More 'getting thoughts in order'

Feel free to skip this post.
Although I've always written for myself, I have been glad that it's entertaining and/or informative for other people, too. So there will be a few of these posts because I need to get it written down so I can refer back to it as needed.

I've never been able to keep a journal for more than a week or so. This blog has been going for almost eleven years. In reading back over things, I find that the things I've written help bring me clarity in a lot of ways. So for that, I thank myself.

If I've managed to entertain people and make new friends, well, that's a bonus.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back in March I decided that things had gone on long enough.
The last time we had to contact our big fish, one of the very first things he asked me was why I had waited so long to contact him.

So this time, I didn't wait. I actually only waited a couple months. Fluffy had done a decent job for her first year. I still can't believe the ogress person she is now was the same person who started as our manager the year before. What a horrible manager. And a nasty person. I can't think of any redeeming qualities other than she doesn't smell like perfume when I see her. But lots of people manage that and I don't hate them.
Haha.

I've been perusing the jobs available out there for a person of my qualifications.
EVERY company currently posting ads is paying more to START than I make now. With health benefits.

It's still not about money, though.
It's about respect.

And I allowed them to treat me disrespectfully from March until the end of the school year because I don't work for the company. I work for the children. I was not going to walk out on little people who depended on me to be there for them.

So they paid out bonuses to people who had only worked for the company for three or four months. Paid them a bigger hourly wage to start than I'm making after 12 years.

It's still not my first choice to leave. Change is hard for a lot of people. I'd say I have a triple dose of that myself. The idea of starting over is hurting my heart quite a bit, really. With the anxiety I have and the emotional attachments I have formed with my kids and my school and the parents and, well, everything except management and their management and the people getting rich off my hard work. I am not attached to them... well, it hurts a lot.

Knowing the staff at the school and considering them friends. Knowing every bit of my routine and how to handle just about anything that comes up. Having my designated back room to keep all my stuff in. The idea of going in and taking the things that belong to me out.

And not seeing my current kids anymore. People don't leave my program often, and it's usually because they either move away or the child ages out and heads to middle school. We form bonds. Those families care about me, I care about them, we have a great working relationship. I have what they call 'legacy kids' meaning some families have sent three or four different children through my program as they've grown. There is no bigger sign of admiration and regard than that and I'm honored by their confidence in me.

But. The protective mom person in me is horrified and appalled and disgusted that there are people working directly with children who shouldn't even have any contact with them.

These are people I would not leave a child with. People who work with children and treat them like crap are being well-paid and treated with deference by our manager.

I followed procedures. I talked to my manager about the issues. She dismissed them. Shrugged it off, said, "I haven't seen that." And did nothing.

A girl came and worked with me after working with that horrible woman in the school just up the road from me and told me about what was going on in her program. It would be dishonest to call it anything except abusive. She is a shit and I utterly hate her for what she has done to the kids under her 'care'.

Things have gotten nothing but worse. They played games with the summer application, retaliated against the people who spoke up this spring, both about the changes in our programming and about the nasty person who was handed the reins of our break programs.

During Spring Break, they ALL treated Carey like shit. It was obvious from the things they said to her that Fluffy had discussed everything with them after the big fish had talked to her.
Another really shitty and unprofessional thing.
No such thing as confidential with her.

Carey was (finally) offered a very small shift for summer. They knew she would not be able to work such a small amount of time and be able to survive. They just didn't give a shit. She asked them for more hours, but Fluffy Jr is a really nasty little thing and said that she had worked 'very hard' on scheduling. Then, they gave LARGE, as in seven or eight hour shifts to Fluffy's friends. Nope, no favoritism here.

Fluffy Jr did that shit to me once, too. She pulled Lyssa from my site and sent her somewhere else for a week. She sent Lyla to me. Lyla had just finished working with Twatwaffle at her site. Which is how I found out how Twatwaffle was treating kids.

Fluffy Jr's little asshole game (You want to go to management? FINE, have some retaliation!!) backfired.

It backfired with Carey, too. Carey won't be returning in the fall.

Sunshine was replaced as our director and offered a very small summer shift as well. Fortunately, her asthma is really bad, the building is really old, and she got very sick several times last summer. I say fortunately because it meant that her doctor said she could not work this summer.

I was offered a shift, too. It wasn't a bad shift/amount of hours, but I wasn't interested in working with any of the turds people that Fluffy has dropped.. er, hired. Thank goodness for pain and agony and not being able to work!!!
And I've given it a great deal of thought. I have not used anyone's real name. As always, the name of the company doesn't appear in writing that *I* wrote... I have not said what school I work in, what district I live in or anything that someone who doesn't already know me could figure out. In short, I've preserved the anonymity of the company, although they don't deserve any more protection or loyalty than they've given me, which is pretty close to zero.

I will probably end up posting the letter here soon, at this point the only thing I have left to lose is a job that no longer brings me joy and a company that treats me with complete disregard and such a lack of respect that it takes my breath away.

One of the benefits to being away from the craziness is time to really think. To be able to really *see* the progression from stable programs, growing enrollments, happy co-workers and joy to constantly shifting focus, peremptory orders tossed at us in a barrage of emails, people who would not know an educational opportunity from a peanut butter sandwich and mentally ill assholes who really don't care who they shit on.

So I have spent a great deal of time doing exactly that. Thinking.
And I think I may not be able to wait until they finally get tired of their games and go to a new playing field.

Time to hit post and go work on my resume.