Confrontation Time

More scandals have been unearthed as Dr No packs up his office. Serious money stolen by Mr A and Dr No’s salary has given himself (and his partner in crime Mr A) a 125% pay-rise in the last 12 months. There i am desperately trying to get the totally dedicated and committed Ms J her first pay increase (a paltry 3%) since 2011.

Everything here is so fundamentally wrong and rotten to the core. It’s morally and ethically totally moribund. And i am a principled Principal. I can’t sleep at night. I can barely operate and in auto-mode. It’s time to take the bull by the horns.

Ato S is about to depart on a two week business trip back to Dubai and Turkey. I text him the night before asking him if he could come over to my office for twenty minutes to listen only. He texts back two hours later telling me he will call me to confirm. But he doesn’t. He enters my open door unannounced.

My points and demands are clear, though extensive

• Everything is fundamentally wrong
• He doesn’t have a school, he has two buildings with fee-paying kids
• Both he and Boss are guilty of gross negligence
• After the experiences with  Mr A and Dr No, cronyism must end immediately – dream on Mountain Man
• Total transparency in Finance – outlandish expectation
• A new salary scale for all be introduced and adhered to
• All teachers’ wages are competitive with other private schools
• Maintenance and cleaning staff are given minimum salaries to take them above the poverty line (some earn less than US$50 a month!)
• 60% of the school’s total income is to be used for salaries and 20% for resources (pretty standard percentages)
• Performance related increments 
• Everyone is made accountable via appraisal indicators

A bit cheeky perchance? I can’t help myself, i can only say it like i see it.

Over-demanding? Absofuckinglutely. Completely and utterly unrealistic. I am clearly chopping off my own wobbly danglies, but i can’t help myself.I have never been one to call a spade a hand-held digging implement. 

But Ato S can’t listen – not even for 20 seconds let alone 20 minutes. What makes it worse is that he immediately goes in to bullshit and lying mode – he simply can’t help it; an automatic response.He pretends he doesn’t know that Mr A had been sacked twice for his inappropriate sexual relationships with young women, and that he personally sanctioned Dr No’s meteoric pay-rise. He tries desperately to placate me. He tells me that the school has broken down, but he will fix it with the “help” of Boss. This is the same man that less than two months ago informed us that Boss should be moved out of to a tiny corner from the current organigram where she sits boldly at the top.

I go ballistic. I tell him it hasn’t broken down, it has never been right in the first place! All under the authority and “organisation” of Boss. I go to the computer and print off  a document that Ginger Warrior had started and passed on to me of 15 serious indiscretions of Boss to which i have added three more, but still not completed. I pass him a copy and pack him off out of my office, telling him to reflect on what i have said, and we’d meet up when he returns to Addis. 

“You will stay for at least two years Mr Mountain,” Ato S calls after himself, and it sounds like a cross between a hex, a life – sentence and a death-wish.