This year was mostly the same but slightly different. There were still cranky ladies (as well as some cranky men). In fact, I almost was one of the cranky ladies! We watched the SAME slide shows about child abuse and risk management. Yes, the same. Same slides, same pictures, same script - a few more years of this and I could give the presentation! We weren't in the auditorium this year - instead being demoted to the cafeteria. However, the biggest difference this time was that instead of being excited for the new system, we all seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to complain about it!
I've mentioned here before that I'm not a big fan of the system. In theory, it's wonderful - and being able to get jobs online is a nice feature. However, a lot of jobs are still assigned in the morning by phone calls made by the system. And the system is not fair. My roommate and I have the exact same coding, however she gets called twice as much as I do. If it wasn't for the fact that I could get jobs online and that I got requested fairly frequently, I wouldn't have worked very many days.
Anyways, we eventually came to the point of the day where those leading the inservice asked if anyone was having any problems with the system. I eagerly raised my hand and told them of my plight. They responded that lots of jobs were assigned online and that's why there weren't as many calls. I then had to say that that wasn't what I was talking about - I was talking about JUST the jobs that got called out in the morning and that I got half as many of those as my roommate. They then brushed me off with the "its probably a coding problem" answer and immediately went to the next question. I was frustrated that they didn't seem to be listening, but was gratified that lots of other people were nodding their heads while I was talking as if they had the same problem, and that other people after me stated that they had similar experiences. Obviously, no one knows why this is happening, so I don't see it getting fixed anytime soon, but at least they were made aware of it. Can't say nobody told them!
Other than that the day was pretty boring. Some of the sessions we had to sit through were super long and filled with information that didn't apply to substitutes at all. I'd wished that they had edited down their speeches to the parts that were relevant. Also, the question and answer sessions all went awkwardly. We got lots of cyclical reasoning and non-answers. It was frustrating.
That being said, it was only 3 hours, and now it's over for another year!
