Oh yeah, this other thing about working...

There was one other thing I had been wanting to write about. I've been a substitute teacher for more than 10 years. I have had a couple other jobs along the way, the longest of which was working for the post office for 6 months during Covid when schools shut down. I was ready to hang up my hat when I went to work for a sandwich shop last month but as soon as I realized that wouldn't work out, I found some substituting jobs right away that worked with my schedule. I just got back on that horse so to speak, with it technically causing no disruptions in my employment status with the school district. Last year my district sent an e-mail about giving us pins for years of service-1 year, 5 year, 10 years, and some others-those were the ones I qualified for. I just filled out the request to get them and didn't think about it again. They called me in November to come to the district office to pick up but I got busy with various things and then figured I'd waited too long to pick them up so I never went in for them. About a week & a half ago, they called me again and asked me to come pick up the pin and I was working that day but said I could come in the next week (which was last week). They only told me to go to the district offices. If you're a full-time teacher, they'll send them to your school but if you're a substitute, you have to track down your own pins. I went into the offices on Wednesday. The first receptionist I talked to said she hadn't been left any pins for me but she'd make some calls and I had to fill in this whole big check-in request to be able to talk to anybody else or go anywhere else in the building. I got that all filled in and she said she called somebody who was willing to come bring me a pin but I was lightly reprimanded as she told me I was supposed to fill out a request online. I told her I had filled out the request online and had been called just a few days earlier to come pick it up. She told me to go to Human Resources and check with them. I went there and talked to another receptionist who got upset with me right away. She was mad I even came in there asking about it and I said the other receptionist had sent me. She told me to wait there and went and talked to another person in Human Resources that I could also hear get upset. They both insisted on walking me back to the other receptionist, chewing me out along the way and telling me I was supposed to fill out a form online, which I had done and which is what got me in this whole mess to start with. They got mad at the other receptionist for sending me into their office and then she was more upset with me because of that, even though I had only been doing as everybody so far had instructed me. The lady who had been called who had said she could bring me a pin showed up, reprimanding me again for not filling out a form online. I tried to tell her I had done that but at this point I was just thinking about how little I care about service pins and how much I care about getting out of this horrible place!!! This lady chews me out and then flips a switch, smiles, and says, "Well, here's your pin-thank you for your service!" and hands me the pin and that's that. This pin was NOT worth getting chewed out by 4 people for on one of my days off work. The offices are far away from anywhere I normally go so I had a long drive back home to think about this. It was pretty indicative of what my experience as a substitute teacher for this district has been like. There have been a handful of teachers over the years that have gone out of their way to be kind and supportive to me and they will never know just how much that has meant. There are a few administrators at a few schools that I have had a lovely experience with and adore. Overall, it has been a chaotic shuffle around to schools where I get an earful about things I haven't actually done wrong and I get treated like a nuisance and a pest as I come in to supervise hundreds of kids who pull out all their latest and greatest tricks, trying to get away with something while there's a substitute. Because I recently applied for an administrative job at a school nearby, I found out that even though I've worked for the district for over 10 years, they don't consider substitutes internal employees and they don't want us to have any advantages in applying for other jobs in the district. We're held to a higher dress code standard than teachers and we get blamed for things that go wrong on days we're at the school, even if those things have nothing to do with us. I've loved the flexibility of the job schedule but I'm definitely feeling like I need to re-think some life choices here. If this is the way the district "rewards" employees, I never want to be rewarded again!