Accused: An Anecdote
Amidst personal growth, getting caught up in current politics, and experiencing a lot of firsts this season, I thought I’d write about something that happened a few years ago. It’s easier to see situations more clearly when you’re out of the thick of it.
I used to work at a daycare. I worked in the infant room for the greater part of that time. People think it’s all peace and quiet, holding the little ones, and loving on babies. That is absolutely part of it, and it’s a wonderfully beautiful part, but it’s also about managing ten (or more) schedules, personalities, two more teachers as the Lead Teacher of the room, and twenty more parents. First time parents go through the hardest time, and it’s our job to help them see that even though we’re total strangers, we are going to love and take care of their baby to the absolute best of our ability. And we really did - daycare teachers know all of your babies’ different personalities, cries, amusing habits, what made them the angriest and what calmed them down. I still babysit for some of my families because I love staying connected. I learned so much about taking care of infants that I feel way more prepared if I ever become a Mom. …I say if because I won’t lie, I’ve never cried so much than when I worked there.
The worst part of the day was the two-hour, mid-day nap. The Assistant Teacher would take her 90-minute lunch break during this time while I worked straight through the entire day. (Don’t question me on the legality of this now, we didn’t talk about that.) During the nap, I cleaned, made notes on each baby’s sheet so their parents knew how their day went, fed those who were on a different schedule, and rocked the little ones back to sleep who wasn’t napping. The last part was the most stressful - more often than not you were alert and on your toes ready to calm down one of your babies as quickly as possible so others wouldn’t wake. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t. I can’t tell you how many handfuls of times three or more infants were crying at once and it was near impossible to calm them all down in a timely manner.
Their safety is of the utmost importance, but it cost me my sanity.
And you absolutely, under any circumstances, cannot leave the room if you’re the only one in there. Managing 10+ baby’s naps alone for an hour and a half everyday with another person is manageable, but doing it alone - listen, their safety is of the utmost importance, but it cost me my sanity. Sounds dramatic? If you’ve had a little one, go back to those times when they just wouldn’t calm down. Remember the screaming, and now multiply that by at least three, and imagine that happening for the better part of two and a half years for at least an hour straight and you can’t leave the room. You can’t sit them somewhere safe, go in another room, and shut the door for five minutes just so you can get an ounce of peace. Now please don’t mistake, I’m not saying my job was more difficult than parenting, I know it never was. This was when I would cry. I am thoroughly convinced that at some point, some governments in this world used recordings of multiple crying babies to torture spies or something.
So I say, “if I ever become a Mom” because I’m still healing, alright?
I was pushed to my utmost limit at this job, but about a year and a half in, it got so much worse. Working with 99% women in a high-stress environment with a less-than-average work culture that doesn’t pay enough is a breeding ground for a viscous rumor mill.
I’d previously worked with one teacher, we’ll call her Cathy, that I’d generally had good experiences with. We connected really well and knew a lot about each others’ personal lives. I’d heard stories about some of Cathy’s tendency to be vindictive, but it was second-hand information and I’d never seen it personally. With a constant rumor mill, you learn to take everything you hear with a grain of salt. I was her Assistant Teacher at the time, but when she stepped down from her Lead Teacher position to be part-time for personal reasons, I was promoted to her position. As Lead Teacher, you could organize the room a certain way because you were the one in charge. I love organization and on my first day in my new role, I changed a handful of small things. Nothing huge, but I was excited (and so, so naive) to be in this new level of leadership. I found out months later that when Cathy saw this, she said to another teacher, “Well she just jumped right into her role, didn’t she?” This was something I didn’t take with a grain of salt because - well, just keep on reading, but me becoming Lead Teacher was the beginning of the end between Cathy and me.
I could smell disaster from a mile away, but I didn’t realize just how in the middle of the cross-fire I’d be.
Things were tense, but with her being part-time, she floated in rooms as needed so I didn’t see her much. I quickly got a new Assistant Teacher, we’ll call her Amara. Amara and I jived really well in the beginning, but after a few months of working with the same person for months on end, you start to get annoyed with some stuff. It’s inevitable, especially when both of us were very non-confrontational to a fault.
Soon Cathy had a baby. She requested for her baby to be in the other infant room, which I was perfectly fine with, but they were full, so he was in ours. I could smell disaster from a mile away, but I didn’t realize just how in the middle of the cross-fire I’d be.
Remember how I mentioned tension was building between Amara and me? At one point, we actually yelled at one another at work when she excused me of something deplorable. We were both written up for yelling, and we tried to resolve our differences and do our best to work well together.
Shortly after this incident, I was called to the office with a member from corporate, his daughter (who was also our Director), and our Assistant Director. I was asked about my stress levels very thoroughly. I was confused and felt that I was in a trap (I can’t really say that I was, he was just doing his job), but I was as honest as I could be. Further in the discussion, I’m told there was a formal complaint against me from teachers and a parent. I knew that Amara represented the teacher because the complaint was exactly what she’d accused me of a couple of weeks ago. I was floored at who the parents could be because I had generally good relationships with all of our parents in the room, and any issues we had I was quick to let management know so we could solve it as quickly as possible, and any complaints about my quality of care for their babies were nonexistent because I did my job well.
I was so, so naive.
I felt guilty even though I knew I wasn’t. I felt like I was going to be fired even though I didn’t deserve it.
The protocol was to watch me on camera for a few weeks without me knowing, and then ask me any questions that needed filling in the gaps - this part was why I was in the office. The cameras were kind of grainy and didn’t show every corner of the room, so while you could get a pretty good general idea of what was going on, situations like this required a lot of dissecting. I hated every second of it. I was asked about trivial, everyday tasks that I couldn’t even remember doing they were so insignificant, but I had to figure out the answer. It felt like every second I used trying to remember that moment, the worse I made myself look, as if the longer I took to figure it out, the more guilty they thought I was. It felt like they thought I was lying when I defended myself, even though I told them the truth.
They sent my statement off to HR and I had to wait for whatever discipline was deemed necessary.
I’d love to tell you that I kept my head held high until I got home, but the truth is that left the office and started bawling right outside of the building to another coworker of mine. I felt guilty even though I knew I wasn’t. I felt like I was going to be fired even though I didn’t deserve it.
Ultimately, I wasn’t fired and continued to work there for another year. Why, you may ask? That’s a great question. But I was the center of the rumor mill for a long time. The next day another teacher went into the room right next to mine asking about me and heard that “it was, like, really bad,” gluttonously hungry for information. For weeks to come, I’d walk in the break room and people stopped talking… yeah, like a cliche movie scene. I don’t think I ever knew that kind of thing happened in real life.
Cathy and Amara both left our location a month later after I was made aware of the accusation.
Months after the dust settled, other teachers started to tell me what happened. I can’t blame them for not wanting to get involved earlier, but I found out Cathy initially started the egregious rumor about me and asked multiple teachers to vouch for her. Guess who obliged? Amara, and now because there were two of them, representing a parent and teachers in my room (remember that Cathy had her baby in our room). I also found out that Amara told our Closer Teacher that I didn’t like her and I complained about her often. This was completely untrue but because I left earlier in the day, about right when she came in to close, Amara spent the most time with her.
I remember my anger. I remember my hate towards both of them. I also remember thinking of every mistake I’d ever made as a Lead Teacher and those somehow made me guilty of the horrible things being said about me.
I also remember the absolute elation I had when I was offered a full-time position at a company I’ve grown to love - I’d been working there part-time for the last six months I was at the daycare.
I learned to be more empathetic to those who’re accused. We hear about it everyday: people charged with crimes they didn’t commit, fired from their job for a mistake that caught wind of the wrong person. A reputation ruined makes for a hard life. While awful, my accusal only affected a small pool around me, so I can’t fathom the spiral I would’ve gone down had it grown beyond that.
I also had to learn to forgive them though. I was angry and bitter for a long time, and I have paranoia around cameras at work now, but ultimately, I have way too many amazing things happening in my life that I can’t let anger or bitterness taint them.