-armed into doing this last year and haven't seen a bump in my pay. 

No.  Just say NO.  No.

This time, I'm digging in my heels. 

I ask, "We have all these professional development days, so why not do this work at that time?"

"Well, some of it will be done then, but you'll have to work on your own time outside of school," she smiles sweetly, albeit a bit nervously.  She is, after all, sitting within arm's distance of me, and I can slap that smirk right off her face in the bat of an eye if I want to (not that I will). 

This time it is I who smiles, and it's not sweetly and it's not nervously.  "No."

Silence. 

Not another person in the room utters a sound.  Hell, I'm not even certain they are breathing at this point.  So I repeat, "No," then add, "I already did this work.  I already did what he wanted, and now he says he doesn't want it.  I'm done."

Fake authoritative voice, "But you'll still have to do the work!"

"I will?  Really?  Watch me.  Make me."  The only thing I don't say out loud is I dare you to.

And yet it will be I who gets into trouble.  I will be insubordinate for refusing to redo a project for the third time.  I will be screamed at by the big boss for creating a hostile work environment.  I will be the one vilified and chastised and strung up from the nearest oak tree so staff members can throw acorns at me while they're re-writing the work we already completed twice before.

Honestly, what … the … fuck.

It's a good thing these people are salaried.  If they were actually held accountable for billable hours, we'd have an entirely new administrative hierarchy in the district, and taxpayers would totally shit their drawers.

Ah, public schools.  Makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?