I work as a lecturer for an educational institution with branches all over the country. My branch is regarded as the finest in the whole organization, and this story is about the time I realized why.

Around five years after I started working there, the board of directors of our organization decided to gather all the lecturers at a conference hotel. The idea was to exchange experiences and generally have a nice time with our colleagues.

We were organized into groups based on subjects. All lecturers from different schools who taught the same subjects would be in the same groups. The day’s program would be decided by different groups: the program for [subject #1] lecturers would be set up by [City #1 School], the program for the [subject #2] lecturers would be set up by [City #2 School], etc.

My school happened to be responsible for setting up the program for my subject. We did some planning before the conference and decided that it would be a good idea to share experiences and resources and generally converse about how we went about doing our jobs. Our colleagues from the other cities thought so, too; we spent the day discussing all sorts of case studies and methods, generally learning a lot from each other.

During these talks, I realized the first reason why my branch is the best in the organization. We were discussing our methods when I showed one of my junior colleagues from another school some resources I had on my laptop. You know the sort of thing: PowerPoint presentations, written documents, spreadsheets, etc. She leaned in and studied my stuff eagerly, eventually muttering:

Colleague #1: “I don’t have anything like that.”

Me: “Well, they’re fairly easy to make, but the reason I have so much of this is that I’ve worked on it for five years.”

Colleague #1: “Well, I just started this fall, so I’ve only been working here for five months. It’s my first job, so…”

Me: “Do you want some of this?”

She looked at me, surprised.

Colleague #1: “Really?”

Me: “Uh… yeah? It’s not secret or anything.”

Colleague #1: “I can just… have it?”

Me: “Sure. What are you interested in?”

Colleague #1: “Well… all of it, but…”

Me: “Okay, I’ll set up a shared link for you. Hang on.”

I collected pretty much everything I had made for work over the past five years — PowerPoint presentations, syllabuses, and timetables; tests and evaluation criteria; collections of suitable literature complete with specific page numbers so they could easily be matched with subjects; lists of links to relevant web articles — a whole bunch of useful stuff.

Colleague #1: “Wow, this is great! This could save me a bunch of time. And it’s okay if I just reuse this?”

Me: “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

Colleague #1: “It’s just that we’re not really used to sharing resources like this. I’ve found some stuff online, but…”

Me: “Hold up. Hang on… You don’t share your ideas with the other lecturers? Why not?”

Colleague #1: “Well, it… Huh. I guess it just never really occurred to us.”

I looked around the table at the other people who taught the same subject as me. They seemed equally perplexed.

Me: “Do none of you share resources? Plans, timetables, lecture presentations, notes…?”

Colleague #2: “Hm… Not really, no…”

Colleague #3: “I guess we do sometimes… but no, we mostly just build our own stuff from the bottom up.”

Me: “Well, feel free to use my stuff. You can make changes, too, if you need to. There’s no copyright on this.”

Colleague #1: “This is awesome!”

It turned out that our branch had developed a culture for sharing information and discussing things freely while the other institutions had much less interaction between their lecturers. To me, the free exchange of ideas has always felt like a very natural thing (especially given that we are, you know, a freakin’ school), and my managers encourage it. My coworkers and I borrow stuff from each other all the time. Apparently, this wasn’t common practice everywhere in the organization.

After the conference, we heard that the other branches also seemed to have a completely different idea of what this kind of conference was about. One subject group decided to spend the day watching a stand-up comedian they had hired. A different group spent most of their time chatting and lunching. For them, this was a social event. The whole day was just spent hanging around in a hotel, socializing. In fairness, the people who attended did say that it was very nice, but it wasn’t exactly useful to their actual jobs.

I hear things are a bit better at the other branches now, some ten years later, but the board of directors still considers my workplace the “cherry on the cake”.

I teach at a small one-building school district. The bookkeeper, who is in charge of all the district’s financial records, is a piece of work.

She sends out the W-2 (an American form for filing your taxes). Two weeks later, she sends an email:

Bookkeeper: “I did the W-2s wrong. Use the updated form I’m sending out.”

Guess who the schmuck was who filed his taxes immediately?

Later:

Me: “Why is my paycheck about half of what it should be?”

Bookkeeper: “Oh, I forgot to withhold something in your last few checks, so I took it all out of this one.”

It never occurred to her that this would be inconvenient for me or that she should warn me. Fortunately, the principal decides that maybe I should gradually pay back the money over several paychecks rather than all at once.

Later:

Me: “Are you still putting money from my paycheck into my annuity? It looks like it stopped.”

Bookkeeper: “Oh, yeah. You needed to sign up again when you switched positions.”

Me: “That was months ago! Why didn’t you say something?”

Bookkeeper: *Huffily* “I was in this office for the entire summer. If you had come in once, I would have talked to you.”

Me: “I taught summer school. I was here literally every day for a month.”

Later, I marry a fellow teacher who starts working in my district. She gets her first pay stub.

Wife: “Wow, this teaching gig sure pays well!”

No, it doesn’t. The bookkeeper accidentally included the school nurse’s salary in my wife’s deposit. Because the money is in our account, we are the ones who have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it to the nurse.

Later, I change districts, but my wife stays. One day, she calls me in tears. The bank has called us saying the checks we paid our bills with are bouncing. When I find out why, I call the bookkeeper myself. (My wife, who is pregnant at the time, is too upset.)

Me: “I understand that you gave [Wife] a physical paycheck last cycle?”

Bookkeeper: “That is correct. I put it in her mailbox.”

Me: “Well, for the past two years, her paycheck was automatically deposited.”

Bookkeeper: “I had to write a physical check because of [some screw-up on her part, which was the result of another screw-up on her part].”

Me: “Well, she assumed the envelope was just the receipt — like it has been every time. She never opened it and assumed her check had been deposited.”

This is in the early 2000s, before online banking is commonplace.

Bookkeeper: “Well, someone needs to take responsibility for checking those things.”

Me: “Yes, someone does, since it sure as heck ain’t you.”

The district authorized another check, and the bank didn’t penalize us for the overdrafts.

The bookkeeper later retired.

CONTENT WARNING: Dead Animals (Taxidermy)

My aunt used to do free presentations using taxidermy specimens from the college where she worked. I’d help. These specimens had tags saying the dates they’d been stuffed — some back to the early 1900s. (The oldest I recall was a bear cub from 1903.)

The kids understood that the animals were dead and stuffed. On multiple occasions, we had parents ask what kind of drugs we had given the animals to keep them so quiet and docile.

THEY’RE DEAD!

I was at a veteran’s program at a school one fall wearing a small set of US Marine Corps sergeant stripes on my shirt pocket. I got these stripes maintaining helicopters during the Vietnam War. The school did an excellent job, by the way, for being so small.

Anyway, this kid, who looked like he was in the first grade, came up.

Kid: “Are you a vet-er-un?”

Me: “Yes, I am, young man.”

He thought for a moment.

Kid: “Were you in World War One?”

D***, I know I don’t look 120. Better come up with something quick.

Me: “I sure was. As a matter of fact, I started it.”

His eyes got as big as golf balls.

Kid: “Wow! You started it?!”

Me: “Yep, me and my cousin. His name is Jim.”

He took off. I could hear him as he ran around a corner in the hallway.

Kid: “Mama, mama! There’s a man here that started World War One!”

I’m the author of this story. Here’s the worst field trip experience, which gave me a permanent medical condition.

The summer before the previous story, my school district was experimenting with running its own summer program for elementary students. They’d have regular teachers also on summer break hired to run it, and it would use one of the existing schools. All children in grades one to four (ages six to eleven) who went to schools in the district would be welcome to enroll. Lunch would be provided, there would be field trips every Friday, the hours would be similar to regular school, and there would only be a nominal fee upfront. For working parents, it was a godsend.

When we got to it, it was okay. The teachers who had taken the position were the ones who worked at the school that was hosting it, which was the wealthiest of the six elementary schools in the district. Even we oblivious kids noticed that they were a little snobby to those of us from the “less desirable” schools. Groups were based on what grade we’d be in come fall, and each teacher had about thirty-five kids to watch over.

I don’t remember most of the time there, just a tie-dye project the whole “school” did (they stole my cousin’s to give to a student who went to that school during the year who was absent the day we dyed them), a pretty cool demonstration/talk from a guy with a “pet” bald eagle who did wildlife rehabilitation, and the field trip in this story.

One Friday in the middle of the summer, we were going to a semi-local resort that had a spring-fed pool with nearby streams where you could catch crawdads with your bare hands. I loved swimming at that time and was ecstatic that I could just stay in the pool the whole time. My memories of the day are hazy, with only a few clear moments. During the few times I was out of the pool, I visited the singular drinking fountain on the property to view a hummingbird guarding its nest but didn’t take many drinks. By the time we had to leave, I must have been exhausted and a little sunburnt, but I was satisfied. I don’t think I was on the bus I came in on, but my cousin helped me onto his bus, and those teachers must have decided to just let me be since his bus was split between our age groups anyway and notified my bus so the whole caravan of three or four buses could head off.

It was an hour ride home, and fifteen minutes in, I started vomiting uncontrollably. Thankfully, I had just collapsed onto the first seat, and the driver had a real garbage bin onboard. The air conditioning was either broken or non-existent, there were no extra bottles of water, and I wouldn’t have been able to keep it down at that point anyway. I was only seven and didn’t know what was happening, I was scared I would die, and I started crying into the trash bin.

My six-year-old cousin did his best to comfort me by giving me what was left of his water bottle, rubbing my back, and asking the teachers for help. They didn’t do anything except comfort the other six-year-olds who started crying because my condition scared them, and then eventually have everyone move back so there was an empty buffer seat between me and my cousin and everyone else.

Once we got back to the pick-up site, I was puking less but still sort of crying. There, we met with my older brother coming off his bus, and we waited for our dad to pick us up, which I’m told was thankfully faster than usual. I’m pretty sure I remember my brother and cousin getting me to sit in the shade of a tree on my towel and one of them staying with me while the other got my dad to help me into the car when he arrived. My last clear memory of this day is crying while apologizing as I started puking again in my dad’s back seat.

Apparently, I was still semi-lucid so my dad just immediately took me home. There, he set me up on his bed with the ceiling fan on high and our air conditioning turned up, kept alternating cold wet cloths on my forehead, and tried to get me to keep down drinks. I hadn’t gotten better by the time my mom got home, about an hour after we did, so they made the decision to get me to the hospital. There, apparently, I had an IV to help rehydrate me and get my core temperature down, and I was released later that night because I had been alert and conscious the whole time.

My parents spent the next week taking turns taking us kids to their workplaces (they both had offices, thankfully). Then, they decided to have my grandma watch us with our cousin before they could get us into the daycare they used during the school year for the last few weeks of summer.

From my point of view, I passed out in my dad’s back seat and then woke up from a nap in my grandma’s bed. I was a little confused but knew I was in a safe place. More importantly, I knew my aunt and uncle who lived with my grandma had treats in the freezer, so I went out to the living room to ask if I could have a Fudgesicle. I forgot about the confusion by the time my parents got us, and it didn’t come up again until I was almost an adult.

At no point during or after were my parents ever contacted by anyone at the summer program. The school even tried to get them to reconsider when my parents called to unenroll me and my brother.

I had a heat stroke on that field trip, and ever since, I have had to be very careful about my body temperature and can’t take much direct sunlight. On bad days, just washing my hair with hot water can make me overheat and leave me exhausted for hours. It also took a few years for my long-term memory to recover and develop properly, but I think it’s more or less normal now after puberty.

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