Do you really think I’d make for a dangerous/intimidating school teacher?
- This topic has 26 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 4 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hunter, I have a medical card and two kids and I also think you are completely ridiculous and unsafe around children.
Wow, too bad the parents didn’t write you a thank you note for telling the kids that smoking weed is an adult thing, when finding their “cool” library aide smoking weed out in public. Real great role model you are. You could have made that a good job for you. Maybe if you’d showed more integrity and did more than show up really stoned and argue with everyone you would still have a job now. But you don’t.
And I don’t think weed in a “thug” drug but way to keep that stereotype alive.
You will be very unhappy and very low if you keep on this path. Have some discipline. Get a job, be sober at it and only smoke weed when are not at work and not in front of kids.
Is he actually going in to work stoned? I didn’t see that stated explicitly, but those were two long posts and I may have missed it. If you’re going to work high, that’s a huge problem even if it is legal where you live. Alcohol is legal, but employers across the board have the expectation that their employees show up sober. The same is true for cannabis.
I have friends who are teachers in smaller communities and they are mindful of their behavior when they go out on weekends because they know they might run in to students or parents. Because even when it’s legal, optics matter… especially if you’re working with the community’s children! I don’t remember your old posts well, but it does sound like you’re in a small community.
I’d say if you have coworkers complaining about your cannabis use and behavior, that indicates some kind of larger scale problem, even if you’re limiting your recreational use to your personal time off school property. And if you’re not going to work high and people still think/say these things about you… that’s still not good! It means you’re alienating everyone just being a sober coworker.
I say all of this as someone who supports legalization and uses it recreationally sometimes, mostly as an aid before I go to bed because I’m a terrible sleeper and it helps me fall and stay asleep.
It’s funny that you say that “genuine drug addicts” get into fights and abuse strangers. I’d categorize your flipping off the preschool teacher as getting into a fight and abusing a colleague. She shouldn’t have had to tell you to watch your language in front of preschoolers; you’re an employee and should know better! If the teacher’s aide saw you when you were so sure nobody was looking, it’s just as possible a kid saw you, too. But since you didn’t know better, she was absolutely correct in calling you out even if she’s not your supervisor because it’s completely inappropriate in your environment. You didn’t even attempt to do damage control or righting your wrong even a little bit by going back and talking to the preschool teacher and aide, you just walked away like you were in the right when your offense was absolutely a fireable one.
I know you’re still young and trying to find yourself, but it doesn’t really sound like you’re learning much from your mistakes since you think you’re right and everyone else is wrong. If you indeed are in a small community with only one school district, there may not be any coming back from this offense.
I use cbd oil rather than THC and I don’t even work directly with kids. I’d never be out in public smoking like that, just in case I ran into someone I knew from work and it sounds like it happened to you a lot. It got to the point where people were commenting on it, at least.
One thing you need to learn as you get older is that when you’re in these public facing jobs, as much as it’s unfair, you do have to be mindful of people’s perceptions of you. As soon as a little conflict hit your weed use was used against you and you were instantly at a disadvantage. Once anything that may damage the reputation of your employer comes up they’d going to protect themselves, not you. You need to think harder about your professional presentation. Obviously the fight was childish as well but even without that I think you were heading for a work reckoning.
Hunter, I think there are a few lessons to take away from this situation.
Firstly, flipping someone off at work is a big, big deal. Especially at a school. That combined with having enough people at work know you smoke weed a lot, whether because you told them or you’re showing up high (or both), is a combination that’s going to make a supervisor really uneasy. Also, your reaction to being asked to leave initially (swearing and ranting out loud in the halls of a school) plus the whole flipping off, yeah, that’s erratic. Think about what our teachers are up against re: constant school shootings. Seeing someone acting that way could definitely cause a bystander to say “I’m not comfortable with him in the school” even if it was just the one time. Also, even if others have said “it’s just because the principal doesn’t like you”, well, she’s the boss? Your boss’s opinion of you matters a lot, and listening to what they say and what they need from you is the potential difference between a great career and firing, even if every single other person there thinks you’re the bees knees.
I am dear friends with several mid-career middle and elementary school teachers who smoke a lot of weed. Privately, at home or in my home. Never publicly and never where coworkers or students might see. And never before work. If you’re smoking to get through the day, it’s time to examine that. Probably with the help of a therapist. Are you self medicating for anxiety or depression? Does the thought of stopping make you anxious or upset? These are signs that you’ve got an unhealthy dependency and it’s time to change your relationship with weed. Also fwiw I literally don’t know anyone who thinks weed is only smoked by “thugs”? This isn’t a bunch of old ladies clutching pearls about weed who “don’t understand”. Many of us partake ourselves.
Did you just make up that philosophy about the calm one being right? How high were you when you came up with that?
-“The teachers and staff at that school all smoke weed too though, so I didn’t really take it seriously when the new principal told me that they were complaining about my weed use, and assumed she was just speaking out of obligation and didn’t truly personally care.”
You thought that wasn’t a clear warning?
-“I was a little bit put off by that to say the least, so I flipped her off when I thought everyone wasn’t looking (I made sure *kids* weren’t looking, but didn’t count on this one teacher’s aide lady), and then she started calling me back, demanding I come over and talk to her. She wasn’t my boss though, meaning she had no authority to command me as far as I was concerned, so I just left without saying a word, and she started tauntingly saying “don’t come back, then”. I didn’t even take that seriously though. The principal was out during this time, and I still made it back to work the following Monday and Tuesday.
You cannot flip off your coworkers at a preschool in front of students whose eyes you cannot control while being asked to quarantine (as is totally reasonable after a global pandemic.) It looks like she actually did have that authority and look, it helped make the case that led to you being fired. Not her actions- your disrespectful behavior.
-“She was supposed to interview the people who complained, then interview me, then decide what to do. But she didn’t call me in until after the school year ended, and then she gave me this bullshit speech that the teachers and staff were complaining and concerned about me reacting to things unpredictably and being fearful of the kids safety, and she/they blamed it on the fact that I smoke weed and am stoned a lot. She literally said “there are people who are saying ‘I do not want him on campus while I am on campus’”
Hunter, at every turn, your react in defense of yourself believing you are being wronged. You aren’t being wronged. She is supposed to keep kids safe, not keep stoned teens employed part time at all costs. It’s probable that after interviewing the sober adults, and seeing camera footage, she didn’t feel the need to hear your side. You lost your job because you wouldn’t stop showing up to work high and were incredibly disrespectful to an actual member of the faculty.
And of course the other teachers are going to say that you shouldn’t have been fired and they miss you, blah blah, to you when they see you out. People say things like that because they don’t want to say, you know Hunter, you are high a lot. They are possibly among the exact teachers complaining about you.This is a lesson.
It’s great that you think the kids feel safe with you, but that’s the thing- kids cannot tell if you are drunk, high, sober or whatever else. Having kids like you isn’t inherently a sign that you are a trustworthy human being or even nice. Kids don’t know what is dangerous or not, and you kind of still seem like a kid even thought you’re 20. Why’d you drop out of college for a part time job? Why are you showing up to campus a day after you vomited despite the rules for quarantining? That alone is putting those kids in danger. You think you know better than everyone else but you’re just a stoned teenager with an enormous ego and an entitlement issue. Please explain to me how you grown since the last time you wrote in.
The calm one isn’t one isn’t right- you’re just overdoing it with the thc. That’s why you’re calm. You’re always high and you need help with that.
I could go on indefinitely with the material here, clearly, but in a situation like that where they’re looking into somebody’s behavior at work, the feedback has to be egregious and unanimous for someone to get fired. Though honestly, flipping someone off with kids around might be enough on its own. But you can be pretty sure that multiple people said you’re inappropriate.
I also think you were on notice before that even happened. You were there out of the kindness of your mom’s friend. The new principal scaled you back, which was a warning that her perception of you wasn’t good. And then you blew off her feedback. You were already on thin ice.
The feedback doesn’t need to be egregious @Kate – that’s our norm, a school principal or admin doesn’t necessarily play by the same rules as corporate.
But… a principal should always put the safety of the kids first. If they get a single complaint that someone is doing something dangerous, that’s it. That’s the end of the story. You never want to be the principal who received a complaint that someone was potentially putting the safety of kids at risk and you decided to “wait and see”.
I also think Hunter, that you weren’t paying attention to the signals that everyone was throwing off. You come here and the chip on your shoulder is massive. I can only imagine how it rules every fucking thing in your IRL world, every day. And if it’s that big, everyone can see it and size you up in seconds: This is a dude who doesn’t like the rules and is fine flaunting it.
Schools are all about rules. You want a place that doesn’t have rules, then you’re going to have to live in the woods.
Lastly, most people break some of the rules. But we do it subtly, casually, without bragging that we’re breaking the rules and we don’t break the BIG rules. The fireable rules. The ones that cross the lines. And for the teachers that are taking drugs, are they coming to work stoned or are they smoking a bowl at home? Big difference. BIG.
True, in a school it can be just one thing.
Do we think you would harm a child? Not intentionally, no, but it is actually harmful for a child to be in the care of an authority figure who acts out, uses profanity, and can’t regulate emotions. Not to mention openly uses drugs. Come on.
Yeah, I don’t actually know you but I don’t think you would ever purposely do something to harm children, but then again- you’re smoking weed in public around them, showing up to school a day after vomiting (it’s a rule kids can’t show up until 24 hours have passed, here and probably a rule for you, too) but you probably don’t know the rules, or decided like you said that you knew exactly why you were sick and you weren’t a danger. Hunter, you re an immature at 20 year old with almost no common sense or good judgement that I can see.
Like you don’t follow the very basic rules of the job, period. And then you flip off tenured old ladies who’ve probably been there for years or even decades and actually do have the power to get you fired. You just do not yet seem to think you’re actions through. Some people have to learn the hard way, over and over. I just hope you do learn and start making better choices. Being stoned in a shack making barely any money and being the town joke does not have to be your lot in life. I promise you you will feel better about yourself if you give yourself a chance to succeed at a job. I know I sound like a nasty old bitch to you, and I know I’ve been blunt and all “tough love” on you but I think you need it? I also needed it sometimes in my life and didn’t have anyone around to care enough to give it to me. I’ve been low and self medicated. I also do use marijuana daily in my life as a middle aged person now and I hold down a steady job. I never go to work high. I use it before bed or to relax when I am off duty. I don’t drink. I love weed. But smoking as much as you wrote you do doesn’t sound like fun, it sounds like you’re numbing your emotions and becoming dependent on it to feel happy-ish. That’s what jumps out at me. I’m not sure if that’s true or if you’re just trying to sound cool, either so maybe you aren’t. Hard to say, Hunter. I’m sorry if I’ve been a little too harsh but you’re not behaving and expecting to get gold stars. It’s not going to happen.
