Stop Bitching

Yeah, I’m a teacher, which means I should have an honorary doctorate in Bitching. Is there any other profession that bitches en masse about their awful job plight more than teachers? (Okay, you’re right - Cops and firemen are the worst offenders, but I guess we have to lay off those perpetual whiners for another year or so, as they’re still riding out that 9/11 thing for all it’s worth.)

I bet you know at least one person who is a teacher, and odds are good you’ve heard that person piss and moan and bitch and gripe and gnash their coffee-stained teeth about how underappreciated and underpaid they are. Lest you doubt the validity of their wailings, let me explain what an absolute ballbreaker this job is.

The hours are killers! I am usually home in my recliner and sucking on my second martini by 3:30 every day. I’m in my early 40s, and I still get to use the phrase “on my spring break.” I get over a week off every Christmas, yet I’ve still bitched about having to work an entire half-day on the goddamn 23rd of December. (The indignity!) I’ve done this very bitching to some poor working schlub who is ready to give his boss a thank-you hummer for letting him leave a whole hour early on Christmas Eve.

This year, even though January 2nd falls on a Monday, we have the day off, which means that I can get piss-drunk AND stoned while I watch the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s night. It’s one step away from slavery, I tell ya.

Then there’s that little perq called “summers off.” This suck-ass job leaves me with ten glorious summer weeks of rolling out of bed around the crack of noon, making some iced tea and watching Sportscenter while I make plans to tackle the day’s lengthy to-do list, which usually consists of a grand total of two items. One, pop three Advil in a futile effort to rid myself of a searing hangover, and two, try to drag my alcohol-soaked ass to Ray’s liquors for more scotch so that I can get an early start on tomorrow’s hangover. Not every day is this easy, though. Every other Friday I have to add a third item to the day’s agenda: schlepping out to the mailbox to pick up that paycheck they keep sending all summer. Pure servitude, indeed.

We don’t get paid enough! Let’s see if that one holds up. I work about nine months a year. My boss actually sees me perform my job about once a year for 45 minutes. The only way I can get fired is if I get caught fucking a white girl in the hall. Some days my most complicated task involves hitting the “play” and “rewind” buttons on the VCR. (Which ain’t so easy after 12 Heinekens the night before.) Every year I receive at least one genuinely moving note from a student whom I’ve somehow managed to inspire through my alcoholic glaze. And for this I get paid over $60,000 a year. Yeah, it’s a real Dickens sweatshop, this job.

You don’t realize the pressure we’re under! Yes, the pressure can be unbearable. Do you realize the long-range consequences if I fail to teach little Johnny to recognize a gerund phrase, or if the P.E. teacher can’t get it through Susie’s ditzy blonde head how to execute the proper rotation in a game of volleyball? My hair is turning gray because I know I’ve sent plenty of little Timmies out into the world who have no idea how to keep their participles from dangling all over the goddamn place. You don’t know white-knuckle, heart-stopping stress until a VCR eats your lesson plan during 3rd period, leaving you only your 30-minute, duty-free lunch period to run to the library to find another video that you can somehow justify showing. (“These characters all speak lines that end in exclamation points. See if you can spot which ones require that often misused piece of punctuation. But keep it down, because my head is killing me.”) And Tom Ridge thought the stakes were high in that cushy little Homeland Security gig he begged off of.

No one has been ever been drafted into this job, yet from the endless griping issuing forth from the teachers’ lounge, you’d swear the government is taking the best and brightest out of law schools in the middle of the night and forcing them to stand in front of classrooms wearing pleated Dockers with chalk-stained pockets and short-sleeved checkered shirts.

There isn’t one member of this pathetic lot of slackers who didn’t choose to do this so-called job, so we all need to stop bitching so much. Unless, of course, they try make us work past June 15th, in which case those slave-driving central office bastards better be ready for a fight, because we’ll file a grievance so goddamn fast...

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.