A whole lotta WTF

This may perhaps go poof in time, but I'm irked.

As you already know, I was not happy that interim chair became chair. And as chair, I am finding it harder and harder to like said person as an actual person.

Ex 1: Lots of people are sick right now. And not just here. I think it has to do with the weather, the changing seasons, and for here at least that our air conditioning is either off, causing us to sweat and get light headed or it's on full blast. Case in point, although it's nearly 80 degrees outside, I must wear longsleeves to work or a sweater because it's cold, almost painfully in the building. I'm sitting in my office right now wrapped in a scarf. Granted I've been keeping the house cold, but I get adjust the temp or get under a blanket. Here I have no control. So this week, I was sick. Like more exhausted than I'm used to being (I'm usually tired in the afternoons after teaching--who isn't) but waking up exhausted to the point of tears with a headache and congestion (I did not work out these days). What did it for me though was that my lungs hurt. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest. My insurance with the J's new job doesn't go into effect until Oct. 1. My concern is bronchitis. Oct. 1 is a long way off if it develops into that. So, I came in an taught my early class and was waiting to see how I felt after class. I felt worse at the end than I did in the beginning. That's a sign to call it a day. And my thoughts were it's better for me to get rest and nip it in the bud and miss one class than it is for me to miss a week (some people already have--and this is our second full week. Clearly, there's something going around). I went in to let my boss know that I was going home. That I had already contacted my students and given them a substitute lesson to do on-line, and I took care of making cancellation signs for myself. That I was exhausted and having trouble breathing and that I needed to rest because I didn't want it to get worse because of insurance, etc. Chair's response: "You know, in all of my years of teaching, I never took one sick day. The only day I ever missed was the day I was in a car accident."

Well, congratulations. You win! I'm a grown ass woman. I know when I need to rest and when I can work. I miss one day a quarter. That's it. It's much earlier this time, but I have yet to miss more than one day. And actually, I've only missed one full day. Truth be told, out of the 291 class sessions that I've had, I've missed a total of 5 actual class periods. That is a total of .02% of my teaching responsibilities that I've missed. POINT ZERO-TWO! Not even close to 1/10 of a percent. Not even close to 1%. My absence rate is virtually nil. And I get grief over this! (The last time, if you might remember from winter quarter when I told chair I was sick, chair asked if it was hormone related!! Gah!).

We have an instructor out on maternity leave for the quarter. Chair is pissed off that she decided to take it (I can only imagine because the birth occurred over the summer and not during the quarter). If the time ever comes, I do not look forward to dealing with that. I'll go to HR first before I tell Chair.

But this my friends, wow. One of our instructors was told that ze is out of a job come November. The powers that be "forgot" that the line for ze's courses had been cut, and ze was told that ze was lucky that they "managed" to "find" some money to pay hir for the classes ze has been teaching and that ze should really be grateful that ze's getting paid for her job because ze almost wasn't getting a paycheck.

The line was cut last year, btw.

Solution: apply for the office assistant's job and you might be able to get a class a semester to teach. So yeah, I'm sure ze wants to work for the very person who forgot that ze needed to be paid!

Since ze was not informed that hir job was on the line, and ze's finance' got tenure, they bought a house here. Over the summer. After the budget had already been cut and ze was out of a job that everyone forgot about.

Our beloved office assistant who is amazing cannot handle working for the chair anymore so ze has quit. And who can blame hir. Ze has to deal with these shenanigans 8 hours a day 5 days a week.

Also, Chair criticized me on Wednesday, too, for not having Zicam in my house and for not beginning a Zicam regimen the moment I started feeling terrible because if I had, then I'd be able to work through my illness.  Um no. I just nodded and said I'd pick some up. Chair's reply: "Well, it's too late now. But you should have some for next time. You're still coming to my party this weekend, right?"

face/palm.