Like a boss...

Another thing that happened in the past few weeks was that I was offered a promotion by my employer.

They are changing the structure of the company.

They called and offered me the position a couple weeks ago.
It involves overseeing a few sites, doing a lot of paperwork and checking up on people. Making runs to Costco. Filling in at sites when the regular person doesn't show up.

They emailed me the job description.

There was a ton of stuff on it, the thing was four pages long.

I considered it carefully.
If you've been reading here for the past few years, you know that some of the supervisory people I've encountered were... hm. I can't think of a euphemism for dumber than a box of hair.

A person came to sub at my site when I went on a vacation, and my kids ratted her out to me. She left my site in a horrible mess. The table I had for parents to sign in and out had papers tossed on it, there were crumbs from someone's snack, the little cup that had all the pens in it had been knocked over and the little stones that had been inside were strewn across the tabletop. The door mat at the back door was covered with leaves and dirt, the floor hadn't been vacuumed at all, the tables were sticky and dirty.  I was embarrassed when I came back and saw it.

She took them to the gym, and while they ran around and played, she took a nap on a pile of gym mats!

While she had the kids outside on the playground, there had been an altercation between a couple of my kids and the son of the night custodian, who was always at the school with his dad. She did not handle the situation well, so the custodian was angry, too.

She let Kenzie go to the restroom by herself, which was against the rules.

The restroom was out of sight, through a hallway and across the gym. The restroom was next to an outside door, too.

Kenzie was a smart kid. She went to the restroom and when she entered the foyer, noticed there was glass all over the floor. Someone had shattered the window. Instead of going to the bathroom, she ran back to our room and let Courtney know that she'd found broken glass.

Courtney gathered all the kids and took them with her to report the incident to school personnel.

I was LIVID when I heard what had happened. If the person who broke out the glass had been in the building with the intent of harming children, Kenzie wouldn't have had a chance. She was sent alone to the other side of the building, out of sight and hearing of the 'adult' in charge.

I confronted Courtney the next time I went to the office. I should have reported her and gotten her in trouble, but I wasn't sure about who to go to at that time. It was (and still is) a curiously disorganized organization in some ways.

The 'supervisors' sometimes have no business being in any sort of position above others.

I made sure that Courtney never subbed at my site again.

And let's not forget Tim, who was a nice guy but had some really stupid ways of dealing with children. Reading this post will tell you almost everything you never wanted to know about dealing with kids the wrong way, and Tim advocated this crap from the beginning.

I did not dislike Tim, but I am glad he is no longer with the company.

There are other examples of people who seriously have no idea how to deal with children without being patronizing/stupid/falsely hearty. It aggravated me to have them in a senior-to-me position, at least on paper. No one ever actually checked my site or tried telling me what to do, so there's that at least.

This was an opportunity to help train other people, too. Again, at least on paper.

But what the job description really meant.. bottom line?
Glorified sub and gopher.
Gopher this and gopher that... take a run to Costco, sit in the office and sort files. Make copies. Administrative shit. Some people are cut out for that and get off on the idea of a job title that (say it with me) on paper puts them in a position of superiority.

Oh, and one has to dress for the position. Khaki or black pants, polo shirt emblazoned with company logo.

The job also paid $3.50 an hour more than just running a site.

So I'd make  an extra $140.00 a week. On paper. But the more you make when you're in a job like this, the more they take  from you at tax time.

I had to decide whether it was a good idea.

You know already that I didn't take the "promotion" 'cause I've told you about my plans for the upcoming school year.

For me, it's never been about the income.
My job is about the outcome.

I love the kids, I know that what I do makes a difference, and I'm happy in my work. It isn't a difficult job, really, but it takes effort and thought to do it right.

So I said no.

The person who's my immediate superior is okay. I have worked with her before. She's nice to the kids, she cares about what she does, and she ran a decent site.

She will be 'managing' my site, although she won't actually BE at my site very often.

I may end up regretting my decision, but I don't think so. I don't think it would have been a good fit for me and I don't think I'd have been as happy in my work.

We'll see how that goes.