Bad People Do Bad Things, Expect It

When did people stop doing the right thing? When did they stop caring whether their actions harmed others?  I guess the answer to that is that there have always been some people who did not think about anyone but themselves. Thankfully, and perhaps naively, I still believe that the vast majority of people do care about others. However, I recently witnessed what I consider to be a pretty deplorable situation and have been so bothered by what transpired that it led me to write this piece. 

There is a recently organized small Christian charter school in our community that caters to those children who simply cannot learn in a traditional classroom environment.  The school’s founder did not establish it to make money but rather to provide a service, it was her calling.  There are only about 40 students enrolled in the school and the tuition is what I would call ridiculously cheap, but then the parents of these students are not affluent.  What this means is that before this school was established there was not an alternative available to them.

This is a bare bones environment; those who teach at the school do it as a service to the community for very little pay.  Witnessing the teachers reach out to their students gradually adapting to their individual learning disabilities and challenging situations is truly heartwarming.  This is the kind of individual attentiveness that can only be accomplished in a class room with no more than eight students. Any person with an ounce of common sense could look at the school and see the tuition charged and completely understand that this school is not about profit, it is about the kids, giving them a chance they otherwise probably would not have.

Back in January, my husband and I heard that the school needed a math teacher to teach one class. I mentioned this need to a few people, none of whom expressed an interest. We finally thought about an acquaintance that had always made great play of all the volunteer work he did and who also frequently professed that he did not need compensation.  We provided his name to the school administrator and he was subsequently hired to teach one class each day beginning the last week of January.

By all accounts, although a bit forgetful, he did a good job and the kids liked him.  All appeared well until the February pay checks were given out to the staff just prior to Spring break.  He was extremely dissatisfied with what he was being paid and quit immediately without notice. Further investigation determined that he had in fact been accidently over paid in January by a factor of five since he only taught one week that month and thus extrapolated that that he should receive five times that amount for February.  It should be noted that he demanded to be paid more than the full time staff members and indicated that if he was not paid the amount demanded that he would “bad mouth” the school.  He also stole books from the school and said he would not return them unless they paid him. Needless to say, my husband and I were mortified that we had ever suggested him as a candidate, but then who knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of men.

This whole situation devastated the school, particularly the administrator who was responsible for the accidental overpayment.  Hoping to minimize any potential damage to the school and erroneously believing that paying him off would put an end to an ugly situation, the school paid him.  Actually, the administrator forfeited her own salary for the period of his employment to cover his unearned and extorted pay. To say that they should not have done this would be an understatement given that he was not only a thief, but an extortionist as well, and he had already begun to make malicious and false statements about the school and many of its staff members. He acted like a classic bully, and the school gave him their lunch money.

Perhaps they should have known better, perhaps they should have known that a person who did the kind of things this man did could not be trusted, in any and all things. But they are, after all, a Christian school and were ill equipped to deal with actions so vile.

Looking at this situation, I ask myself, why did he accept a position for pay that he ultimately considered inadequate? Did he simply hate teaching there and use this as a way of leaving? Why did he not ask why his initial paycheck was five times the amount he was told he would be paid? Did he not care about the significant impact his departure would have on already-challenged kids? Did he not care how the other far more qualified teachers would feel about his being paid at a rate five times what they were receiving? Had he known that an individual would be giving up their own pay to compensate him would he have done the same thing?

I think the only conclusion most people would come to is that he is incapable of thinking about anyone other than himself, that the charitable nature he has presented to so many is nothing but a façade, that he didn’t give a hoot about the kids, or that he is a truly bad person.  Or, maybe he just needed the money and was willing to forfeit any pretense of decency to get it.