Hi.
I got to apologize right now for this post who wil be quite long, with a bit of antiwork, a bit of Karen, a bit of Iamthemaincharacter and a bit of AITAH.
To set right now the background, I work in some kind of private school in southern France, near the sea.
And I'd like to share you some of the stories of my workplace, if you don't mind. I've been working here for now near 1 years so, even if I'll try to keep that post readable and in a chronological order, I've got to warn you right now that I will probably fail.
In order to keep you interested and to give you the best example of what I have to endure, I'd like to start by telling you how our concerns about our visibility on the web turned.
Facing competition, my boss wanted to make sure our website was easily found on search engine.
So she allowed me 30 minutes to achieve a simple task : to find out, with the help of search engines like google, how google search engine algorithm was written and to understand it in order to make our website more easily reachable than those of our competitors.
For years, I had to deal with logins and passwords written on post-its, written with too many lines of reasonin like day of the subscription, name of a remote cousin ….., having to find out to which website one may be used, to find out if it was still used …. For years, I adviced her to just allow me an hour to test every damn website we are subscribed to and to clearly see which login and password work to record it on an excel sheet I will insert to a zip file encrypted with a simple l33t password so we will just learn one single password to be able to login to any website in a matter of a few dozens seconds rather than a few minutes.
“Totally useless, I've got them right here and furthermore we have no time” (despite she can spend half an hour talking about her pet)
So, one day, having to login to a website, I decided to start writing those checked passwords to a zip file, and recorded about half a dozen passwords and logins.
A few weeks later, she found out the zip file and asked me what it was, so I explained her. “what do you bother doing it like that ? Had you told me, we will have allowed half an hour, I would have told you the correct logins and it would have been done like that and over right now ?” Hearing that, I just looked her, dumbfounded by the nerves she got to say so while she always talked against that personal work.
Because of COVID and later students working remotely with us, we had to send them scanned terms but we didn't had all of them scanned. So I decided, rather to spend every time about half a dozen minutes, scanning it in bmp file and send it by email, to just save scanned files in a folder, on the office laptop, clearly named so we will just have to insert it to email when needed.
About, 2 months later, I had got to send a student a file I knew I had previously scanned (I scanned about 15 files at this time) so I looked for that folder but it was nowhere to be found. Boss wondered what I was doing and I explained her I was looking for scanned files folder who wasn't anymore where I saved it.
“oh, I must have thrown it out. I didn't know what it is so I erased it”
I had clearly named it with a name like “11th grade Physics Working sheets” so it was very hard to gues what it might have been about. “Funny” thing is bin folder was emptied so I had no other options that spend another 5 minutes to scan it again but she never emptied bin folder before or since ?!
When she makes a websearch, she write full sentences and spend a very long time after to search between search results to find something related to what she looked for, instead of just writing the adequate keywords. When she worries if her mailbox is working or a website is refreshed, she close the damn browser rather than click on the refresh button.
We will soon move out to another location and, in the span of 24 hours, I tried 5 times to make her aware than our current internet provider is shit, we are disconnected every day and now we are disconnected many times every day. Each time, she just interrupted me to talk about important matters as the choice of walls color or which desk she will buy. But, later, facing the fact that our provider is shit, she just acted surprise and asked me why we never told her about those disruptings.
Last year, following russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy costs inflation, she tasked me to find how we can save money. I suggested than, rather than using old halogen lamps who heat rooms so much we got to use air conditioner, we use led lamps powered with batteries I will charge with solar panels, and she told me to go on.
So, never been trained to this, I called my part time coworker and asked her to come before her working time to give me a hand to this.
As soon as my coworker arrived, I explained her our problems, our last energy bill, the fact we wonder if we can use batteries charged with solar panels and how I understood the problem.
We may have worked on this maybe 3 minutes before my boss arrived from her office, a mere 4 meters from us.
She didn't even ask my coworker why she was here, unpaid before her working shift.
She immediately interrupted me and started to tell my coworker the things I already explained to her and started to talk about how her groceries bill has inflated, detailing clearly what she bought ” I just took 3 tuna can, some bread, one six pack … and it costed me as much and before with such money I coud have bought …” Since we have learned to know her, we clearly never attented taht dicussion, patiently waiting for her to stop so we can go back to our calculus.
But, she just didn't want to let us do what I have been tasked to do and what for I asked coworker's help, she jsut kept talking about her, her groceries, how Poutin is insane and how a previous coworker warned her about him years bfore ……
Maybe 25 minutes later, she stopped to look something on her phone, seemingly not paying us anymore attention. Having her not said a word for a dozen second, I stupidly thought she might have clearly stopped so I started to get backto our calculus, explaining to my coworker how I thought I understood how to make those calculus, since I hadn't been allowed to just finished those explanations about what I found on google.
Boss as soon interrupted me again, saying “I ain't finished talking” and looking me bad. So she started again her monolog until students were about to arrive. 10 minutes before they arrive, we haven't been able to look at this one single second so I just told her preliminary inquiry to what she responded by saying that it was too tedious to do, so we will just to as we were doing.
2 hours later, after students were gone, she came back to me saying that I got to found out to make it work with solar panels …….
I once ad t read a student mail to find what she was doing in order to adequate exercices.
I had the fucking mail right before my eyes, was reading it, clearly reading that a specific lesson hasn't been taught yet.
Boss, hearing me answer her that said lesson hasnt been taught yet, came to me.
Wanting to read the damn email (who was at this time clearly displayed right in front of her) started to close browser to start it again to login to her mailbox (rememberwhat I wrote about 2000 words before ?), went to contacts folder to write student name in search bar (instead of just opening inbox).
Failing to find the correct mail adress, she started to mumble. Loosing patience, since she then just make me lose 2 minutes of my schedule, I then tried to take back control of mouse to directly go to inbox to show her the recent mails from that student.
Boss tried to take it back from me , keep saying “I wil find it, I will find it” and later, when I took the mouse with my left hand to keep it out of her reach, just laugh while trying to take back mouse.
Finally managing to open inbox, with my wrong hand while, with the other hand, making her unable to take it back, I showed her the recent mails.
She then JUST SHOWED ME THE 3 F*****G MAILS I WAS READING BEFORE SHE CAME, TELLING ME TO READ IT TO FIND OUT WHAT STUDENT HAS BEEN RECENTLY TAUGHT….
One time, unable to find important letter in a cartoon folder, she gave it to me and tasked me to find said letter. So, not wanting to spend an hour on it, I started at the beginiing, went page to page, making sure to not pass the correct page. She then, just grabbed it from me, cursing that I didn't find it yet, and just turned pages randomly, seemingly hoping to find it by miracle.
About 7 seconds later, bored to not find it, she gave it back to me. I kept doing as I was doing and found said letter 13 seconds later.
As soon as she grabbed it, I knew how it will turn since it wasn't the first time she showed herself to wand something to happen without effort and after bored to see it doesn't happen as she wanted.
She sometimes blamed me to not talked to her in front of students as I should have had or told me tha tit was necessary to correct me in front of them.
Fine, let me told you one of those times if you don't mind.
We have exercises about Beer Lambert law in which graphs is made with mass concentration.
One time, a student came and showed us exercies like that but with molar concentrations.
So I just told that it didn't matter, we just had to say that graphs were made with molar concentrations. Where it is written mg.L-1, we just had to read mmol.L-1.
“we don't have exercises like she has in her exercise book, with volumetric concentrations, where can we find some of that kind ?”
So I just told that it didn't matter, we just had to say that graphs were made with molar concentrations. Where it is written mg.L-1, we just had to read mmol.L-1.
“But we don't have exercises like she has in her exercise book, with volumetric concentrations, we got to find adequate exercices, what can we do ?”
So I just told that it didn't matter, we just had to say that graphs were made with molar concentrations. Where it is written mg.L-1, we just had to read mmol.L-1. (I know, I repeat myself, I'm doint it on purpose to try to show you what a Monthy Python like discussion I had)
“But we don't have exercises like she has in her exercise book, we got to find adequate exercices, with volumetric concentrations, what can we do ?”
……..
I don't know exactly how many times she just repeated herself, I just know that at some time I just lost patience to see her not giving a f**k, so I told her something like “Ok, now we stop the funny things, First one does not talk about volumetric concentration, correct terms are mass concentration or molar concentration. Secondly, as I've been saying for a full 2 minutes right now, we just have to say that our exercise talk about molar concentration instead of mass concentration and it is done . period”
Another time, I was welcoming a student and setting up her lesson. She has been taught about Kepler laws and, for some reasons, we had just 2 hours to see it in its entirety.
So, even before my boss asked if it could be done, I calmly and clearly explained to her, that I had picked up absolutely necessary exercises and questions she can't go out without have worked on it. Knowing my boss, I made sure to not talk too quick, to articulate and to point said exercises and questions on the sheet.
“can we manage to get this chapter done in two hours ?” or another question like that
since I clearly took time to try to make it enter her head, I wondered what she meant and asked about it since I thought she cannot ask about what I jsut f*****g explained to her as I would have explain it to primary school student
she kept asking 5 times before clearly making sure she was really asking me what I just explained her
student and I just stared at each other with disbelef while boss went out bitching that it's amazing she got to ask 5 times to get an answer
This post is clearly already way too long, but I would like to add some facts about behavior outside of workplace
some years ago, she started a facebook page about asian elephants
last year, I purchased my very first and only home, trying to borrow as few money possible to keep a balanced budget
she just harassed me EVERY DAMN DAY to go to thailand with her to go see a sanctuary, never giving a damn about what I would like to do (maybe working on my house or invite my family to come see it,but clearly not going to thailand to shovel elephant poop)
one may expect her to be humble and tolerant since she just threw a tantrum about wanting to go there but not alone ?
how foolish you will be : she clearly threatened me to fire me if holidays weren't as funny as she wanted
as soon as we arrived, things started : she got angry and demanded that I got my hat off my head (where I put it since I already has my two hands busy) because she didn't like to be ashamed that everybody was staring at me . Funny thing : I turned back and when she said that everybody was staring at me, it means that NOT ONE SINGLE HUMAN BEING IN THE DAMN AIRPORT WAS PAYING ATTENTION TO ME OR EVEN REMOTELY LOOKING TOWARD ME
At the motel, she started complaining that local phone sim cards weren't working (they were but my bluetooth earbud was inadvently powered on so I didn't hear her directlyn my phone) and that I've been tasked one single thing to do and I proved myself too incompetent to do it
Perfectly true : I only had to book flights, to find a motel close to the sancturay office, to book it, to find, purchase and insert local phone simcards in phones, to buy bags I sewed to make sure they didn't fall to low from our chests to make sure one cannot steal our wallets, ……
She, on the other hand, has the unbelievably hard and highly useful set of tasks to do : to harass ambassador assistant to make her know that we were coming, strenghtened by our 370 facebook followers, and will be able to come to the ambassade (at least she wanted to think, since she never wanted to hear that said ambassade was 700 km away of sanctuary and sanctuary staff may hav other things to do that served as a cab to us)
At sanctuary, she yelled at me because I was vaping (and I was exhaling upward to make sure no one breath my vape) and saying that people were walking away of me because of this …… people who said to me they were sorry I was with such an obnoxious person and they were walking away from HER
last day, guide preparing the departure of 10 people group he as in charge of asked us to stay together in a specific place, a procedure higly strange and useless as you might tell
boss, then decided to isolate herself in viewing couch 100 meters away, a place for smokers she just didn't paid any attention before ……. how grown up !!!
In return flight, I tried to get asleep as soon as possible to not loose my mind stuck in a middle siege (I'm a 1 meter 90 130 Kg man). So I tried to switch between two positions (sat back stuck to chair or head on board)
I started to get asleep until, putting my head where the board had to be, I found out my head in a pork wth rice plate while boss was laughing
She knew i spend a heavily uncomfortable first flight, she knew I will try to get asleep, she saw I was trying ……. so she ordered food for me to see me interrupted in my attempts to get asleep, being forced to stay in a position I could not fall asleep until I was entirely woke up
How nice of her
Hours later, neighbour on alley seat went to toilet, so I stood up and managed to get another seat where I could move and not be stuck in an uncomfortable position and finally get some sleep
boss told me later she was worried not to find me at her side, not because she was worried something might have happended to me, but because I wasn't there to listen to her and talk with her
I will not talk about her trying to make me, last holdays, go to vacation with her to a 170€ a night motel so she can spend holidays not alone
I will just say that said thailand vacation was meant to be a only occasion she will not ask me again
but recently, with elections, she decided to go back again ….. Sorry, I made a mistake : she decided WE will go back again
she spend two weeks harassing me to make sure may passport is still valid
last wek tuesday I think, I told her it is not useful to ask me again and, having lost patience, told her that even if I had money for this, I never intended to go again
Being a full grewn up, she just slammed the door or her office !!!
she later told me she cried and told me she “understand me and is NOT MAD AT ME” but she wants my passport to be renewed “just in case of”
??????!!!
I am sorry but how on earth will she be right to be mad at me I don't want to go to vacation with her for her comfort ?
I didn't want to go
I hadn't money to spend on it
things hadn't change
there is no “just in case of” : I will not sacrificed another 10 days and 2000 € to help her to go play with elephants
She unserstand me so, after having let me be one day, she spend all days since keeping harassing me to get my passport renewed ….
One funny thing : one of her excuse to ask me to come is she don't speak english. But everytime she watches a movie on streaming, she don't want to watch it in english with subtitles because it is too boring
I'll stop right here
I'm sorry for such a post, but I wanted to get relax and share it with people I thought might understand me