Jerky Duty

Hammer came into my room today, which scared the crap out of me. The last time I saw her in person was not pleasant.

As I thought, she wasn’t there to congratulate me on a job well done. No, she wanted to know why I wasn’t at staff development on Friday . Before I could respond, she continued to remind me that she is the English Department Staff Development Participation Liaison for all professional development occurring in the 5th six weeks and that I had failed to comply with policy concerning teacher involvement.

It took me a second, but then I realized that she was saying that she took attendance on Friday, and I wasn’t there.

“I was at jury duty.”

“Why wasn’t I notified?”

“Well, I did send numerous e-mails informing you that I would be gone.”

“Obviously, I didn’t get those e-mails.”

“Let’s hope not because the last one I sent I put, ‘I just broke my leg! Help!’ in the heading out of desperation to get you to read it. And if you did get that one, then I must say—my feelings are hurt.”

“If you couldn’t reach me on e-mail, then you should have come to my office.”

“I would have, but all of my e-mails came back with one of those auto-replies saying you were out of the office.”

The conversation did not last much longer after that, but she did leave me some reading on inner-office communication. Now that I know how much she’ll want to discuss it later on, it will be going straight into the trash.