I was both mistaken and misled today, I also did some misleading.

First, my supervisor at the school where I work chastised me very slightly for having mucked up a pretty good plan. Without going in too much detail about the plan and the task behind it, let’s just say I was asked to agree to do something I thought was a bad idea because doing the way they wanted it didn’t actually help me out. Unfortunately, my supervisor didn’t hear my teeth sucking and heavy sigh and thought we had an agreement. This was my fault for not speaking up more clearly.

Instead, because I thought the usual “yeah it’s okay for you to do your job” process had already started, I waited for a phone call or a very rare email (the company I work for likes to leave a light paper trail) that never came. Instead I contacted the company I work for who went “Huh, what, really?” and that started a series of phone calls that led to my supervisor at the school where I work getting some extra work. I apologized for the trouble. If I’d know my supervisor at the school where I work hadn’t contacted the company I work for I wouldn’t have contacted them.

That said, the solution to all these layers of I contact A who contacts B who contacts D to tell D to contact me and explain what I’m supposed to do would go away if the school would just hire direct. If they don’t, then I don’t really mind causing a little extra work every now and then by simply following the rules.

Second, I went in today to proctor a make-up exam for a student who’d failed. I had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t be there. As predicted, at exam time, I was the only one in the room. I planned to stay the entire 50 minutes, but the teacher in the room next to me also didn’t have any students so he came over to my room to say hello. When he saw the room was empty he told me I had to stay 30 minutes and then could leave.

I stayed 30 minutes and left, and then 15 minutes later came back when I found out I’d been misled. It turns out the 30 minute rule only applies to end-of-term exams but for make-up exams the students can come in at any time, although they only have the authorized time to do the test. (For example, if they come in with five minutes left in the period, they have five minutes to finish the test.) Mind you, at no point did anyone tell me this and the only person who told me anything misled me.

I didn’t complain, though, because I’d already caused some trouble.