Folks aren’t fond of necessary evils. Sure, they do get the job done, but there’s always a cost.

Well, believe it or not, school is one such evil, and the cost is your soul. Or at the very least, your precious time. While school isn’t evil per se—it does push away the tide of ignorance—it’s usually the system and the staff that make it bittersweet. And in today’s case, it’s the principal who adds all the wrong spice into the mix.

More Info: Reddit

Just because you’re a principal of a school, it doesn’t mean you can start shouting at random kids. Or abducting them

Image credits: Steve (not the actual photo)

This is what happened to this one uncle’s niece, all because some school principal thought she was skipping class. Spoiler: she wasn’t

Image credits: hicctl

Image credits: Aberdeen Proving Ground (not the actual photo)

Image credits: hicctl

Image credits: Paul Cross (not the actual photo)

Image credits: hicctl

It all boiled down to the principal mistaking the post author’s niece for a student, when in reality she studied in a whole different part of the country

Image credits: Arild Andersen (not the actual photo)

So, the story goes that OP, Reddit user u/hicctl, had his brother as well as his nephews and nieces visit him during their summer break. One morning, OP went down with his 12-year-old niece to a local bakery that’s right next to a large school complex.

While OP was getting some tasty treats, the niece and the dog she was walking popped out of existence. It didn’t take long for OP to follow the tracks back to the local school’s principal’s office. And, oh boy, let me tell you, the principal sounds like quite a handful…

Immediately, OP was met with violence and pushback from the principal: all he did was scream (more so at the niece than him, but still), show a lot of doubt in who OP and the niece were, let alone things like him actually calling the police, and, finally, you know, abducting a minor in the first place.

You see, a tiny, but relevant piece in this puzzle is that OP lives in Germany, and each governing region within the federation has its own summer break dates. So, the niece was on summer break according to the Bavarian school system, but actually “out and about, loitering” and skipping classes in Baden-Württemberg. And that was a very oof oversight on the part of the principal.

The thing was, different parts of the country have different summer break dates, and the girl just happened to be “loitering” where summer break happened later

Image credits: alex yosifov (not the actual photo)

So, a quick, but very intense exchange of words between the two gentlemen later, the police showed up and started piecing the story together. Until then, the principal was being very chaotic in his behavior, but once the police started confirming the niece’s identity and explaining the repercussions of the principal’s actions—shouting at an unsuspecting 12 year old and essentially kidnapping her—the principal started backpedaling.

No matter how much the principal begged to reconsider and not be hasty with pressing charges, it wasn’t looking good for the principal. As the very least, he would be suspended. But it wasn’t the very least situation as the principal ended up getting in a lot of trouble—trouble equaling to 2 years of probation and 500 hours of community work. Oh, and never working with kids ever again. Good-bye, career. You will be missed. Probably.

The Wallace Foundation did some research on how impactful principals really are in the life of a school, and it turns out very. The overarching idea is that principal leadership is key to how and what students learn at school.

Over the years, schools have gradually begun to assume more responsibility, having to perform staff evaluations and the like to make sure no student gets left behind in their education. All of this lands on the shoulders of principals and that means having to one-up their own game and show higher levels of leadership.

Pair this with things like ethnicity (where students are more likely to attend schools that have employed principals of the same race [or even gender]) and increased levels of specialist efficiency (with studies showing vast levels of improvement among students with principals jumping from 25th to 75th percentile in efficiency scores), and follow the leader gains a whole new meaning.

In the end, the principal was charged and got 2 years of probation, 500 hours of community service, and could no longer work with kids

Image credits: Sora Shimazaki (not the actual photo)

So, you can imagine how much suffering the school in OP’s story was probably going through with that sort of antithesis of a principal. But I digress.

The comment section did not digress, though, as they approved of OP’s charge pressing quite a bit. Others shared how they wish this level of seriousness was present in the American education and justice systems. And yet others were sharing their own stories and asking the real question: where was the dog? The dog was fine, OP left it with the bakery lady, she’s a family friend.

Anywho, the post got 23,400 upvotes (with a 90% upvote rate) and nearly a thousand reactions from internauts in the comment section. You can check all of it out here. Or here. Yes, I am hyperlinking this several times for your convenience.

But before you go, here. Be sure to leave a comment detailing your thoughts on this whole situation in the comment section below! And you can also leave a comment rating this article. That’s also below. Oh, and there’s also an upvote button [wink wink].

Folks online cheered the author of the post on for standing up for his niece, and pressing charges where charges were due

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