Imagine that you are the manager at a small factory.
As the manager, you oversee around 100 employees daily and it’s your job to not only maintain production quotas, but to design project ideas, organize teams, and provide quarterly evaluations of your workers.
The problem? Every time that you delegate a task to your employees, they groan. Roll their eyes. Some express their complaints verbally, even over the simplest of tasks.
Being the open-minded boss that you are, you try to accommodate your employees. You listen to all of their complaints. Every one of them. Some employees delve into details of their personal lives and you listen patiently and without judgement. You play music they like during working hours. You adapt their individual tasks based on their interests and abilities. You even promise them a little time to relax near the end of their shifts.
Yet, when you’re not watching, employees are spending their time chatting. They stare off into space. They sneak in naps, sometimes in the middle of formal meetings that you’re leading. Occasionally, you’ll catch two making out in a faraway corner.
“Did you call home to express your concerns?” your boss asks and you sigh.
Regardless of their evaluations, you’re not allowed to fire them. Ever. They can talk about your mom and call you an asshole to your face. If an employee doesn’t perform well at their job, they might have to spend the next fiscal year redoing whatever they had royally screwed up during the prior year.
But they’ll still be there, no matter how inept or lazy of an employee.
Furthermore, a couple of times a year, you have to test them on the basic skills of their job. They are high-pressure, intense skills tests that come from the higher ups - so you spend a significant amount of work time preparing… which, you know, sucks because it hurts efficiency, innovation, and production output at your plant.
“Sorry,” your boss says with a shrug when you complain about it. “I don’t like it either, but it’s the CEO’s orders. My hands are tied.”
So, you continue: managing, listening, changing, sometimes yelling, and trying, damn it… just trying.
It’s far from glamorous.
And more or less the life of a high school teacher.
Reaction to absent teachers when you arrive at class
- In primary school: "What the everloving doodad is going on here? Where are they? What do I do? HOW?"
- In high school: "FUCK yes. QUICK, SOMEONE GET ME THE FUCKING WHITEBOARD MARKERS, IT'S TIME TO PARTY."
- In University: "Are you fucking kidding? Fuck this shit. FUCK IT. I'm going to go eat something, later assholes."
