AIBU to tell team members to forfeit their breaks

[Suedesofblue]

Team member 1: came unprepared to meeting and needed to use one of my pens. Unprofessional. She is being groomed for a role in another office where manager would definitely make her forfeit her breaks for that, so it’s important she learns now.

Team member 2: Left annotated document at home which means I have to fit it in tomorrow instead of today. It is only five minutes of work, but again that’s not the point. They should have remembered.

Team member 3: Briefing team and a team member takes his suit jacket off in the middle of it, which meant I had no choice but to disrupt the meeting for everyone in order to apprehend him.

This looks like a very poorly written, childish attempt at comparing school to an adult workplace 🤦‍♀️

Good catch.

I do think it’s insane that a teenager can’t take off their own blazer when they’re hot, yes. As a former primary teacher, if a child told me they were hot, I would encourage them to use their initiative and take their jumper off without the need to consult me about it. Then it all seems to go backwards in high school if they’re made to ask permission to take off a thick blazer in the heat. It’s bonkers because they are also wearing shirt and tie, underneath so still smart. I will always think that it’s insane when schools do this and absolutely no way a true reflection of the real world. If I asked my boss if I could please take off my jacket at work, she would think I’d lost the plot.

1st - They forgot their biro and wanted to borrow one from the stationery cupboard. Big fucking deal.

2nd - Paperless office and cloud solutions have been available for appraisals and other meetings since well before 2020/WFH.

3rd - Someone took off their blazer during a team brief. Big fucking deal.

I don't disagree. I taught primary in an all-through school and officially the kids had to ask permission but I got round it with getting the kids to mime and I'd give them a thumbs up because it was infuriating having lessons constantly interrupted by the asking.

But...we were contained in one room so if a child forget their blazer it was easy enough to find. If you're going to multiple rooms each day and 100s of other children are also using those rooms, finding a forgotten blazer becomes a problem. (I'm assuming that's the reason for the rule). Asking permission means less abandoned blazers.

If you’re a manager then god help your team
because you’re a pathetic excuse of one.

Regardless of whether or not you think a school needs to be strict, EVERYONE is entitled to a break throughout the day. And more often than not the children that are made to miss those breaks (often for ridiculous reasons/misdemeanours) are the children that most need a break before transitioning from one place/lesson to another.

Some overworked, tired, pissed off teacher thinks Bob forgetting something is so atrocious that he needs to miss a break is only then passing that incident on to the next teacher/lesson. At the next lesson kid hasn't had a break, kid is exhausted, kid forgets something or other because kid didn't get 10 minutes to burn off energy/have a snack/quiet their brain...kid then makes another silly mistake and is reprimanded again. It's bloody ridiculous.

Your heartbroken that resources bought for kids to use actually get used… We’ll it is 19 minutes into Saturday in Mumsnet land!

Breaking equipment means the other 1000 or so kids can't use it. When you are trying to navigate school budgets and you realise you can't actually provide enough equipment for kids to get a decent education anyway, and there's some maliciously destroying things so there's even less to go around, yes, it is heartbreaking.

I'm sorry to hear your colleaues are behaving in this way. I think the issue is that schools have become too lax these days, and aren't preparing them for the demands of the workplace.

Team member 4: picked up a virus from team member 5 and ended up in hospital earlier in the year. Obviously team member 4 can’t go on the away day next month as he took time off when ill. Same for team member 6 who took time off for a bereavement.

In my office most people would see not attending the away day as a reward!

Our students have to do corrections in red pens. They rarely have their own. I teach around 340 students and have been allocated 20 red pens for the year.

It's not appropriate for you to try to "punish" or discipline your team members. If their actions are preventing you from getting your work done or might be illegal or a health and safety hazard or violate company policies, report them to your manager and let them take action or give you advice on how to proceed.

School children are not adults. School is not a job.

An employee who repeatedly arrives unprepared to do their job, fails to follow policies, refuses to wear a required uniform or dress code, disrupts other employees, or mouths off to higher ups will find themselves passed up for advancement at the very least and trying to figure out how they're going to pay their rent eventually.

An employee is at work to do a job for their employer and earn money; the employer has work they need performed and the employee has agreed to do that in exchange for pay. That arrangement continues only as long as the employer finds the employee worth their cost (in terms of financial, cultural impact, time from other employees, client satisfaction) and the employee finds the pay worth the effort.

Students are in school to get an education (and not just an academic one). They aren't being paid, and until they're 16 at least it isn't an optional arrangement on either side. They're not there to do a job for the teachers, they're there so the teachers can help them learn not just academic material but also how to function as part of a group and as an individual with developmentally-appropriate responsibilities. Positive and negative consequences for wanted and unwanted behavior respectively is part of learning.

I don't know why people think they're being clever writing as though work is school.

If at work you turned up unprepared for meetings, then I expect you would be reprimanded. If it happened regularly you might end up losing your job. You wouldn't lose your morning break because you don't have one.

And plenty of jobs require uniform, mine doesn't, but I'm sure if I turned up in a skirt as short as the local school children seem to think reasonable, then my line manager would also be having a word.

You may think that it's ever so clever not to bother with silly little rules like being ready to start lessons with the equipment you know you should have, but how annoying for the children who want to learn when half the lesson is taken up with things like that every lesson.
What is wrong with schools is that too many children are going, supported by parents, with the idea that education doesn't matter for them And ignoring rules is to be applauded.

And if you want to pretend that school and workplaces should be the same then note that work typically gets around 5 weeks of Holiday as opposed to 13, a full time job is 9am-5pm as opposed to 8.30-3pm, with often far less responsibility. They're also not going to be let go after 6 months because they were turning up to meetings unprepared and refusing to wear the uniform correctly.

Well, clearly if my team were behaving like that, I could have a few choices e.g.

Address the genuinely disruptive behaviour and stop worrying about the things mentioned in my posts. I’d also have a word with them separately to ascertain whether it was mainly in my meetings they behaved like that, and if so, why. If not, why. I may/may not get a satisfactory response.

Take time to address that behaviour AND make sure I still focus on the things mentioned in my posts

Ignore that behaviour and ignore the things mentioned in my posts

Keep focusing purely on the things mentioned in my posts and ignore the other behaviour

The weeing on the floor is unlikely to happen. Instead, I suspect that the team member may sit in the meeting not taking much in as he is distracted by the urge to go to the toilet (I’m ok with that, it’s the principle I’m worried about more than value). Alternatively, I suppose they could just decide to leave the room and go to the toilet anyway (in which case they can be sent out of the room for insolence when they come back). In the unlikely event that they did wet themselves, the meeting will be disrupted again, but they will be bullied which will teach them more resilience. Whilst not perfect, those scenarios are clearly better than a quick nod if they ask to go to the toilet (which of course would lead to absolute chaos).

I'm not heartbroken that they get to use equipment if they need it. It's very upsetting however that they get given a brand new pen and then 20 minutes into the leason It's in peaces on the floor, or they have smashed the calculator screen so it's no longer useable. Or they walk off with small bits of science equipment, which another class needed next leason.

Money then has to be spent on buying more equipment so students can still learn. This is a total waste of our very restricted budgets. Which have been shrinking every year.

Exactly this. You try controlling 30+ kids whose mission in life is to push boundaries and then get back to me.

Whether you are referring to a school or to a work place, I think you would be best working in a team of one OP. Leave the rest of us to enjoy breathing and creating and learning, and winning customers in a generally relaxed (and successful) way.

Who wants to live in a stranglehold? Your world must be full of stressed and miserable people.

As a girl I wasn’t allowed to wear a bracelet/bangle or wear my hair down to school. I had to wear a uniform every day. Couldn’t wear a jumper or cardigan over my uniform. Had to wear closed in shoes. Couldn’t wear nail varnish. Couldn’t carry water around with me, couldn’t go to the toilet whenever I pleased, couldn’t eat outside of one particular area.

I’m an ICU Dr now. The rules haven’t changed!

Oh - and don’t tend to get a break either!

leason ! peaces?

Perhaps education is not your ideal career path.

What are you hoping to achieve with such a post? We all know that some schools operate entirely irrationally and in a way that would never happen in the real world. I’m old enough to remember when kids getting a wallop from a teacher was not an unusual occurrence, girls weren’t allowed to wear trousers unless it was snowing and you had to stand up when another teacher entered the room. The concept of using the loo outside of break or lunch time was absolutely unheard of. Funnily enough, we all managed not to wet ourselves because we knew that we had to go then or wait another two hours.

We also know that some of the kids in each school year are feral and wouldn’t last two minutes in a corporate workplace, irrespective of whether they were willing to be there or not. A lot of these rules are about containment of the masses and not what’s best for your little angel. And that won’t change because the cat is out of the bag now and some children firmly believe that freedom from getting a wallop from a teacher means that they don’t have to do anything else that they’re told to do either.

"Any out there know how one gets a pen to exploded because they do it multiple times a day and ink gets everywhere"

They pull the nib part out of the biro, then smear the ink over their hands.

"Whilst not perfect, those scenarios are clearly better than a quick nod if they ask to go to the toilet (which of course would lead to absolute chaos)."

Too true. Especially if in your workplace you could find that that simple nod led to

1. Your staff member stuffing kit kat wrappers etc. down the toilet and sinks flooding the nearby corridor so the other 1000 staff weren't able to use it for the rest of the day

2. ripping the sinks and cubicle doors off again putting the facilities out of use for the hundreds of people that would use them

3. cut their wrists open in a cubicle.

4. Actually be meeting up with a colleague for a sexual liaison

5)Actually be meeting up with a colleague to take or sell illicit substances.