Did something a bit silly at work

[Saracopp]

I regularly visit schools for my job. One school had to change premises to a larger school site whilst building works were being undertaken on the original school building.

The support staff of the new building were unpleasant and unfriendly- possibly because they didn’t want to share their building with another school.

Each week for the past nine months or so I’ve experienced unpleasantness with one particular member of staff on the front desk. Things like deliberately keeping me waiting to let me in and out of the building (she would pretend she wasn’t in the office, but I could see her in the reflection of one of the windows, she thought she was out of sight), abrupt manner, unhelpful, not passing on messages, rolling eyes because she has to get out of her chair to press a button to release the door, huffing because my mere presence is an inconvenience etc, you get the picture.

A couple of weeks ago we had a slight altercation, she was scowling as usual as I arrived and I asked her if everything was ok as she seemed quite unhappy to see me. She immediately became defensive and gave me a right mouthful so I calmly told her she maybe should develop some social skills given she was on the front desk 😳

I spoke to the head teacher of ‘my school’ who said she’d deal with it. Miraculously, over the next couple of weeks the doors were unlocked and she was not in the office as I walked passed. Result

Today was my last day as the school are moving back to their original premises after half term and I did something a little immature. In the foyer at the entrance is a photograph of all the school staff and their names, there was no-one around. Without thinking I got out my sharpie and drew a moustache and angry eyebrows on the picture of this person. Under her name I wrote ‘Miss Funsucker’. I did chuckle about it for the rest of the day but now I feel a bit bad and anxious I will get into trouble- it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out it was me 😬

should I do nothing or should I do something - if so what? I know it’s a long shot but has anyone else done this?

🤷‍♀️It was a tiny daft thing, you didnt run up to her, punch her in the face then leap on to her desk and curl out a hot one into her Live Laugh Love mug.

Tbh, people so rarely look at those boards it could be months before anyone even notices.

Your behaviour wasn't 'a bit silly', it was unprofessional in the extreme. You complained - eventually - the school dealt with it and the situation improved yet you saw fit to deface school property in a fit of puerile pique.

Teachers and schools have enough problems without having to manage the childishness of a so-called adult. If this happened in any of my schools I would ensure that person were never called on again as this type of conduct suggests they are not someone I would want to be working with children and young people.

Meanwhile, the boorish rudeness you show toward other posters here makes me wonder at your conduct and attitude towards the receptionist in the first place; did she have just cause to be as equally infantile and churlish as you are?

Grow up.

You are coming across as a tad smug that you’ve got away with, but you don’t have to be hauled in for a telling off for it to still impact your position within this school and others. If front desk woman is as officious as you say, she will have reported it and probably shared her suspicions that it was you. Without proof it can’t go any further but you can bet the theory that it was you is being shared widely. I would certainly think twice as a HT about having someone around who would target a member of staff they didn’t get on with in this way. You think the HT has your back but at the end of the day this person is her staff member and you’ve gone out of your way to target her in a humiliating way after the HT tried to sort it.

Answered this several times

@FaceIt completely agree. She is probably awful to the children.

This person is not her staff - she was staff already in the building that school was ‘borrowing’.

I’m not smug at all about getting away with it if that’s how you want to put it, I’m just not contrite about the situation.

I have had a good working relationship with HT for over 10 years, so feel we know each other pretty well. Although I would be surprised if she didn’t have my back I’m not naive enough to put all my eggs in one basket and if any of my contracts discontinued it wouldn’t impact me greatly.

if anyone was targeted it was me

I can’t believe this shite has run to 34 pages, it’s not credible and it’s not even funny.

Kind of thing I'd do too! No big deal x

It's trundling on nicely towards 1000 posts, which she's facilitated by replying regularly. No doubt she got what she wanted.

I would imagine you don’t tell anyone about this aside from your husband in real life. Although… perhaps people around you wouldn’t be surprised

If I was awful to children I wouldn’t have a job at all. Children’s well being (mental and physical) is top priority in my line of work - judge away though, you’re only embarrassing yourself

Not sure why you’d imagine that

Some slip through the net

Answered at least 3 times now

Ha ha. No way at all 100%

Honestly never seen such shameless thread milking lol.

Yet you’ve posted to add to the total number of posts

If you have girlfriends, will you tell them?

So the bullied became the bully? Not a good look and definitely not in a school setting!

You aren’t the most objective on that

Oh dear, I think you’ve really put yourself at risk here if you get caught. I guess you could try to make it seem like a joke. I think your organisation would need to take this quite seriously? Even if to you it was just an impulsive retaliation, to a staffing team in the public (?) sector it doesn’t really matter why you did it, you are still acting within a professional setting in a very unprofessional manner, assuming you were there related to your job? I guess if it’s in the street that might be different (although I believe would still technically constitute bullying behaviour related to your workplace). I would expect to at least have a formal warning about this. You are expected to conduct yourself in a professional manner in all settings linked to your work even when you are not working. It doesn’t sound like your job is that important for you to keep or you’ve left, but presumably this might impact on references.

I could grow up yes, but I like a balance between being completely sensible which I have to be most of the time and being a tad silly some of the time. Unfortunately the tad silly overlapped into my work space on this occasion

really like the words infantile and churlish by the way, these are great adjectives 🙌

It’s ok, it’s all sorted now. I don’t work for an organisation

We all remember kids like this at our own schools. They try so hard to fit in, to do something to make the rest of us laugh… and it just flops.

If you say so but I’m thinking I know a little more about my job, the strict parameters in place and general background info than you