Teaching is one of those professions that deserves more respect than it typically gets, but you don’t expect their own principals to treat them poorly.

OP is a part-time teacher of older children in a system where end of year exams play a significant role. His principal always insists everyone else be on time – or even early – but always shows up late herself.

I’m a teacher. The principal we had at our school was the kind who got to this position because it was a way to escape teaching students (she was a teacher before taking the exam to be principal, which is common) and to flaunt the little authority it got her.

One of the issues I had with her was about punctuality. She was especially a hard case about it, which would have been fine if she weren’t herself systematically late to everything.

I loathe hypocrites, and it makes our job especially difficult to ask students to be on time at classes when the principal was half an hour late at a meeting she scheduled herself with their parents.

When it came to exams she would tell students they had to be there at 7:30 when the tests didn’t start until 8 – and she wanted teachers there 30 minutes early, too, even though all they had to do was gather papers and unlock the doors.

Come the end of year and with it, time for the Baccalauréat (final exam of high school). The students start to receive their convocations for the exam week. When we see their convocations, we’re already angry because the time is wrong (on purpose).

It would tell a student they have to be there at 7:30 for a 4h test, without even telling them the test is actually scheduled to start at 8:00 and ends at 12:00.

A few days later, the teachers received their own convocations to monitor the tests (it’s usual to get them after the students, though it was particularly late this year). For us, the scheduled time of the test is correct, but it was mentioned on each of our convocations that we had to be present 30 minutes before the start of each test.

I mean, we aren’t going to be present at 8:00 exactly if the test is scheduled to start at that time. We don’t want to screw the students over.

We need a few minutes to get the test papers and let the students in the classroom so that we can start exactly on time. But 5 min is enough, ten at most. And as teachers, we are used to being there slightly before class starts anyway.

So, OP and his colleagues let her know that they would need to be paid overtime by the end of the week, due to the required extra 30 minutes before exams.

Most of us simply ignored her and came to the exam on time as usual. But a dozen of us decided to comply and we sent her emails tallying up the total number of hours we’d be working that week adding that half hour before each test.

She answered some nonsense that our tallies were wrong because she wasn’t counting the half hour. We let that pass, we complied and my colleagues declared their overtime.

In the end that came to about 30 hours of overtime total for doing jack squat that had to be paid.

She tried to blow them off, but OP had an ace up his sleeve – as a part-time employee, he wasn’t allowed to be paid overtime.

She also did not seem to realize that my email was slightly different than that of my colleagues.

Me, that’s a bit different, because I work part-time. As such, I’m not allowed to do overtime. The reason for that is because both part-time and overtime are paid more than regular hours, so it has to be either or.

When his allotted hours for the week were almost up, he let her know he would be leavin and he hoped she had someone to cover his exam room.

Comes Friday. I sent a new email, reminding her about the upcoming issue. No answers. The last 4-hour test of the week starts at 13:00. At 14:25, I ask my colleague monitoring the next room over (who was in on the plan) to cover for me for 5 min.

There’s a door between the exam rooms, we can stand there and watch both rooms to let the other take a bathroom break or something like that.

I go to the principal’s office. I remind her that there is a room full of students with 2h30 left and I don’t know if she’s scheduled someone to take over for me, but I’ve already done all my hours for this week and since I’m not allowed to do overtime, I’m leaving.

Now, as a teacher, I take pride in my punctuality and my ability to finish my speech exactly on time. I also purposefully timed this one. Just after I told her I was leaving, I look at my watch, it’s 3 seconds to 14:30.

I look at her face while she gathers her thoughts. In three seconds, she went from confusion, to realization, to anger and just as she’s about to answer, it’s time, so I turn around and walk away.

“What are you doing! Stay here! We’re not finished!”

I answer without looking back, “Sorry, it’s 14:30. My work is done. I’m not being paid to listen to you.”

I leave while I hear her half coherent threats.

She ended up having to cover it herself.

She followed me, of course, but couldn’t really talk loudly in the corridors while the exam was taking place. Plus, she still knows that loudly berating a teacher in public in full view and hearing of students would be extremely unprofessional, and she’s the one who’d get in trouble for that.

More importantly, I know where I’m going. I pass in front of the classroom I was monitoring in earlier. I thank my colleague, points at the principal who’s just catching up, red as a beet, and tell him: “I brought you the principal.”

I leave as he greets her, thus intercepting her for me. I learned that she had to monitor the students herself, which must have pissed her off something fierce because she leaves early on Fridays.

He made sure to bring his union rep with him to their follow-up meeting.

Next week, obviously, she requested that we had a talk in her office. I went with my union representative. We explained to her that it was not difficult to prove that she was the one in the wrong and that if she wanted to escalate the issue, we would have no problem getting it to the administrative tribunal.

My union representative also made the open threat of a strike, that I and those who declared their overtime had the support of the union and teaching staff.

I hope Reddit really loves this story, because I do!

One person says that other countries need to take a lesson.

This person came with an excellent pun.

People were really stuck on the union bit.

Either way, that principal should have known better.

This is one of those stories that makes you smile.

Sometimes the little man wins the day.