IAMAROBOT

mrs. O is a third grade teacher. last week we all received a letter in our mail slots saying that she would be leaving this week "due to personal reasons." everyone knows that it's not for that. she's been let go - these personal reasons being that she does not get along with The Principal. or so everyone assumes.

today she came into the Lounge to use the washroom. because The Aides and Other School Bitches such as myself have to monitor recess and the lunchroom, we have our lunch an hour later than all the teachers. she left something on the table, and Mr. P joked that we should snoop and see what it was. We are all sympathetic to Mrs. O - she is, in fact, my favorite teacher to work for. she's always smiling and always suggesting that i go have some coffee because she's got nothing for me to do today. when she came out, she explained to us that it was a note from one of her room moms.

apparently, the Mom had left a note on her desk saying that she should look at her blackboard at the end of tomorrow (tomorrow is her last day). then, mrs. O received another note from this mom explaining that she was going to write "we will miss you Mrs. O!" on the board, but The Principal said she couldn't do it because it would "hurt her more."

at this point i suggested that The Principal might very well be a Robot. Miss G then started imitating The Principal as a Robot. PLEASELEAVENOW GETOUTOFMYWAY IAMAROBOT...

ok, it's not really fair for me to make fun of The Principal. she has always been courteous and professional with me and has never given me personally a reason to dislike her. But not letting a room mom do something nice for a teacher is kind of cold and something you could expect only from a robot - it just seems heartless. i guess it depends on how you look at it; from a neutral standpoint you could see that The Principal was only trying to make it less hard for the kids.

which brings me to something quirky that The Principal did last week. a few months ago she had handed out surveys to a handful of the staff members. these were surveys asking you to evaluate her as a principal, and she requested that you put your name on it as well. fortunately i wasn't one of the Chosen Ones. but a few of the other aides were. three of them had just ignored the survey. however, last week The Principal sent them all emails asking about it, and then made copies should they have lost theirs. so they all moaned and complained because they were all very intimidated - J kept saying, i could lose my job over this! and there was a general feeling of awkwardness. so the surveys were completed and handed in last week. unfortunately for The Principal, the secretaries are close with the aides. one of them overheard her complaining about some of the responses to her surveys... can you believe someone would write this? LADY! YOU ASKED FOR IT! what would you like - for us to give you some flimsy evaluation and not be of any help to you at all, or do you want our honest input? i'm really not sure what J had written on her survey; she kept going on and on about how they don't follow the district guidelines very well at our school, but i don't remember hearing any of them say anything warranting the kind of response that was overheard by the secretaries.

i'm just glad i wasn't given a survey.