If you think you can walk all over teachers, be prepared to be slapped in the face with a hard reality check.

Remember that teachers spend their days among students who have copious amounts of creativity when it comes to mischief. Do you think teachers wouldn’t learn about this, let alone not use it against you if you ever so even dare to wrong them?

A teacher has recently shared their story of malicious (mischievous too) compliance where they, as well as their colleagues, were asked to come to work early, only for the principal to now have a headache over what she would do with the numerous overtime hours the teachers recorded, and have to monitor a class herself.

More info: Reddit

I think it’s safe to say that people should never mess with teachers because, remember, they work with kids—and their mischief can become the teacher’s

Image credits: Jeswin Thomas (not the actual photo)

A teacher recently shared a story of how they maliciously complied on two occasions that not only cost the school money, but also cost the principal some nerves

Image credits: Djorgal

At the end of the day, the principal not only had to figure out how to justify 30 hours of overtime, but was also all of a sudden forced to monitor an exam

The story is twofold, with both parts being very maliciously compliant. On one front, OP, a teacher, and their teacher colleagues were all asked to show up 30 minutes early to monitor an exam that’s an equivalent to an SAT (called a Baccalauréat, all this happening in France). But common sense did not exist here, as teachers would have shown up 5 minutes early and they wouldn’t need more than that. But hey, they were officially asked to be 30 minutes early, so they maliciously obliged.

The other part was OP’s personal contract with the school—as a part-timer, overtime was done a bit differently. Despite all communication and formalities, OP’s hands were tied and so they had a fellow teacher fill in for a couple of minutes while they marched to the principal’s office to say that their work was over, and just left. This in turn forced the principal to get stuck with a classroom of students under examination. All because of formal scheduling.

OP’s post drew in quite a few eyes with its double maliciousness. All commentary about non-native speakers speaking better than natives aside, folks were cheering OP on. Some shared their stories, others pointed out the importance of unions, and yet others guessed what subject teacher the principal was before—it was history/geography. You’re welcome.

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And speaking of knowing things that were outside the scope of the post, OP has been quite active in the comment section. This is where they clarified that this happened in France, that the principal left the position soon after the incident, addressed all the “you speak better than most natives” thing, and gave more insight into how teaching works there.

Specifically, in France, teachers don’t have employment contracts in the traditional sense of the word. They get a status and statutes that define their work conditions, perks, and duties. Teachers work in “missions”, each of which defines however many hours of class they have to give per week, grading, prepping, talking to parents, going to meetings, and the like.

“If we are being technical, we are not even really being paid to work. What we receive is called a treatment, not a salary, and we receive it as a perk of our status. In theory, both perks (such as being paid) and duties (such as having to work) stem from our status, one is not rewarded for doing the other. Though in practice it’s functionally the same,” elaborated OP.

In other words, it’s not work by the hour, but more like work by the package of tasks that you need to have done. The package has a certain number of hours of class, sure, but there’s also other tasks that are in it that also need to be done by the end of whatever arbitrary timeline. So, the more you know!

Image credits: Anastasia Shuraeva (not the actual photo)

Bored Panda got in touch with Brad Weinstein, CEO of TeacherGoals, an organization dedicated to helping educators through inspiration, innovation, and some humor, more or less in the form of memes. And if any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it is—we covered the organization’s Instagram meme page some time ago, which you are more than welcome to check out here.

Brad elaborated on the technicalities and problems that teachers in the US face in their line of work: “Most teachers have contracts with set hours that they must be present at school. There are very few teachers that are able to get their jobs completely done within contract hours. There is certainly not enough time to grade papers, plan, go to meetings, and do many other tasks in the time allotted. Most teachers work many hours beyond their contracted hours. In most cases, teachers are just expected to get the job done, regardless of the amount of extra time that it takes. Teachers do not get to log overtime and do not get paid for overtime.”

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But that is just one of many problems that plague the humble educator vocation. Brad pointed out that another one of the main problems that apply to teachers is a lack of mental health support and resources for their students. Picture this: a bunch of students coming to school, many of whom deal with trauma, poverty and mental health on the daily, but teachers can’t address these issues properly. For one, they aren’t trained or qualified to take on such a delicate task. But it’s also the issue of them already having a lot on their hands.

And, as if life wasn’t hard enough, there’s also the issue of respect towards teachers. This takes the form of  being demeaned and under attack in the public, disheartening the teachers who work very hard to do what is best for all students.

“As far as mental health supports go, the only real remedy is more money allocated to schools to hire proper staffing to work with these issues. There is also a shortage of mental health professionals, so this makes it even more challenging,” added Brad.

So, what’s stopping teachers from simply walking out, more or less like OP did? Well, the very same reason they’re there, for the most part. “Teachers walking out is looked down upon because they can affect the students that they are supposed to be teaching. It is also not potentially legal in some areas. Teachers walking out might be effective to get the attention of the public, but the reality is that the public can quickly turn on them because of doing this,” explained Brad.

Be sure to check out the Teacher Goals listicle or visit their Website, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok to learn more about what it means to be a teacher in today’s wild world.

But, coming back to OP’s post, it got a beautifully rounded 10,000 upvotes, spawning hundreds of comments. You can read the post and all of its comments here. And before you go anywhere, why not leave a comment sharing your thoughts, opinions or any other combination of words to make coherent statements of personal conviction in the comment section below!

Netizens approved this piece of malicious compliance, not only taking a jab at OP’s very good English, but also sharing stories and discussing

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Image credits:  Stephen Paris (not the actual photo)

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