How do you deal with the knowledge that a colleague would sell you out in a heartbeat? I have to figure out the answer to this one, and damned soon, so I can manage to keep doing my job in a professional manner.
When I took this job, the discussion I had with my dear friend and now downtown boss was that the job parameters were slightly altered: instead of one "head" position and one junior position, the two media specialists were to be as equal partners as we could manage, splitting duties as practically as possible and sharing responsibilities. The discussions I had with Eeyore led me to believe this was a workable situation where we could ebb and flow whatever we had to do and attempt to balance work life with the needs of our young families. Sounds good, right? I thought so.
And then we have the truth, or what nobody really told me.
That fantasy of a workable situation was dependent on both of us being willing and capable of making decisions and actually acting upon them to effect the changes in the media center that we had discussed and agreed were in the best interests of the students and staff. That doesn't happen. Read: I would have to set her ass on fire to get her to 1. decide to sit down and 2. then DO IT.
The building administrators were apparently not let in on the idea that the media specialist jobs would be on equal footing, not "head" and "junior". Since I replaced the "head" they automatically think of and have actually referred to me as the "head". I did try to correct that early on, but they looked at me like I was nuts and told me that was the job in this building. The jealousy factor that goes along with this is intense, and it seems to bother her even more that I really couldn't give two shits about being "head" in anyone's eyes. This seems exceptionally bizarre to me right now, given what happened this week. I've still been trying to make this work as a partnership even though it's like trying to nail Jello to a tree.
I was told early on by my predecessor that Eeyore had difficulty following through with anything other than teaching classes and showing up for lunch duty. Eeyore assured me that she wanted very much to do more but had been stymied by the imposing and controlling personality whom I replaced. I actually bought that. More fantasy.
In reality, if I need to make sure that something gets done I have got to do it myself. The staff will often refuse to deal with her because her performance is so poor. They have described her using the words "uninspiring", "learned helplessness", "dull" and "boring." I have had staff remove the signup schedules from the desk, come find me, and ask me to do booktalks or help them with something, but only if she is not involved. I have attempted to get her to participate in booktalks and do "tandem" ones where I do some books and she does some books, but that has been a raging disaster because she doesn't read. How the hell you can be a media specialist and not read at least a couple books a month I don't know. We're talking YA novels, not goddamn rocket science.
The last tandem booktalk we did was in November, three periods for one teacher's classes, and she refused to pull the cart with me, and then told me she didn't know any of the books. I asked her to add whatever she liked that she thought was appropriate, smiled and walked away. She refused to participate in the first two booktalks -- but she listened to what I booktalked and how I did it. I had to go into the lab to teach my class the period of the last booktalk, and the teacher came to me afterward and complained that she only talked briefly about the books she had heard me booktalk during the previous two periods. Aside from the lukewarm response from the class toward the books, the main problem was that there were few copies left of the ones I had talked about already, so the kids were left to rummage through the cart and try to figure out if anything else might interest them. The teacher was adamant that we should not do this again. When I was out sick, there were three booktalks she was forced to do on her own, and again it was a flaming disaster. I had scheduled them with the teacher just before vacation, and had planned to pull the cart the first day we were back to school. The cart was pulled not based on the teacher's requests but on an old list with the core book's title at the top, left by my predecessor. The titles were old, many not appropriate to the teacher's aims for the classes (both in terms of subjects that didn't match her requests and reading levels that were far too easy), and the few that Eeyore was apparently ready to booktalk were the sequels to the core novel that the students had not yet read -- and it is more than crucial to read those in order. It was utterly ridiculous. My substitutes all week did her lunch duties, other than the one every other day where the administrators have us doing lunch duty at the same time in different cafeterias. I got called at home to update the website for my principal, and when I logged on to do what he asked, I saw that she had made a mess of the front page by just copying and pasting straight from the daily email announcements without editing or condensing, or using pdf links for more extensive announcements. I'm home sick, loopy from the steroids and I have to do this????
Eeyore came in on Monday and brought a teakettle from home -- told me that our aide, whose kitchen is now completely demolished, took the electric teapot (which was hers) home so she could boil water. Eeyore told me that the kettle had been a wedding present, and that she had never used it (it was in the box -- a basic copper-bottom Revereware kettle ... for the stove). I didn't say anything about it, and thought it was a little odd. She proceeded to wash the kettle, leave it on the counter, and then about 20 minutes later announced "Oh! This isn't an electric one!" I was at my desk and couldn't see her behind the circ desk back wall, so I have no idea what finally tipped her off. This is someone who is supposed to be a technology resource for the staff??
Since the beginning she has been insisting that we both had to do things and both make decisions. This has consistently been unworkable. We discussed weeding the collection over the summer before the previous school year finished, and she told me she wasn't going to come in to do any work at all over the summer -- she needed to clean her closets at home. I told her the exact dates I was planning to weed, since I had two weeks of both my little guy in camp and Sadie in daycare four days a week, and I told her if she wanted to join me or come drop in at any point she was more than welcome, and she said that was great idea and that it was nice that I was willing to do that since she wasn't. I weeded over 4,000 ancient and decrepit books over a course of about four weeks (did some therapeutic "get something done" time when my parents arrived and my mother-in-law was at the end). When I told her what I had accomplished in a phone call (which was originally to tell her I was taking the first two days of the school year off for bereavement since my mother-in-law had just died), she sounded miffed and ended the conversation. She called back ten minutes later and screamed at me and told me off for doing it. Her exact words were "It's not YOUR library!" WhaFuck? My response was to tell her "We discussed this in June. You knew what I was going to do, you knew when I would be there to do it, and you chose not to participate or even drop by to see how or what I was doing. We made the decision, I chose to follow it and you chose not to help." She kept repeating "What makes you think you can just come in and do that? It's not your library!" (Like I'm some janitor who would rather throw out the books than dust the shelves???) I think I repeated my response about five times. It took everything I had in me to keep my voice calm and professional. She ended in a huff, telling me that we had a major communication problem and we were going to have to deal with this as soon as I got back. When I got back to work, she mentioned that we had to discuss communication several times, but when I actually said "Fine, how about right now? We have time" she wouldn't actually talk about it -- just kept repeating that we have to communicate better.
Every single thing that anyone has asked me to learn to do or participate in (the webmaster duties, managing the website for the school, booktalks, workshops, meetings, consultations etc) Eeyore has gotten upset/miffed/huffy about: "Well why wasn't I asked to ...? You know this is supposed to be equal." However, by the same token, when I have made sure to include her immediately in discussions or requests, her response has been an unfailing, "Oh, you can do that. I really haven't done/read/whatever and you have." I have been telling her from the get-go that I DON'T CARE who people are asking to do things -- if she wants to do things, that's fine, but the bottom line is things have to get done. Looking back it's almost a paranoid-style response from her when she thinks I am somehow "getting" to do more than she is or that people ask me first and not her first, or don't make sure to ask us together or whatever. She pops up, usually starts off in a normal voice, but descends very quickly into a whiny-sounding harangue thaqt at this point I can't even listen to -- all I hear when she starts is "mememememememe". When I get asked to do something, I tell her about it as soon as is practical. I'm not interrupting her class or marching down to the caf to find her on lunch duty so that I can get her paranoid responses any faster.
We had a fairly serious difficulty just this week that required both of us to sit down and try to figure out what had gone awry. We decided that one of the solutions we would put in place now would be to purchase a small, relatively inexpensive combination safe. When the P.O. went down to the office, I was called down to explain the reasons why we needed such an item. This was during Eeyore's class. I decided to go down and be completely honest and take responsibility for what had occurred. I sat down with our fearless leader in his office to explain the situation in its entirety. When I sat down with him and explained the problem, the first thing I said after the explanation was "I'm responsible for this. I did things the way we have always done them, and trusted that it would be just fine. It wasn't." The discussion then went into all the possible variables, and the fact that there were so many major variables that there really was no viable solution. About that time, Eeyore walked in and said "Is this a meeting I should be at?" (As if I'm leaving her out on purpose) I told her that I was explaining our situation to our fearless leader, at which point she interrupted to announce that she had just brought down and deposited the exact amount of lost book monies we had collected since the beginning of school, and that she wasn't sure if the district could tell that we should have done that, but that she thought we should have the exact amounts recorded. This really wasn't what we were discussing, but I let it go because she was getting higher-pitched and more strident sounding. Then she said she had to go to lunch duty and left. OFL didn't quite know what to make of that. I left after telling him that I was planning to research different options and figure out some way to use the technology we have available to prevent the situation in the future. He was not pleased, but he was not angry with me. After I finished lunch duty, Eeyore found me near my desk, got close to me and said quietly, so what did you say to OFL? I told her that I gave him the facts, the variables, explained the problem, and that I told him I was responsible for this. The relief the came over her was palpable -- she actually thought that I was in there selling her out. The first thing out of her mouth was "Oh, GOOD!" I was aghast at her reaction and what she was continuing to say to me. She really thought I was in there dumping the blame on her. I couldn't even respond other than "WHAT?" The thought never entered into my mind to even consider doing such a thing... but apparently it did for her.
A later conversation with OFL made it clear that if the situation continued without change, all three of our jobs (his, mine and Eeyore's) were potentially in jeopardy as the district's expansion of some big brotherish software is coming sometime in the next few months. I made it very clear to him that I would not under any circumstance allow things to continue as is, and that I would ensure that this never, ever happened again. Again, he was very matter-of-fact with me, not angry. I believe that it was because I was thoroughly honest about things, answered all questions without hedging, and took immediate responsibility without being forced to do so. Though I believe Eeyore is an honest person, I cannot now say that she is capable of the latter two items in that last sentence. I decided to tell her what else OFL had said this afternoon once all the students had left, and her reaction was even worse than before. She actually said "I don't see why I should be held accountable -- I never had to deal with this before and I wasn't responsible for this at all." I said "We are both media specialists up here and we were both responsible for taking care of the situation." Her response was to just repeat that she didn't see any reasons why she should be accountable for any of it, it wasn't her fault, and why was I telling her this now anyway?
Damned if you communicate, damned if you don't. My junior high gym teacher, Mama Roe, used to holler at us "You cain't have yo' cake and eat it too!" I wish she'd show up and bellow that at Eeyore a few times. She had a great scaryass don'tfuckwithme voice.
Right now the one thing I know for certain is that I cannot depend upon her to be responsible for anything of consequence that I could also be held accountable for. I can't trust her. I don't know how to work with someone I truly do not trust. I've worked with people who were assholes, people I genuinely did not like, people who had major life situations that made them unreliable, but I cannot think of a single person I have ever worked with whom I distrusted this much. I do believe that if I had been teaching and she had been called down to explain, that she would have blamed it all on me. I don't believe that OFL would have necessarily bought that, but the idea that ducking all responsibility and assigning blame elsewhere would have very likely been her first response is pretty much a death blow to this "equality" business. After talking with my hubby, who was concerned enough about the situation to actually listen to me and try to help me sort out my options, I know that I need to discuss this with OFL as soon as practical next week (Tues, or Wed latest) and find way to make absolutely certain that my ass is convered and she has no possible options for any actions that would result in ME getting called on the carpet or worse.
And I return to my original question - how do I deal with knowing that she'd throw me under the bus without a second thought, and still manage some kind of professional/working relationship?
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