You can do everything right in a crisis and still get blamed when someone else makes the wrong call.

So, what would you do if a water main burst in your classroom and your students were helping you keep the damage under control, when suddenly, the maintenance man walked in and started yelling? Would you try to explain yourself? Or would you just do as he says?

In the following story, one science teacher finds himself in this situation and chooses the latter. Here’s what happened.

Water main burst, maintenance guy told me to stop dumping water out the window

I’m a high school science teacher, and a few years back, a water main burst in my classroom.

I saw the drain was clogged, so I sent the majority of the class to the library and grabbed some students I knew could handle themselves from coaching wrestling and football. I had them help carry water to the window in trash cans while I called Building and Grounds.

A few minutes later, a maintenance guy came in, yelled at me, told everyone to leave, and said we should let the water fill the class until the pressure cleared the blockage in the drain.

The water pressure did not clear the blockage in the drain.

The aftermath was a mess.

The whole hallway on both sides flooded, as did the hallway beneath it, and mold grew, and we had to shut down over 40 classrooms for over a year.

There wasn’t enough classroom space and we had to split the student body in half and have one group come in from 5 am to 11 and the other come in from 11-5 pm. The repair cost the district over $15 million.

All spring sports were cancelled for the year, the next year’s fall sports were cancelled too, and in a lot of ways, the district never recovered.

They even blamed him for the damage.

I got a load of crap from my supervisor, a VP, and the school principal in the immediate aftermath, and wasn’t brought back the next year.

I got offered my old job back when they realized how much damage I was trying to prevent, but I had already moved on to greener pastures.

Wow! And that guy called himself a maintenance man.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about this story.

This person thinks there should’ve been a shutoff.

Harsh but true.

Here’s someone with a lot of questions.

Exactly!

What a mess!

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