User blog:Forestpaw13/OMG THIS WEEK.

I think it is safe to say that this past week has been one of the longest in my entire life. I can only think of a few that have been worse.

Skipping the drama with my parents, who now seem to have forgotten the entire incident entirely, I also had to deal with a multitude of other things. Guess what? They all had to do with my boss. >.< Or a tarantula.

For those of you who don't know, I am currently an after school counselor at the YMCA. So I work with children in elementary school and encourage them to be their best.

Recently my supervisor has been replaced from one father of three kids. He was the least put-together person I had ever met in my life. Until I met my new supervisor. This dude is a cook. He is not on the same wavelength as everyone else, but the suckish part is that he's our boss, so we can't speak up. He has spent the past few weeks deconstructing all respect we had gained with the kids and making us re-earn it.

A particularly annoying example: When I take kids outside, a favorite pastime of theirs is to take berries off bushes and throw them at one another, then come crying to me when the other kid does the same in return. I am trying to solve this problem by declaring: "No berries! None!" (I don't believe they're edible, anyway, and no kid has tried to eat one... yet.) After reinforcing this new rule for about four weeks, my supervisor decides to come outside and begin a "BERRY FIGHT! YEAHHHHHHHHHH!" and proceeds to station himself at a bush and pelt berries at any kid that comes near, giving one a somewhat serious cut in the process. Now I don't mind kids having fun. Seriously, I don't. It's the fact that he didn't even ask me about a single rule before proceeding to do what he wanted. My supervisor is also a perfectionist: During counselor evaluations, he told one of my friends that she needs to "step up her game". When she asked what that meant, he told her that it meant, "Get better at basketball, soccer, kickball. Kids respect you more when you're good at a sport." Uh... I suck at all things sports and kids respect me. This didn't seem to line up at all.

Now for today. Today was Friday. Thank God. I came into work expecting an easy day. I was assigned to a "dancing" station, which basically meant playing a song and letting the kids go at it. I played soccer with co-counselors for about thirty minutes. I cleaned a floor. I was pretty much ready to go. I hung out with the kids. Then came for our first thirty-minute activity. I stayed inside with the younger kids. My supervisor said: "Let's play a group game!" I thought, well, as long as he runs it, go right on ahead. So we got in a circle. The basic idea of the game, he explained to me a bit later, was to give the kids a ball and have them pass it to another person in the circle, anyone they wanted. That person was to pass it to yet another person. The idea was, once they passed that ball, once they got it back, they would always have to pass the ball to that same person. The idea was, how fast can you do it? The kids were supposed to figure out that they would have to go sit next to the person they passed the ball to- God forbid, sitting next to a girl!- and just pass the ball around in a circle. Of course, I didn't know that then. My supervisor spent a great deal of time getting kids to "sit in a circle so you can see everyone. Follow directions." I mean, whatever, I got to sit and watch and talk to my friends and occasionally tell a kid to pay attention. The activity took up the entire time. We hadn't even gotten each kid to touch the ball. It was a complete failure and my supervisor looked stupid. In an attempt to cover it up, he gave the kids a life lesson: "You will fail sometimes in life. You know how you win and lose in games? You lose more often than you win and that's how life is. You lost this game, all of you. Get used to it." Some kids nodded, others looked shocked and hurt. I mean, to tell a kid that! In that way! Jesus Christ! So next came Assembly, where kids got announcements and stuff and birthdays were celebrated and whatever. A time for me to start cracking down on these kids. My supervisor kept interrupting and being weird until finally a co-counselor announced that today's gym activity was "Step team! If you don't know what it is, come find out!" I stepped forward to announce my location and that's when my supervisor did it. He stood up and pretended to be on a step team. He fooled around, blah blah blah, and in his excitement he took off his shirt. I mean, he's a thin guy, but man his chest was hairy. He rubbed his nipples in an iCarly sort of fashion, screamed, "WOOOP! STEP TEAM!" I left the room at that point to pull myself together. Give it to him to do that. When I came back he was just putting his shirt on. But he wasn't done. He declared: "Boys! If you want to do step team, you are allowed to take off your shirts! WOOP STEP TEAM!" The rest of us: "Uh, no. Keep your shirts on." Supervisor: "TAKE YO SHIRTS OFF, BOYS!" Us: "Keep them on!" Supervisor: "YEAH! GO STEP TEAM! SHIRTS OFF!" Oh my God. So then I announced my activity and things went on smoothly and we got the kids to activities. Nobody went to step team. They ended up just playing basketball. Later my boss approached me and said, "Did I offend you?" Well, this dude has me on payroll, so: "Haha! No! You were hilarious!" "Oh, that's good."

So that's how I found out that three of my co counselors plan on quitting as soon as they can, and leaving the other three of us with our supervisor with 90 kids.