This week has been a strange week at work. There are four of us that work together. Three of us are Instructional Assistants and the other is the Secretary. For the most part we work well together with exception of a few run ins with the Secretary. Only two of us seem to bumps heads with her the other IA is good friends with her.
The other IA who I will call ‘A’ and the secretary ‘S’ have pretty much begun to form a click . They’ve always been friends but have always included myself and ‘D’. We would have great conversations and have fun when time allowed. This week tho’ whenever ‘D’ or I go into the office to visit, when we are done with our work and waiting for recess or lunch to begin, ‘A’ & ‘S’ barely acknowledge our presence. Since we’ve been getting kinda ignored ‘D’ and I have stopped going into the office because we felt like we were always interrupting something. So we’ve been hanging out in the lunch room during our down time. It feels weird.
Along with the whole click thing. ‘A’ hasn’t been doing much work. From the time we all get to work to it is time to go home ‘A’ is in the office talking to ‘S’. She does take care of the library which takes all of 10 mins. and she does wash down the tables before lunch and she will do any copying that is left in our Production box but that has been it. She was asked to read with a group of kids by one teacher which she agreed to do but later complained to us that she doesn’t have time to work with the kids. When was she going to do the library? When was she going to ge the copying done? When was she going to wash down the tables? And after all she has to take over for ‘S’ while ‘S’ is at lunch. HUH? We have 2 hours to do everything! ‘S’’s lunch is only a half hour but ‘S’ sits in the office during her lunch and talks to ‘A’. ‘A’ & ‘S’ wash down the tables together and as I said the library takes 10/15 mins tops and somedays there is copying to be done and some days not. So what’s the problem? ‘A’ says she wasn’t hired to work with kids. What?! She works in a school! What was she hired to do as an Instructional Assistant?
Okay let’s get to this week in particular. We have a Production Box that we work from. It will have copying to do or papers to correct or some art project to get ready for a class. All three of us get our work from that box when we are done with working with the kids. Since ‘A’ doesn’t work with kids for the most part with the exception of the one group a teacher asked her to work with ONCE A WEEK ‘A’ usually does most of the stuff in the box that she can. ‘D’ and I work with the kids. I teach a phonics class and take groups of kids to read. ‘D’ does math tutoring and reading groups. When we are done if there is work in the production box we do that work after our reading and math groups. ‘D’ and I keep pretty busy. This week we begun to notice ‘S’ and ‘A’ being quite clicky and noticed that ‘A’ was not doing any of the correcting that was left in the box but that’s okay it gives ‘D’ and I somthing to do before it is time for lunch/recess. BUT sometimes we don’t have that much time to finish it all so we put the unfinished things back in the box and ‘A’ will come and get it to work on while she is filling in for ‘S’ who is ‘at lunch’. ‘A’ has not been getting the stuff out of the box. She is just leaving it there while she sits in the office and talks. This is really beginning to bug ‘D’ and I. This is also NOT like ‘A’. She normally jumps right in to help when we have correcting and what we don’t finish she will finish up while in the office with ‘S’. ‘D’ and I are confused. ‘A’ hasn’t seemed herself for over a week now. Sure she will talk to us when we speak to her and we will have friendly conversations but there is a distance there. There is not secret the ‘D’ and I don’t get along well with ‘S’ but we keep things friendly and try to not get into any confrontations with ‘S’.
Meanwhile ‘D’ and I are getting a little miffed at all the time ‘A’ sits and talks to ‘S’ when there is a lot of work to do and she isn’t doing any of it or offer to help with it. This really isn’t like ‘A’. I am not sure what to do. ‘A’ is very hard to confront when it has to do with something she isn’t doing. She gets really defensive.
I just don’t get it.
mercedes (aka Nikkie)
Ahhh, it’s office politics, heh. I know you’re not in an office but I think it’s the same thing. I used to work as a medical secretary in a room with three other secretaries. One of them was lovely and very helpful. The other two, who sat over the other side of the room, would never answer your phone if you were busy, would never get up to open the keypad door if someone didn’t have the code… they’d just keep to their own ’side’, do their own stuff and not lift their finger any higher than was absolutely necessary.
It’s silly, isn’t it? We leave school, step into the ‘adult world’ and are confronted with grown-up kids.
I know this much from my working career. Women in the work place can sometimes be incredibly brutal with each other….more so than men. There are the petty jealousies over looks, work output, who gets what and when…the list goes on. I’ve seen it in my own offices and out in the field, and my ex-wife used to come home in shambles after a day at her offices. She would have days where the other girls would just wear her out from their pettiness and immaturity.
I’m not saying that men can’t have issues in the work place but I don’t think it’s quite to the same level. It does sound like some of your work-mates need to do some growing up.
Sheesh, it does sound like the adults are acting like the children there! It would drive me crazy. There are a few that I’m not wild about at work, but we all manage to find a way to work together without this kind of garbage – at least most of the time. Ha! I hope this can all be straightened out soon.
Ugg… I once worked in a place that had this kind of situation. You must go up to her and ask her if there is a problem. Communication is the key. If you don’t say anything, this will go on and on and it will get worse and worse. You’re feeling resentment right now because of the lack of work she is doing, that will only fester, trust me.. :)