School is definitely one of those places (and even periods of time) that can be best described as wild. I think that requires no elaboration—we all know what you did in school, Josh.
But if you’re a teacher, the wild doesn’t stop. And what is more, sometimes you have to embrace it in order to bring order and common sense back to the table. Like this one teacher who was told by the principal that he was to report absolutely every single incident, big or small. And then malicious compliance ensued.
More Info: Reddit
It just goes to show, you never mess with a teacher. Why? They work with kids, they have an infinite source of mischief. Does that explain it?
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
This one teacher channeled their inner mischief recently, and decided to maliciously comply with the principal's order to report on "everything" suspicious
Image credits: Taaronk
3 times a day, 3 weeks straight, weekends included later, the principal admits defeat and lets the teacher bask in the glory of malicious compliance done right
Image credits: Mikhail Nilov (not the actual photo)
I have mentioned this several times before, but you just never mess with a teacher. Teachers essentially have an infinite source of mischief to learn from, and so breaking a teacher’s arm into doing something unnecessary might just have unnecessary consequences as a necessary result.
The story goes that OP is a high school teacher and was one day approached by a student who explained that they had a strong suspicion someone was partaking in some giggity in one of the other rooms in the school. Apparently, they saw a couple leave and it smelled like business time in there. Yes, those are technical terms, please stop interrupting.
Anywho, the teacher went to investigate, but couldn’t discover any signs of burning desire, including said odors of sin. And since there was no empirical evidence of anyone or anything getting primal, he dropped the investigation and went back to work.
That is, until around 4 months later when, apparently, word spread that someone had violated that one room in the school with all of their shame. The news was so big, the principal caught word of it. This in turn led to the principal tracing back the incident to OP and asking about it.
Of course, his asking was essentially reprimanding the teacher for not reporting it to him, despite there not being anything to really report in the first place, but so be it. OP inquired as to the criteria of what counts as report-worthy, and the principal essentially said “everything”. [Cue that meme of that one guy saying OK.]
From that point on, absolutely everything that was even remotely suspicious for OP was immediately reported to the principal by email and phone. This meant that a minimum of 3 times a day, OP got in contact with the principal just to tell him something suspicious and problematic, and that went on for 3 weeks straight. Weekends included!
This all culminated on one fateful Friday when OP was about to make his usual problem call when the principal picked up, and before the teacher could even speak, the principal said “Ok, Mr. OP… you’ve made your point.”
Image credits: Max Fischer (not the actual photo)
Needless to say, folks online loved the malicious compliance. Folks were quick to remind the principal (rhetorically at this point) that the teachers there work with teenagers—should it come as a surprise that their bodies are doing what they are supposed to be from an evolutionary standpoint?
Though, some did point out that you can’t be too careful with these sorts of issues. Sure, pics or it didn’t happen rules, but you can never know when something serious is actually happening that way, and it’s good to stay on your guard. But, in any case, the school should’ve made that clear before blasting OP.
Another commenter shared how something similar happened to them (boinking not included) when the principal wanted to be in the loop with all of the groups the school had on its intranet. The commenter was the IT person who could make that happen. And they did. It took two days for the principal to get crushed under the relentless pressure of virtual mail.
Well, 11,700 upvotes (95% positive, this one’s not a reference) later, the post went viral and so here we are now. You can check it out in its context here.
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
Now, among all of the tasks the teachers in schools already have to perform—teaching classes, face-to-face time, class prep work, student and PTA meetings, logistics, paperwork, extracurricular activity organizing, and just being there for the kids, among many other things—you’d think surveillance wouldn’t be in the mix because it is quite humanly impossible to do that amount of things as a teacher. Yet teachers persist.
At least in the State of Victoria, Australia, teachers commit to 38 hours of duty, which is divided up into 3 parts: face to face teaching and learning, class-focused teaching and learning, and other tasks.
The first part tackles actual teaching as per scheduled classes and other directly related work. It is also the largest lump of work teachers do and recommendations vary between 18 to 22 hours.
The next big lump is the class-focus teaching and learning, which is roughly 8 to 12 hours per week and that tackles the behind-the-scenes of a teacher’s work that directly pertains to the job, like prepping, planning and paperwork. In total, it’s 30 hours of more or less direct work.
The remaining 8 are often allocated to other duties, which include organization, meetings, lunch and the like. Together, that’s 38 hours, but that’s Australia, mate. In the US, teachers do pretty much the same work, except their work loads average at around 54 hours a week. So, yeah, maybe cutting teachers a bit of slack with all the student surveillance and investigation is probably due for the course?
In any case, we’d love to hear your thoughts on anything you’ve read here today in the comment section below!
Folks online loved the story too, making sure the post garnered nearly 12K upvotes along the way
