Was My Colleague Totally U? I think She was..

[CaptainCrunch]

Hi everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I am a Learning Assistant in a Primary School, we returned on Wednesday for an inservice day. There were 2 boxes of chocolates wrapped up on the staff room table with a card in a sealed envelope on top marked "To support staff".

We went off and did some training and came back for our break to see that the one of the boxes had been opened, almost completely finished and our card opened too, the envelope scrunched up beside it.

We were a bit annoyed as the teaching staff have form for horsing all the goodies before any support staff can get near it (they take their breaks before us).

With the agreement of my colleagues I wrote this note on the staff room whiteboard:

"Hi, just to say the chocs were specifically for support staff..we have no problem sharing them, but would have preferred to open the card and gift ourselves" and signed it from all the support staff.

The next day I walked into my class and a box of chocs was on my desk, turns out it was my class teacher who had opened them.

She was absolutely horrible to me and said "I'm really pissed off about that note, I've replaced the chocolates". This was in a very nasty, abrupt tone.

I said it wasn't about the chocolates it was because it was clearly marked to us and had been opened without our consent.

She then said "Well, I didn't read the envelope properly, I thought it said to ALL staff...there's a ridiculous divide between the support staff and teaching and shit like this doesn't help".

I was really stunned. We get on well together and I really admire her but I thought this was completely uncalled for.

She is correct in that there is a bit of a divide...mainly because a lot of the teaching staff treat us like second class citizens, some can barely bring themselves to say "good morning".

I'm not going to let it affect our professional relationship, but she's really gone down in my estimation and it's left a bad taste.

Am I being U to let this bug me so much?

More Wicked:

"It really IS just chocolates. I promise that the teacher didn't do it on purpose. The issue with support staff at my school is that they notice petty things"

• in other words: we can eat your chocolates, suck it up, it is petty to mind

" and discuss/gossip about them endlessly among themselves, whereas the people they are gossiping about have a massive amount of work to do and truly do not notice or have time for issues such as chocolate thievery."

We don't have time to notice or apologise when we take your chocolates.

" There is no slight involved:"

Well actually there is - taking someone's present of appreciation and not noticing is a slight; but you are unilaterally announcing that the support staff should not regard it as a slight. Incredibly arrogant

"did this happen before the break? Do you realize how busy teachers are in that time period?
It is fashionable to pretend that the teaching job and the support job are equally rigorous, but this is just not the case. "

Clearly saying that teachers are too busy to notice or care when they take stuff that was meant for support staff, because they are doing a "more rigorous" job.

Thetruthfairy

"I am a teacher.
Half the time I don't even manage a break. My head is so full of 'the next lesson' that I can see quite easily how the teacher missed the note.
I borrow tea bags from my support assistant all the time. [...] I get to school for 7am and don't seem to be able to remember little things like tea bags."

to be fair, thetruthfairy seems like a much nicer person and seems to have much better relationship with the support assistant, but the message is still the same one of superiority: I am too busy and important to confine the things I use to my own stuff. I can just grab stuff that's there, as I am so busy. And that's fine, and people should not complain.

See, teachers (NATALT!) - some teachers - just come right out and say it: I am too busy to notice whether the stuff is mine or meant for someone else, and that's fine, and anyone who has a problem with this is in the wrong.

Incredible.

See. Teacher-martyrdom. I told you that was involved.

Seriously, how can you have time to open a box of chocs but be too busy to read what's on the envelope attached to them? You can't have it both ways.

Would have been much more fun to write, "Who stole the stool samples we wrapped up and put on the table? Did nobody read the note?"

Fantastic round, I would have loved to have written that.

I'm a bit worried that people marking essays on Byron and the politics of disembodiment are unable to comprehend the difference between "to all the staff" and "to the support staff".

I work in an industry where some people behave like this (like the teachers). I am in the Tier 2. the worst one I have ever met used to blatantly take one-of-a-kind things off Tier 2 people's desks - personal gifts - and used to tantrum about it if people politely asked for them back.
I left, mainly to get away from her. I have heard recently from a mutual colleague of the time, that things went badly wrong in that team and in the end her little empire of senior support fell apart because she pushed the bitchiness and aggression just too far.

I actually feel sorry for her because she was terribly managed and had no idea where the boundaries for decent behaviour at work lay, because over time she had been left to get away with it and everyone else had been head-tiltingly forced / "persuaded" to put up with it, because we were considered to be less important. Had she been squashed earlier on - say, suppose someone like me, just to pick a COMPLETELY RANDOM example - suppose I had had some support when I was trying to work with her, finding her impossible, and seeking support from management in finding a decent way of working together where I could receive some basic respect - if that had happened earlier in her career, I think she would be in a better place now.

Oh well

So now you know why I am so horrifically over invested in this thread. It fascinates me that there is a class of people who consider themselves Tier A and say not "Oh, sorry! How could I! I do apologise!"; or even "I didn't" (which might be true, somehow); but "I did it, and because i did it, it's fine. The problem, as always, no matter what I do, is you." It's fascinating and horrible to see it all coming out on this thread.

That sucks howbad, sorry you went through that

Oh don't worry it was years ago! Thanks though

Sounds familiar. Some years ago I overheard the teacher I supported complaining about the expense of ta gifts to the head.

the expense? how do you mean Geranium?

The class teacher tends to buy their ta a bottle of wine or similar at Christmas - and the TA does the same for their teacher. The teacher was complaining about the expense.

Snoooort at "I am too busy at work to notice or care about something so trivial as a box of chocolates"

Well in that case you wouldn't eat them, would you? So there wouldn't be a problem.

The teacher in question clearly wasn't too busy to notice them, or too busy to care about them. And, it takes quite a bit of time to eat almost all of a box of chocolates.

It pisses me off when fellow teachers try to pull the "we're too busy/important for this shit. Ffs, we've got stories to mark" nonsense.

It's bollocks. Basic good manners dictate that you don't open gifts addressed to other people, end of.

Wickedtricksyfalse

gone back to reading the mound of essays about Byron and the politics of disembodiment

Is the implication that the support assistants are too thick to understand Byron and the politics of disembodiment?

OP sounds much more learned than you.

She's a teacher and she read the words "support staff" as "all staff"?

It sounds like the chocolates being taken wouldn't have been a big deal but you said they have a history of doing things like that and there had been ill will building up between the two groups. Thus the note. So...

I think her reaction reinforces why there is a divide. She took the chocolates, and got reprimanded by a "lesser" rank person in public. I see why she's mad about it, usually the saying is "praise in public, reprimand in private." But you didn't know who did it, so you couldn't do that.

A bigger person would have met your note with humility, I did make a mistake in taking their chocolates and with all the hostility going on between us, I can see why they got upset. I will apologize and explain that I didn't read the card properly and I'll replace the chocolates (with genuine good will).

The ongoing history of the lack of humility and respect on the part of the teaching staff caused the lack of respect and the public reprimand on the part of the support staff. I think that's what happened going by your post.

If you hadn't written the note, the teaching staff would likely just continue their behavior so I'm not sure what other choice you had if you wanted them to stop.

You could have overlooked what she did and not written the note, which is the way I would have handled it. But then the hostilities continue to simmer and that's not good either.

But you know what, I bet she doesn't take the chocolates again! haha!

Thinking about this a bit more. I believe you were right to stand up for yourself and the rest of the support staff. It was a small thing, but it was a small thing on top of a lot of other things.

It is likely the teaching staff would not only continue looking down on the support staff but probably would ramp it up as time goes on. So, really, it is better to stand up at the beginning of the kind of casual contempt they were showing the support staff.

I usually let things build up and only when something is unbearable do I stand up and say something...and I think your way is better. Sometimes you do have to stand up even in what seems to be a small thing.

Don't apologize to this teacher. She could have shown humility and didn't. She's not superior to you or anyone else on the support staff.

Arrrggghhhh! This thread is doing my head in. Person T saw Group TA's Christmas present. It was wrapped. It was addressed to Group TA. Person T opened it and shared it with Group T. Person TA wrote a polite message on behalf of Group TA saying this wasn't on.

And it wasn't! It just wasn't! I don't give a fuck where you work or what you do, you can't go around scoffing someone else's Christmas chocolates. If you do, you should be contrite and apologise and quite frankly beg for forgiveness. You shouldn't be arsy and make out they're in the wrong.

I don't know what else to say. I'm going to bed.

Summed it up, fragola!

Fraggola telling it like it is...well said and totally agree.

Sorry, Fragola...one g

Sanity seems to have returned to the thread! I've been saying this for pages!

Lol, thanks everyone

Hurray!

One last point from me before you all kill me:

It is a tactic in abusive relationships when someone keeps trying to talk about change to unfair situations, to always say "oh of course I am willing to talk, but it's how you said it" - while never hearing the gentle reasonable attempts of the other person to talk; and getting all wounded about the more direct attempts as being "aggressive" and "this is no way to go about it, we can't possibly discuss this constructively if you begin like this, fingers in ears la al la la la"

• which is what the teachers are doing