» Customers from Hell

A long rant about ... Parents ...
... or, rather, customers of the great Government school system of Australia. 'Customers', even though it's FREE education.

One of the reasons I prefer teaching in Asia - if the parents are twats, they bitch-out the Asian staff, 'coz we don't understand them.

This happened back in Oz. I hate teaching bogans (chavs, white trash). How many times can you tolerate explaining that I CAN'T tell them how to spell, "HAFTA" and, "COULDA", because they AREN'T WORDS!?!?

Little bogan girl runs up to me at the end of lunch period with a lunchbox emergency.
Her yoghurt has burst open, covering the inside of the box, and the apple that accompanied it.

Pushing aside my surprise that she actually has something other than take-away food for her lunch, I start cleaning out the lunchbox.

She has the apple in one hand, yoghurt pot in the other - "Waddowoi do wif dis?"

It's an empty yoghurt container, what do you think?

"Throw it in the bin."

Off she toddles. Things are cleaned up, problem sorted.

Until the next morning.

I'm sitting on the floor with my class of 5-year-olds, most with emotional and/or psychological problems, one is autistic and VERY violent. Easy to set them off into screaming chaos.

Bogan girl's mum - a veritable hambeast - suddenly appears at the door with a posse of large, grotty-tracksuit-wearing, ugly-stick victims.

"Oi. YOU. YOU TELLED BOGAN GIRL TO THROW OUT 'ER APPLE YESTERDEE WHO DO YA FINK YA ARE HUH YA BLOODY BITCH I DON'T WORK ME ARSE ORF TA BUY SHIT FOR YA TA CHUCK OUT I WANT YOU TA PAY ME FOR THAT FRIGGIN APPLE!"

I calmly attempted to explain the real story, at the same time wondering how "having kids by multiple fathers and getting child allowance" translates in her mind to "working [her] arse off". And trying to ignore the threatening looks from her 'gang'.

"I WANT ME MONEY FOR THAT APPLE I'M GOIN' TA THE PRINCIPAL YA FAT COW YA FINK I CAN WASTE MONEY?"

Well, buying your kids take-away for every school lunch would indicate that.
"WE'RE GONNA BE BACK, ROIGHT GIRLS?" Her 'girls' nod.

Keep in mind, I was a small, 24-year-old. They were in their 40's (I know the mum was also a grandmother) and just one of them could've kicked my arse.

Apparently, the principal told her politely that it was a 'miscommunication' and that further issues with me should be brought directly to him.

Bogan girl later stole my purse, took out my money that was there to pay bills after work, and left the purse in the carpark. All my cards got bent when the cars drove over it, so I couldn't use the ATM to get more cash, and it was Friday.

This sort of crap happened all the time, parents think that because we raise their children for them, so that they can spend more time cheating Centrelink and being scummy and shoplifting from Crazy Clint's, that they can dictate what the school does and heap abuse on the hard-working 'education implementation and assessment officers'.

I've also been physically attacked, threatened and generally disrespected by parents and students alike.
I hate teaching in Australia.
(Mon 8th Sep 2008, 4:49, More)

» Panic Buying


Bought a second-hand kimono for my mum in Kyoto for 800 Yen (about $10 Aus), but when I got home, I realised it had a fairly dodgy, yellowed stain on the inside - right around the bum area.
(I'd had a few sakes prior to buying it, so it went unnoticed in the shop).

Tried to fix it by cutting the stain out of the lining, which made it look even worse.

Then I realised I hadn't bought anything good for my nana.
Started thinking ... Hey, she's pretty short ... if I just cut the kimono in half (eliminating the botched sewing job/stains), I'll have a nice housecoat for nana, and enough left-overs for some cool cushion covers.

She loved her new 'dressing gown'.
Wandered 'round the house, bowing and saying, "Ah, so!" to my cousins & I, which was fairly dodgy ...

... but not as dodgy as her 'loving' grand-daughter ...
(Tue 27th Dec 2005, 0:22, More)

» Scary Neighbours

Not my neighbours
... but my cousins' neighbour ... liked to play loud music at any hour, but would call the coppers if her friends (who live on the other side of him) played anything. (Which they would, just to piss him off - goffik stuff, usually.)
His music would be so loud, it'd make the floorboards in her house shake!
One weekend, her mates had had a gutful. So, they went away for the weekend, and left the stereo on full volume. After standing at the side fence screaming at an empty house for a while, this nutter ends up standing in their driveway, waving a CHAINSAW and swearing his head of (to the delight of the other neighbours, who were standing around watching!)
Our neighbours are fairly normal, but the woman in the apartment above ours has a VERY loud vibrator. Her bedroom is directly above mine, and we live in crappy, non-insulated/noiseproofed Japanese housing. So, I can hear her take a bath, walk across her bedroom floor, open a drawer, then ... "hummmmmmmmmmm"
Cue slight discomfort ... especially when it starts changing speeds, tempo etc.
(Thu 25th Aug 2005, 14:28, More)

» Bastard Colleagues


The teaching profession has more than it's fair share of cunts, bitches, arseholes and wankers. Especially those who teach younger kids, they're the biggest bastards of all. It seems they mostly hate children ... and most of them are mothers.

Being a young, fresh-out-of-uni teacher, on a staff full of 40-something women, seems to automatically bring out the latent bully in otherwise-mature ladies.

A sample - not very funny or interesting, just venting:

My first job, working with a fat cow who worked 2.5 days a week, yet was always slacking off and asking for more APT (additional preparation time).

Her main topics of staffroom conversation were the new shoes she'd just bought (which were always ugly and obviously too small for her lardy feet), and the diet pills she took that gave her an explosively squirty bum whenever she ate fatty foods. Which she did, almost exclusively.

Who would blag an afternoon off, then bark at me, 5 minutes before classes started, "You have to teach the class today!", then leave. I would have to ask the kids what they'd been doing, and make up a lesson on the spot.

She also berated me for letting a few kids out a couple of minutes early. These kids went to the classroom of their siblings to wait for them, which she considered a disturbance.

Cue her screaming at me, in front of the remainder of the class, plus their waiting parents, with the general theme of, "Who do you think you are?"
Never said a word to the kids who had allegedly caused the 'disturbance'.

We used to smoke in the disused PE storage room, that was usually left open, so that teachers could go in and smoke during their leisure.

She decided that it should be kept locked, in case some of the kids went in there. They never did, but ... She bullied another teacher, who was the PE coordinator, into locking it between breaks. HER breaks. Which meant the rest of us had to smoke with her, or not at all.

This was ridiculous, so the key was kept at the front of the PE teacher's pigeon hole, and we could run and collect it, have a quick fag, then put it back.
However, she decided that I didn't need to smoke with the other teachers, as I had my own office to smoke in.
Never mind that it was in my classroom, and the windows were sealed shut.

So, she complained that I took too many smoke-breaks (I was only able to take them with her, remember?), and the ensuing fuss she made ensured that all teachers were banned from smoking on the premises.
Which she twisted into a story that made it sound like I had caused the whole ban.

All because she was a spiteful old cow who was trying to piss me off.
Found out on my last day that she'd applied for my job and been denied, which was why she was such a cunt to me. Very mature.
(Fri 25th Jan 2008, 3:10, More)

» That's when I knew it was over...

I didn't realise it was over when ...
1. He told me, "You're not the kind of girl I thought I'd end up with." Repeatedly.

2. He repeatedly suggested a threesome with my best friend.

3. He would make me wait outside in the car for ages while he talked to one of the girls on the cricket team he coached. Allegedly about cricket. No real woman talks about cricket for that long.

4. I would arrange my schedule so that I could visit him, and he would spend 2 or 3 hours on the phone with her.

5. He told me about how some girl at uni kept cracking-on to him, how she would put her head on his shoulder, touch him etc., and tell him that she hoped I would walk in and "catch them", so that I'd dump him.

6. I would travel for 4 1/2 hours home from uni to see him, every weekend, for 3 years, and he visited me about 4 times.

7. I would go home on the weekend, and he'd go out with his mates, and I couldn't go because it was a "boy's night". But then my (female)mate would ask me, "Why didn't you go?"

8. When he kept pestering me for anal *for 3 years*, and I refused, and he finally just slipped it in "accidently".

9. All the other times he treated me like a piece of shit and made me think it was my fault that I was unhappy, when it was actually because he was a wanker.

10. When he told me he thought it was time we ended it, because we had nothing in common - after 5 years.

11. When I asked him if he still loved me and he said, "Uhhhh ..."

12. When I asked if he had "somebody else lined-up", and he said, "Uhhh ..." and smirked.

I realised it was over when he called me *for a chat* 2 weeks after he dumped me, and ended the phone call by casually mentioning that he was pretty busy packing his stuff, because he was moving-in with the skanky cricket chick.

Best thing he ever did for me was buggering-off with her.

Yeah, he had the length & girth, but didn't have a clue how to use it ...
(Fri 22nd Jul 2005, 15:13, More)