So, I’m feeling really down today. I work in a school as a dinner lady and I really don’t think I can stay there any longer. I’ve been there 2 and a half years but it’s a toxic place to work and I can’t bare it but I don’t want to quit without getting another job first as I’ve never done that before. The level of disrespect from most (not all) of the kids is unbelievable. There are a lot of nice kids who are kind respectful polite etc but they are in the minority sadly. I’ve left work today feeling sad as I couldn’t even manage to get the kids to settle down after coming in from lunch. Three kids came up to me gave me a hug and told me they felt sorry for me as the other kids won’t listen. I of course assured them I was ok but I’m not.
Then coupled with the fact that the members who I work directly with are borderline bullies makes things work. They teacher in my class plus most other teachers and majority of the teaching assistants are lovely but the 3 people I work directly with each day go out of their way to make me feel excluded. One in particular who is my main partner in the hall/on the playground is horrid. In the past she’s made comments about my hearing (i’m partially deaf) she’s belittled me, talked down to me in front of kids, purposely (in my opinion) not communicated things to me so that I make a mistake. On the playground the three members of staff stand huddle together chatting away whilst I walk around interacting with the kids, facilitating games, checking they’re ok, splitting up fights, stopping arguments etc. They do the bare minimum. I have never reported the behaviour because I don’t believe anything will be done. The senior leadership team have their hands full with other things and in my opinion they’re not firm enough with the kids and allow them to run rings around the staff so I can’t see anything changing if it report it.
I just want out of there. My face doesn’t fit and it never will which is a shame as I’m a hard worker and although I’m only there an hour and a half each day I work my socks off and do my best but because i dared stand up to the main bully a while back the other 2 members of staff (who are up her arse) only talk to me when they really have to or when they’re trying to be superior and boss me about. My husband works full time and our two older kids are adults but our youngest child has autism and whilst he’s 13 he still needs one of us around all the time hence why I took a school job. But I can’t take it anymore. Any advice?