I tried to flounce. I wasn't allowed.
As I have previously said on b3ta, during my A-levels I was given the tedious, stressful and frankly pointless job as "person of responsibility" (not even a prefect, honestly) put in charge of the apparently very very important Sixth Form Newsletter. This was a slim and over-cliparted volume published at the end of every term, that usually featured articles about open days at unis and courses and and the various speakers we'd had in for "society" every so often. In other words, it was dross that didn't even interest the people writing it and something I wouldn't even line a cat's litter tray with. (Of course my insanely proud parents kept every copy I was anything to do with).

I was not alone in my hated task, either. As well as two deputy prefects from the year below who were actually useful, I was also sharing my torture with Stalker Boy's best enemy, the openly and flamboyantly gay, snarky (think the bitchiest, meanest girl you've ever met) Tris, who used his "connections" as a way to further his entourage of girls who hung on his every word and worshipped him as their very own Gay Best Friend God. Can you tell Will & Grace was popular at the time?

Somehow, however, in all his preening and telling girls they looked "divine!" and bursting into numbers from Annie for no apparent reason (he was cast as Daddy Warbucks in the school production and we never ever heard the end of it; the only way he could have got more big-headed was if he was cast as Annie), he didn't have much time to get work done for the newsletter, which meant I was the one who more often than not was asking people who I hated and who hated me (see Karma QOTW) to write me a few lines about what they'd been doing on admissions days and stuff, and more often than not I'd end up writing them myself. Meanwhile, in spite of being asked to do things, every time I asked him for a bit of assistance, Tris would agree "of course I will, sweetie!" and later snarl and spit about I had "such issues" asking him to do things when I was "so lazy, she just has to delegate!"

This all came to a head about three weeks before the deadline in my last term, when I had asked Tris to proofread the finished document while I had my Latin class in the other end of the building. "Yes of course I will darling!".

Twenty minutes later, Stalker Boy sidles into my classroom wringing his hands like a pantomime villain and, pausing only to call my Latin teacher a variety of obscenities in German and suggest she becomes a rent boy, he tells me "The minute you went out of the room, Tris alt-tabbed and went straight back to looking at Gaydar, dear."

Something snapped in me that day, and I used my next free period to write a letter politely telling the head of sixth form to stick her poxy newsletter up her arse (omitting that she looked like Snape from Harry Potter) because I was getting no support from any of the other prefects, and found the work to be totally unrewarding. I printed this at the end of lunchbreak, and handed it to the staffroom. No envelope or anything, because I didn't have one and didn't think it would be necessary.

I'm amazed I didn't hear the scream of fury when she read it, judging by the way she glared at me when she collared me in the middle of the afternoon and asked, nay DEMANDED, to see me in her office at the end of the day. I spent the next two hours in Latin freaking out that she was going to gut me and print the next newsletter in my own blood (did I mention as well as looking like Snape, this woman was fucking terrifying?), and dragged my feet to her office at the end of the day, trembling like a kicked spaniel.

I had barely got through the door when she started on me, and it all seemed to come out as one word "how DARE you resign in such a RUDE and inconsiderate manner without even putting the letter in an ENVELOPE and handing it to me PERSONALLY, and that you think that this is NOT A WORTHWHILE USE OF YOUR TIME! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY OF THE SCHOOL GOVERNORS READ THIS NEWSLETTER AND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS?"

"um... sorry...?"

She then held a prefect meeting the next day, where she told everyone what I'd tried to do and said "please be nice to Maladicta, she's only small."

I did eventually get revenge, by inciting rebellion and ensuring all the lower sixth saw how much of a chore the evil thing was to put together at the end of term when you had more important things to worry about, like, you know, exams, and deadlines that actually mattered. And none of them applied for it, meaning that she had to actually incite democracy and set up a committee for it, which lasted about a year.

Length? She probably had quite a bit of length.
( Maladicta, Thu 22 May 2008, 22:04, Reply)