So...this summer. I had a job in the office of a summer camp; shortly prior to camp beginning we were still short teachers. My mom is (was, she hasn't been able to keep a job in years) a teacher. With a lot of thought and many misgivings, I recommended her for a position. She was rushed through the interview process, and got the job. There were things I knew she would struggle with - getting resupply orders in to me, keeping her room organized, getting along with a younger staff, etc - but I thought, with me there as a buffer, I could make it work. It was only seven weeks...how wrong could it go? She got fired at week three. That's right, my mother got fired from the position I helped her get, while I was still at the workplace (and killing it, in my position, I might add).
What went wrong? She didn't like the curriculum. I'll give her that the curriculum was complicated, supply heavy, and maybe even - as she said ad nauseam - not age appropriate. Many of the other instructors were very stressed out the first week too, so my mother's particular degree of obnoxiousness wasn't immediately apparent. But then all the other instructors started to adapt - tweak materials, shorten intros, etc...as they were told they were allowed to do. After a few long days of unpaid overtime (they really didn't get enough time to set up) they had their classrooms in order and were able to keep on top of supplies and set-up, for the most part. My mom...just kept hollering. She bitched about the curriculum, the lack of help from the team leaders, the pay, the quality of supplies...anything else she could think of. On weekends I would go over the week's lesson plans with her and brainstorm ways to make them more manageable. She would drag her heels and complain the whole way through, and then still tell the director she just wasn't going to do certain projects. She swore that all the other instructors still felt as strongly as she did, they just didn't have the guts to keep saying it. Well, I explained to her, you can't start a revolution with nobody behind you. If all fourteen other instructors are willing to put their jobs on the line and rally behind you...go for it, make yourself heard. But in actuality nobody is willing to stand behind you, so you're just a complainer and a thorn in everyone's side.
I begged her not to make me look bad. I reminded her that it was just for seven weeks - just put your head down, do the work, get paid, and don't come back next year. How hard is that? She climbed the ladder up to her high horse and stated that "it wasn't fair that their curriculum developers were getting overpaid to hand down not age appropriate curriculum that tormented the underpaid teachers who were tasked with implementing it." She was not going to shut her mouth until the CEO said "Oh my goodness, you are so right! Stop everything - put camp on hold - please, please, how much do I have to pay you to redesign this terrible curriculum?"...or, until she got fired.
I was not pre-informed of her termination. It made for a) a very awkward conversation between the director and myself in which she had to inform me that she had just fired my mom (which I took "surprisingly well and so professionally" because I am all too aware of how crazy my mom really is) and b) an ugly evening at home. We started out talking about the job, and then, of course, moved on to the larger issue of the mess that her life is - literally and figuratively. She told me in no uncertain terms that she did not want my help on any front, and that she did not feel she had done anything wrong. As in, ever - this summer's employment debacle, all the past jobs she's been fired from, the state of someone else's house that she lives in for free, the state of the last house that she abandoned...she's made no bad choices, and done nothing inappropriate or irresponsible, or just plain cruel.
She went back to sitting in her armchair all day, watching TV. When she finished watching all the prime time TV that she had not had time to watch during her three weeks of work (another thing she complained about), she started watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. All. Day. Long.
So, I guess I give up. With the camp season over, my boyfriend and I are looking for an apartment closer to his job, and the job I will begin in September. He asked the other night if I was going to try to say anything more to her before we left. What do you say about change to a person who believes they have done nothing wrong? If admitting you have a problem is half the battle, she's sitting in her armchair, blissfully unaware that a battle rages around her. I feel like I've failed Jack, who's house and life she clutters daily, but I don't know what else I can do.
