I’ve got a World’s Worse Mum here…’

 

‘I’ve got a World’s Worse Mum here…’

I’m trying to get reinstated on the lists of two schools as a supply teacher. A computer glitch i.e. a human mistake led me to be deleted from the supply teaching lists. New readers start here:

http://deepestdarkestengland.blogspot.com/2009/10/end.html

http://deepestdarkestengland.blogspot.com/2009/10/mellow-and-cordial.html

I have my brand new shiny CRB paper that dropped through the letter box to show to school secretaries, and a new payroll number to give to one of them.

At the first school the secretary takes my CRB form photocopies it and takes my payroll number. It seems I’m now sorted there.

At the second school things go so differently. I offer the precious piece of paper to the secretary.

‘Have you got the letter?’ the secretary asked. She’s looking at me over the top of her spectacles.

‘Letter?’

‘You should have a letter to say that you are on the supply teachers’ list.’

I have worked at this school before. She knows me. She’s employed me as a supply teacher before.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

She looks at me as if I’ve just lied. She goes and comes back with a folder flips through a few pages and shows me ‘The Letter’ as if to jog a rather woolly memory.

‘No, I haven’t had that letter.’

She looks at me in surprise and disbelief.

‘Well, you should have had a letter. I can’t employ you until you’ve had a letter.’

‘I saw…’ I give the name of the woman I’d met when I had to prove who I was and verify the legality of my existence and my credentials at a meeting two weeks ago, ‘…she said I would be reinstated on the supply teacher’s list. There was a computer glitch. That’s why my details were deleted.’

‘Well, I suppose I could ring her,’ the secretary says, looking at me as if I’m the glitch.

She goes to the back of her office and reaches for her phone. Her office is large and she is at the far end of it. I’m left sat waiting in the chairs by reception. I’m holding a red football I had to remove from a chair to do so.

‘I’ll have that,’ it’s the caretaker. He takes the football from me. He knows a dubious type when he sees one.

I give him the ball.

‘Hello,’ the woman’s strident voice says on the phone. ‘Can I speak to…’ her voice is loud and brittle.

She is connected.

‘Yes, I’ve got…’ she holds my name up in the air as if it’s a disgusting piece of soiled underwear, ‘…here. ‘Yes,’ she says, cosying up to the woman on the phone. ‘Oh, tell me about it.’ There’s more of the same. Then there’s a louder sentence, designed to shame, humiliate and catch me out is uttered, ‘She says she hasn’t had the letter!’

I listen mortified.

I hear fragments. ‘She’s here now. Yes, she’s here. Yes, she’s just brought in her CRB certificate. Postal strike. Tell me about it.’ Her words are rebounding off the double glazed windows in her sanctified office. ‘Yes, she’s here.’

Then there is silence.

I wait.

A door opens unexpectedly behind me, it’s the secretary. She pops her head through.

‘You haven’t been sent a letter,’ she confirms. ‘They haven’t been notified that you’ve cleared the CRB check. When they’ve been told they’ll send you a letter to say you can now teach. You’ll have to bring me the letter.’

I stand up to leave, and try to think of something, anything nice I can say.

‘Thanks for alerting me to the problem,’ I say. ‘If it wasn’t for you I would have had no idea that things had gone so badly awry with my details.’

She beams, ‘so some good came of it,’ she says with officious delight, as I leave with my diary empty of future work.

‘Yes,’ I lie.

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