“There Were Many Smiles”: Teacher’s Epic Resignation Leads To School Chaos

People with just a little bit of power very quickly tend to forget its limitations. They might get so used to abusing it, cajoling people, throwing around threats and insults that they cease to consider the possibility that someone might get up and leave, or, even worse, simply refuse to be threatened.

A teacher shared a brilliant bit of malicious compliance when an abusive and ambitious principal tried to make him teach courses he wasn’t trained to do. When he refused, the principal mockingly suggested that he look for a new job and was unpleasantly surprised when the teacher decided to take him at his word.

Unfortunately, parts of this story will no doubt feel all too familiar to anyone who has spent enough time employed. After all, if you work for any company or organization, chances are, you have a boss or manager of some sort. A principal is a classic example of one type of manager. Setting aside questions of what these people actually do, these folks tend to have some power and, often enough, do not hesitate to flaunt it.

More often than not, this creates a feeling of immunity from consequences. In the US, around 30% of workers have reported some sort of bullying from management. Sometimes this is the result of malignant personalities ending up in positions of power. All too often, people with narcissistic personality disorder end up in positions of power, despite them being roughly 5% of the entire population. Other times, this is just what happens when a person gets used to throwing their weight around.

The unhappy truth is that most people can’t afford to just quit on the turn of a dime, meaning they stay at organizations with toxic culture for years. Often, this means their productivity and motivation plummets, with disastrous results. The best employees will generally just leave, as they tend to not have trouble finding work elsewhere.

This story has a classic and absolutely counterproductive example. When confronted about their decisions, the principal tells a valued employee that “no one cares” which is sure to motivate them to keep trying. While we can’t know for certain, this principal probably thought this line was absolutely fantastic, and enough to keep this pesky teacher out of his hair.

In any other situation, saying “no one cares” to a person passionately defending something is roughly akin to fighting words. At best, this principal was so caught up in their own vision that they forgot what a school and its teachers were actually for. The result is that he is now making decisions that lead to the entire teaching staff applauding when one quits.

As drastic as it might seem, quitting is often the best choice. Firstly, the “bad manager” isn’t going to magically get better or act nicer. Abuse of power is often a learned behavior, something they do because time and time again, it works out for them. Sometimes cutting one’s losses is enough, but as this story demonstrates, it can also be what gets an even higher up to notice.

Now this principal will have to explain why they desperately need to replace six teachers at once and that they lost a lot of extracurricular activities in one fell swoop. Teaching is by no means an easy job, so finding people willing to do it is often harder than most people think. Regardless of what he says, it will be hard to spin this as anything but his own failure. In a perfect world, this might end up with the principal removed, but at the very least, it should curtail some of this power.

Regardless, this story serves as a reminder to not waste your time in a toxic environment and, just as importantly, why it’s vital to have a real and functional support system. If this teacher was saddled with bills and had no one to go to, unemployment would seem a lot more scary than it is.