An update

A quick update on the situation.

He did show up this morning and met with the principal during morning planning. It ended in a shouting match and Mr. K was told to go home – he didn’t, and was ‘escorted’ from the building. His main beef today was that we wouldn’t listen to him and use the seating chart he wants to use for our field trip next month. We’re using the one the bus company sent us! Mr. K says they sent the wrong one. His chart has only 44 seats and we’ve contracted for 2 buses with 56 seats each. Sigh… I have no idea where all this will end.

Nothing on topic, just griping about work again.

There’s something going on at work these days. I’m in a four-person team.  Megan and I get along great, a new woman joined us this year and I really like her. And then, of course, there’s Mr. K. He is rude, arrogant, bossy – he’s always right and never shuts up.

Things are getting worse. Last week he was so rude to the principal at a meeting the rest of us were honestly covering our eyes. There was a private meeting between them later and Mr. K left. I don’t know if he walked out or if he was told to leave. That was Friday. Monday morning he just didn’t show up and had not contacted a sub.

Boss met with the other three of us today. He says Mr. K feels no one likes or respects him. He says no one listens to him. He’s forty, unmarried and has no friend at work or otherwise really. I feel sorry for him – I really do, but he brings it on himself with his total lack of social skills.

Boss feels about the same as we do, but he is asking for our help in making Mr. K feel better. And he is asking for any suggestions we have in how he can change the way he deal with Mr. K. It’s a toughie, they are two alpha males – neither with great social skills (picture thirteen year old boy personalities.)

I know why Mr. K is having a harder time now. In the past, before last year, all his partners were sweet, polite, ladies who allowed him to run all over them. Last year he and Miss T got along pretty well. But now, now… he is teamed with three strong women who basically ignore him and it’s driving him crazy. I may choose to be submissive to Nick when he feels like being dominate, but as I’ve gotten older and more confident I’m pretty much alpha bitch when anyone else tries to tell me what to do.

If he come in tomorrow (and I think he will because, like everyone else, he has to have a job) the boss will meet with him again and then he wants our team to meet with him – sometime soon.  I really don’t know what to say. The man has been irritating me for nearly eleven years now. If we all meet together I know he will feel ganged up on. I plan to begin by giving him a chance to tell things that I do that bugs him. That seems only fair if I’m going to address some of his shortcomings.

This year especially, I have wonderful students – ninety of them. I really love them all. I like ninety-five percent of the factuality. But Mr. K, poor Mr. K, I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ll be polite and I’ll be professional, I will not tell him what to do or how to run his class – but if he thinks for one minute he can get away with rudeness, or trying to tell me what to do… all I can say is, heaven help him if he tries.