Has almost everyone at your work become borderline intolerably mad and difficult recently

Well I sort of agree. I have been where I am for almost 4 years. I’m senior and most people I deal with are too. They can talk to me for ten minutes and I have had no idea what they have said, it’s all so bull shitty. No substance or accountability. So weird.

Which area do you work?
Wondering if it's a local issue, or more global given you say SM is driving it (which I don't doubt).

social media is driving current populism issues.

The heat has made things worse.

kids are extremely tired at work - staff are too. Early light mornings and light at night always causes this.

schools are phenomenally stretched funding wise. They’re loosing the sports funding. Teacher pay is increasing but most from school budgets. A send crisis is in full swing. Yes falling numbers but more have send.

We have the Covid gen coming through school. We now know that Lockdowns worsened executive function skills for all children, especially those who started reception in 2019 and 2020. So children born around 2015 and a few years before and after have been badly affected by this. Many will be chasing diagnosis; it won’t help as there’s no funding to do any more than what is there already. Some will have always been autistic or adhd. But a few are likely to have been severely affected by what happened around lockdown time, especially if trauma or abuse was a feature. Plus over reliance on screens during that time and since.

locally police are contacting schools to remind children and parents that taking and sharing on phones can be a crime . Afaik there’s been a number of serious incidents lately.

All this is causing extreme stresses if you work in education or have kids this age.

But it wasn’t poisonous and tribal at the beginning. The algorithms didn’t drive conflict to the top and the bad guys were hustled waiting for their aol envelope to open like the rest of us. It’s a tool for division now unfortunately.

Social media has been around for a long time, but the use of it and AI has increased exponentially and not in a positive way.

Everyone is just frustrated that pay hasn’t increased, yet workloads have and companies are more and more demanding with nothing more in return.

Social media's been around for 20 years though

Social media is driving it.

That's depressing. 😢 What do you think's causing it?

I support a lot of schools who are on their knees with parent-related issues. The use of AI to draft emails quoting legislation and threatening legal action against individual staff members(usually sent at 2am), is really taking a toll on staff wellbeing.

I'm a secondary teacher and I've never known such intolerance, misogyny and racism as there is amongst the kids at the moment. The language used is vile. All races.

Oops no, sorry!, I meant to tag@Okdokeyartichoke in my previous reply. Apologies

Same at our school. The parents are furious and staff are disappearing.

Not in my colleagues but definitely in the parents we deal with. Kids, actually, I see as becoming nicer and more tolerant (for example, I work a deprived secondary school in Salford, lots of poverty. We recently had a child join our school age 11, who wasn’t toilet trained. No SEND although absolutely undiagnosed with something, but had been ‘home schooled’ until parents struggled and placed him in mainstream education. This child soiled himself in a lesson, didn’t tell anyone about it until another pupil came and told me that they thought the pupil had had an accident and needed some help. Following this, the ‘most popular’ boy in year 11 (typically quite poorly behaved in lesson) walked him to the bathroom, reassured him that it wasn’t a big deal, and told him that if he was worried he could come and chat to him.

Parents are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. I had a parent take her year 11
daughter to a cheerleading competition in the US in March/April. Then come home and demand I offer one on one maths intervention to catch her up. When I declined and directed her to one of the two sessions we already deliver, she refused them saying her daughter had anxiety in after school clubs. When I didn’t offer anything additional she complained to the governors that I was ‘targeting her daughter’ Another member of staff threw a pen to a child who didn’t have one (not a smart thing to do granted) but the parent rang the police to press charges for assault, wanted the staff member fired .

Our execs keep making statements about ai doing 30:70 of our jobs and can’t understand why we can’t keep up with the workload on a 30 % reduction of staff because we have ai… free copilot that not one of them has used but someone has told them it can do our jobs. It’s kind of funny to observe but I can see others going slowly mad.

People don't communicate like they used to, that's for sure.

And it seems like it's the older generations that have dropped the ball in particular

Millennials, gen y are more polite and engaged than anyone else!

Have you tagged the correct poster?

I am sure your situation is valid and objectively bad, but I think @NameChangeScot was just been self-deprecating so a bit unfair to call her sexist when she was actually blaming her own sex for it!

But everyone is upset at the moment, yes? I'm not even at work and I would say that.

Literally no-one at my work, no.

This 100%. Morale is low and there's some really unhelpful stuff that goes on my workplace, but people don't know how good they've actually got it!

There's a very weird vibe about the place at the moment. I haven't really spoken to any colleagues this week (if WFH) the chats a oddly silent, and I'm beginning to wonder if I've done something to upset everyone.

Yes but it could just be me. I’m post menopausal and can’t be doing with idiots and bullshit.

Colleagues are fine, but I regularly work with the public and would certainly say common sense is down and entitlement up. But I can't tell if I'm just getting cantankerous in my middle age and so have less tolerance for incompetence and rudeness. Perhaps a bit of both.