Story Time: Issues at Work

I work two jobs,(well technically four). I have a part time cashier position at a local grocery store and a full time position that is split up between two departments at a nonprofit organization. My full time position consists of being a site coordinator of two different programs and also being an in home counselor. To put it simply, I have maybe one day every two weeks that I’m not working somewhere.

Let’s face it, issues at work are inevitable.

There are some days when I feel like I’m doing everything right, then something will cause me to feel upset and annoyed. So recently at one of my programs, which is held at a school during after school hours, I found out that one of the teachers doesn’t like the way I leave the room after my program is done.

I can understand if I rearranged the tables and didn’t put them back or touched anything on her desk, but I didn’t and continue to not.

The teacher says that I leave the room a mess because I apparently don’t clean up after giving the children a snack.

What makes it worse is that she says this has been happening for weeks, but I have never heard about it until another teacher interrupted my program and told all the children, in a yelling sort of way, that she would personally give them detention if the room was a mess again. This teacher didn’t even acknowledge me and walked out of the room.

If I created an issue why haven’t I heard about it until that moment. I never received an email or was even talked to by the teacher that has the problem with my “mess.”

So being a third party organization in this case, I have to email a lot of people.

First, I talked with my supervisor from the nonprofit organization that my program runs through. I asked her how to word the email and who on the school’s administration as well as any of the other administrators in our organization that I should send it to. Then came the reply from the school’s administrator, which led to a meeting with me, two of my supervisors, and that teacher.

Honestly it seems like it was the result of some miscommunication between multiple parties.

Apparently there was some crumbs that were left on the floor after the first week and since then whenever the teacher came into the room the next day since, she looked for crumbs. If she found a couple, she would complain to other teachers because she thought that my program was part of another program that is held after school. That program eats their snacks in the cafeteria.

However, my program isn’t funded by the school, so my snacks aren’t purchased through the school.

To make my point clear, I even showed pictures that I had taken after I had cleaned up from one of our parties. Just to prove that I didn’t leave the room a mess.

(And in my opinion, it was cleaner after I left.)

It’s still a misunderstanding that effects my program due to the negativity that the teacher said to others. Eventually, my program got moved to another room, which isn’t any better than the previous room.

But it’s better this way now.