Attitudes

Yesterday couldn’t have been more stereotypical of a Monday.

It started at home before I even got to work when I thought I’d be ahead of myself and check my work email… which I couldn’t. Instantly, this sent alarm bells ringing in my head that something was wrong at work.
Indeed, it was.

At work, I was faced with lights of the red variety in the server room instead of the green variety and servers half on and half off. This was certainly a disaster and a slight emergency and therefore I declared the Curriculum network unusable for the day until I (and our trusty maintenance company) had fixed it.

As a rule, teachers spend their working day inside a little bubble. Within this bubble is what they need to do during the day – their classes; their reports; their lunch, coffee break, etc. Anything outside of this bubble is irrelevant and so, if exterior forces affect what’s in their bubble, then all hell breaks loose. Of course, their bubble is the only thing that exists and is the only thing that’s important so whatever has disrupted the flow of the day in their bubble needs to be sorted NOW so that their bubble can function correctly.
Now when you have 40+ bubbles with the impression that they’re the only ones who matter asking to be put right immediately, it does get very frustrating. Sometimes, the asking can turn into demands which is usually responded by silence.

Yesterday was no exception. I had locked everyone's account to prevent them from logging on to the network which it did, although it prompted a flurry of questions which weren't really thought about properly before they were asked.
Examples being: I try to log on and it says, “Your account has been disabled”? (Yes, that was me. The server has no reason to disable your account itself); When will it be fixed? (Unfortunately, I failed the "seeing into the future" exam); Can I not log on and check my email? (if that were possible, I would have LET you log on).

By the end of the day, the responses above were typical to those sorts of questions. I had wandered into the world of sarcasm.

Throughout the day, I was becoming more and more annoyed with the damn servers and why they weren’t working and why people weren’t coming to sort them out and people asking me daft questions. However, a couple of comments shone out as an example of the typical teacher thinking only of what THEY need and want.

The first was in the morning when one of the questions above was put to me - “Can you unlock my account so I can play a DVD?” I answered no in a polite way and explained why. I’d rather not have anyone use the network until I know it’s properly fixed. This immediately prompted comments, meant in a joking way but, obviously designed to try and make me feel guilty and had no effect whatsoever - “Oh, that’s my planned lesson out of the window. Well, when the kids ask why, I’ll be pointing the finger at you” – yes, you do that and see if it makes your situation any better.

The second was at the very end of the day when I was at my most fed up.
I was asked if everything would be back to normal tomorrow (Tues) and, being the truthful bloke that I am, I replied by saying I don't know. Someone was due to come in tomorrow to have a look and we'll take it from there. At the moment, it's no. For some reason, I was then told that the teacher had a class doing some GCSE coursework... so what? That fact isn't going to make the repair any quicker. To be honest, I don't care what anyone needs it for and how urgent. My priority is that I have an entire network down that needs to be up and running as soon as possible. Then I got the guilt - "but this is happening nearly every week and it's not on" - tell me about it. However, as weird as it may seem, I didn't actually cause this problem or do it on purpose and I haven't been sat on my backside all day waiting for it to fix itself.

So, a message to all teachers everywhere who rely on us lovely support staff,

- When something goes wrong, 99.9% of the time, it's not actually our fault so don't go making us feel guilty by pointing the finger.

- Burst that bubble. You aren't the only department/teacher in the school and it's not just you with these problems.

- We, also, have a job to do. Let us do it. We're not just sat doing nothing all day. We're there to support you and when things like servers go down we aim to get things back up and running as soon as possible.

- Whatever you need things for, telling us isn't going to speed things up. If the network is down, the network is down. There is no special button to press if Mr A needs it for a DVD or Mrs B has an important test to do. We don't care. We just work to get things working for everyone as soon as possible.

I think that's all for now. Today hasn't been much better but that's another post.

BYL.