Hard-Working Teachers Were Incensed When a District Admin Insisted They Clock In and Out Every Day—So They Billed the District for Every Second of Daily Overtime
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Sometimes we find that teachers are accused of having it easy. After all, to the untrained eye, these folk go to school five days a week through school terms, and then have all those school holidays paid to rest, relax, and spend time with the kids, their friends and their family. They can even go on vacation, because they have what to some people looks like copious amounts of vacation time to enjoy, whilst everyone else has a meagre few paid days to take every year. Or so it seems.
But be careful ever implying that to a teacher, or you’ll be hit by a strong dose of reality. Because generally, teachers are the hardest working folk of all, working so much overtime during the working week that even some of the most corporate ladder climbing business folk would cry. Because a teacher’s job isn’t done in the school day. Outside of school they’re planning lessons, grading tests, and marking homework – and believe it or not, this carries on through the school holidays too, with plenty of teachers also supplementing their low wages with additional part time jobs during the vacation.
And so the teacher in this story was furious when a district admin became suspicious that teachers weren’t working enough hours, knowing full well that they and their colleagues went above and beyond every day for the school. So they complied fully, and the enormity of their workload became abundantly clear.
Read on to find out more.
“We’re going to add a time clock, and teachers need to start clocking in and out, because too many are leaving 5 – 10 minutes before contract ends.”
About eight years ago, I was working at a middle school in the DC suburbs.
Nice district and super supportive parents, but high up admin caught wind that teachers would periodically leave about ten minutes prior to the end of “contract hours”.
Keep in mind, this is after kids are all mostly gone for the day, and we didnt really have a negotiated “contract” because VA was a right to work state with zero union protection.
No principal took it super seriously unless it was being abused, but for some reason, some high up decided to make this his crusade.
Let’s see how this person tried to make the teachers stay those extra ten minutes.
So district admin decides to install a time clock, because a few teachers would occasionally leave ten minutes early to try and beat the worst of the bus traffic (and for those of you who know the DC area, you know the difference between leaving at 2:50 and 3:00 can be massive).
It was mostly parents with kids of their own they had to pick up, and all of us already work obscenely long hours, so this micro managing doesn’t go over well.
So a few of us dug around and realised that the district had language in our employee handbook about requesting reimbursement for work “beyond the duties of a typical contracted school day.”
So we figured, if the “contract hours” are that critical, then every other hour must be “beyond the duties of a typical contracted school day”.
Read on to find out how that went down.
So a few of us started having “grading parties”, where we would meet at the school after a happy hour, clock in, and sit in the bleachers, grading.
It turned into a nice form of bonding and team building, ironically.
We started flooding the district office with requests for reimbursement for these extra hours (and the extra hour plus that most of us worked daily before contract hours began).
None of them were approved, obviously, but it didnt take long for admin to remove the time clock.
Wow, this is the way to get back at these pedantic higher-ups.
Because we all know just how hard teachers work every day, and how little most actually get reimbursed for all their effort.
So making them clock in and out is downright insulting, and it’s great that with a little malicious compliance they got it removed.
Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.
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This person thought that this policy was ridiculous.
And other teachers spoke of the importance of malicious comliance in a job like this.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a grocery cashier who gets into a standoff with a customer who hasn’t paid for everything in their basket.
Meanwhile, this Redditor explained just how difficult the life of a teacher really is.
Genuinely, until you work as a teacher, you’ll never understand just what a tough job it is. Because it’s not just babysitting a bunch of kids and then taking long vacations, it’s taking responsibility for the safety, welfare, and educational progress of hundreds of individual children every day. It’s making sure that they are learning and understanding everything you teach them, that they are doing their homework and doing well on their tests.
It’s marking all their classwork, their homework, and those tests, all while planning the next things you’re going to teach them. It’s making sure they are behaving and calling their parents when they’re not, reporting things that seem suspicious or any concerns you might have, and attending meetings with colleagues, superiors, and parents. It’s all the extra curriculars, the summer schools, and the field trips. And it’s getting up early every day, with the knowledge that you’re going to be exhausted again this evening, and doing it day after day – often working many more hours than other folk, generally for less pay too.
So when a district admin thinks that the teachers are leaving too early and insists that they clock in and out to prove that they didn’t leave a minute before they were allegedly supposed to? Well you can expect kick-back from the teachers who devote their time and energy every day to helping every one of those kids. And you can expect to pay them for all their overtime too.
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