Told to do an assembly

“Come in.”

You half hoped Mrs Oversight had not returned from assembly yet. No such luck. Her voice is familiar. You obey.

“Ah, Mr Smith. You got my message, good. Come in. Sit down.” You obey again, shutting the door before you do so. “Is there a reason why you weren’t at assembly just now.”

“Sorry. I overslept.”

“You should use an alarm.”

“I did, I slept through it.” She screws up her eyes and peers at you. The longer she looks, the smaller you feel. Her perusal makes your skin crawl. You remember the other time you were in her office, listening to her lecture, and the anger you felt back then rises in response.

“Well, that’s not acceptable,” she finally comes out with.

“You didn’t say I had to attend every assembly when you offered me the job. And I’m not religious.”

“No, I didn’t, that is true. And your religiosity has nothing to do with this. Yes, we quite often have prayers and so on, and occasionally priests from the local churches, but that’s not the reason you should attend assembly. You do it to show the girls that the teaching staff are unified and setting an example to the girls.”

“I’ll try and attend more often.” You want out of there. You want to be gone. Deal with this later. Mrs Oversight’s words are sickening.

“As the religiosity of the assembly is a problem for you, I have a solution. Maybe you’d better appreciate assemblies more if you gave one.”

“Gave one?”

“Yes. I have proposed it to Dr Stricture and she agrees. It should last about five minutes.”

“What about?”

“The topic I’ll leave up to you. As I’ve already said, it doesn’t have to be religious. What it should be is informative and help motivate the girls. As you are new here, Dr Stricture does insist that she vets what you’re planning to say first. I agree that would be sensible. Can we say that you’d have an outline by Thursday.”

“Thursday? That’s soon.”

“The sooner, the better. Layla will inform you of the timing of the meeting. You’d better go now, your first lesson of the day is about to start. The Lower Sixth ‘C’ Stream if I remember rightly. You don’t want to leave them waiting, do you?”

No, you don’t. And it’s not as if staying to talk to Mrs Oversight will change her mind. But an assembly? What are you going to talk about? Fuck.

{if Retire = 1}

You curse Mrs Oversight under your breath as you leave her office. This is just nonsense. Why are you even entertaining it? You should just ignore her. Do nothing. They’re going to vet you anyway, and you can bet whatever you do come up with they’ll just rip it apart and tell you you’re useless. You can see it in Mrs Oversight’s eyes. She’s already regretting hiring you. She already thinks you’re doing no good. The only reason you don’t tell her to take a walk and forget about it is the girls. Whether that’s because you want to do the girls good, or you want to do the girls ill, you can’t really tell.

{endif}