Bad News…

OG7-G5

Well, my four day sub assignment ended after just two days. Not a real biggie. I guess the teacher got everything squared away at home and was ready to re-take control of her class. I just didn’t appreciate the way I got the news. A phone or email as late as Sunday night would have been acceptable, but not at 05:00am Monday morning.

If you live long enough, bad news will come your way. It’s a part of life and unavoidable. It’s just that sometimes the delivery method and/or timing could be managed to lessen the impact.

Some of the more memorable examples how I got “The Bad News!”

1. Promise a young college graduate all year long that a job is waiting for him after college graduation and then cancel that promise two weeks before the intended job start date and one week before his wedding and honeymoon.

2. Reassure your employee that the rumors are false about his job being outsourced overseas before he goes on vacation only get the news his job left while he was on vacation. The boss delivers the news via answering machine the weekend I get back from vacation. Luckily, he didn’t have my cell number or he would have tried to call me a week earlier in London so the termination dates could have been recorded a week earlier. Nice guy, eh?

3. Have an automated system call at 05:30am and wake me from a sound sleep to tell me that my 2-day substitute teaching assignment for day and tomorrow is cancelled. Couldn’t that piece of news waited for at least one more hour of peaceful slumber? I guess I should be grateful they didn’t call at 04:00am.

As it turned out, the other school district called later and I picked up a job for a 5th grade class starting at 10:00am. The only thing I lost today was a couple hours additional sleep.