Dear Friends,
For a week or so now, I have been struggling with something that is not related to my wife being almost 3000 miles away and our dog being somewhat depressed. This is a work-related thing, and it makes me feel like I need to go on something of a rant.
For much of the last several months, there is a certain male teacher I work with who I keep hearing the female teaches say awful things about in conversations. They have said how he hits on them and is super inappropriate and now I’m hearing that he touched the face of one of our aides, removing her mask without her permission, so he could say how pretty she was.
Who the fuck does this?
I know who: Assholes.
This particular aide also shared with me that several female students have confided in her that they are also uncomfortable around him and don’t want to be in his classes. I am fucking livid and feel the need to do something about it. The macho (yes, I have that, sort of) guy in me would like to take him out on the field one day and kick the living shit out of him, but that would only hurt me and benefit him.
I’m not going to do that.
I should probably add that I have also found him to be extremely unprofessional and inconsiderate. He is supposed to be at my class at the same time each week and he is almost always ten minutes late. I have complained about this to my superiors, and nothing has been done. Even if they have talked to him about it, he clearly does not respond well to boundaries.
In the past, I did the same job that he does and if I were late to a classroom even once, I would have apologized profusely and tried to make up for it. Teacher prep time is like gold and this motherfucker owes me about three hours of it at this point. But seriously, that is nothing compared to being a sexual predator on campus.
These people are like submarines. They are constantly pinging, like sonar, to see if there is anything out there that might get in their way. They are always on the lookout for someone they can push around or make feel uncomfortable and that just sucks. The workplace is guaranteed by law to be a safe place and clearly mine is not safe for the women on campus. I hate it.
It is bad enough that he’s hitting on adults, but making the kids feel uncomfortable is even worse. Based on what I’ve heard from at least five adult female teachers, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised that some of the students are part of his bullshit, too. We only go up to eighth grade, dear reader, so this is a guy in his 30s hitting on girls 11, 12, 13, and 14.
I keep getting madder and madder as I type this.
As a young dude, my dad was very direct and to the point about how I was supposed to interact with women. It didn’t ever seem like he was being overbearing or overly precautious. He just laid it out to me that I was supposed to be respectful and listen and take no for an answer if it came up. To me, this was always an easy guideline to follow, so it’s hard to wrap my brain around what this guy is thinking.
It’s not like he’s single and ready to mingle, either. He has a gal pal (not sure if she is his wife or just the mother of his baby) and a very young child. All the women on staff know this, but he’s tried to make time with a lot of them anyway. For some people, that’s not a deal breaker, but everyone I’ve heard about this guy has been repulsed by it.
In this day and age, I don’t get how people think they can get away with this but clearly, they can. #MeToo was a joke. Not that it isn’t real or necessary, but a joke because it got swept under the rug as fast as a new, bigger rug could be put in the place the old, worn-out rug that put up with sexual abuse and assault for every year prior to #MeToo becoming a thing.
I should probably also mention that this guy pushes his limits, even after he’s been told to back off. If you are not happy in your romantic life and immature enough to think work is the place to find new love (and, admittedly, I’ve been guilty of thinking this in the past), you are playing with fire already. Not backing off, though, and continuing to push when you’ve been told “NO” is, yes, you guessed it, illegal. It’s also, in my opinion, immoral and contrary to that cross he likes to wear around his neck.
Lord knows I know better than to bring religion into this, but apparently even God loves a hypocrite.
I’ll figure out how to approach my principal about this. I’ll also continue to let the ladies who confide in me know that it isn’t their fault, and they are safe in sharing this information. I will also continue to tell them and anyone else who ever brings this type of thing up around me that I believe them. It is the least I can do.
Guys like this make it harder on the rest of us. We all say and do the wrong thing sometimes. Humans are imperfect creatures, to be sure, but people who go out of their way to make others feel like an object fuck it up for the guys out there who mean well, want to be respectful, and don’t know how to talk to someone they find attractive. There are plenty of those guys out there who want to do the right thing, but no one was there for them like my dad was there for me.
If I end up in jail or out of a job for beating up a fellow teacher, now you know why.
See you tomorrow.
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