Dear Busy Teacher,
In order to understand how busy a teacher is, you would have to be one. Admittedly, I have never worked in another profession to compare how busy teaching is to other careers, but I did work at McDonald’s as a teenager. During the lunch rush, the drive thru line was wrapped around the building and the lobby was four rows deep of people who wanted to know what came on a Big Mac. Seriously, it’s McDonald’s. There aren’t a lot of surprises here.
My second day on the job, a birthday party was added to the chaos. During the lunch rush, the birthday girl vomited up circus peanuts. The manager told me to grab a mop bucket. I reluctantly agreed. That was the day I decided I was most definitely getting a degree.
Staring at the pile of orange vomit wondering where to even start had a way of lighting a fire under me for a life far, far away from circus peanuts.
Little did I know, 25 years later, I would still be working for peanuts.
I would also still be so, so busy. I would venture to say this is the case for most teachers. Teachers are so busy they often forget to eat or go to the bathroom. They also never fully finish anything. They just kind of pause the stack and start anew the next day. It’s a vicious cycle that gives the illusion of progress only to have the stack grow larger over night. Sometimes teachers are so busy, they don’t even know where to begin with the pile of vomit, so they don’t begin at all.
Instead, they decompress by scrolling through Facebook where they land on a blog about busy teachers, except they can’t make it to the end of the reading. Too busy. You know.
But it’s okay if you didn’t make it to the end because the only part you missed was where I say, “To this day, I still can’t look at a circus peanut without getting nauseated.”
Also, that was so wrong of the night manager, Dana. Revenge is sweet though. I have a seven year old who has a birthday coming up soon.
Does anybody know if she still works at the McDonald's in Brewton?
-CDB