Tuesday, December 05, 2006

On the Job 2


It's fairly tedious standing around in a corridor for 45 minutes a day. After a conversation with a dean, I decided to stop every single kid walking down the hall who didn't carry a pass.

I learned that most of the kids walking down the hall claimed to be going to lunch, but that a good half of them were walking the wrong way. I started sending them the right way. This did not sit well with the dean near the lunchroom, who put up a gate and made every kid walk around the entire school to get to the lunchroom. This tended to waste quite a bit of my time.

Meanwhile, I pursued the kids who refused to stop and caught every one of them, writing them up and dragging them to the dean's office. I got a letter in my file saying what a great job I was doing, and due to the new contract I couldn't even grieve it.

Once, I chased a kid all over the building, and a dean, who knew her name, sent her to lunch rather than to the dean's office. He explained that if she didn't get lunch it would be "another issue." The special ed. dean said they would not pursue this, as there was a "much more important" case pending against the young woman.

A colleague told me his approach was to challenge only kids who were not moving. "If they're moving, they're going somewhere," he said. I decided to adopt this policy.

The other day, a kid stood outside a nearby door. He said he was going to lunch. I told him to go then. He refused. I asked for his ID and he finally started to move. The AP of security was at the end of the hall, and I asked him to stop the kid. He gave the kid a lecture on what a great job I was doing, then allowed him to go to lunch. He told me to write it up on the hall patrol rather than in the office so that I wouldn't miss anything.

I don't particularly understand why they want us to do jobs better suited for scarecrows. But I'm not wasting another minute enforcing rules for people too lazy to back me up.
blog comments powered by Disqus