I’ve been around many FCPS schools as a parent and as a substitute and I’ve come to accept a rude front office staff as the standard and am pleasantly surprised when I encounter someone moderately pleasant and friendly. Typically this is a new hire and either won’t last long or will soon become embittered!

Anonymous wrote:It's a job that requires a lot of hyper focus on details while also bring interrupted 28,000 times a day.

hahahahahahaha. Probably the funniest thing I have ever read on DCUM

It's a job that requires a lot of hyper focus on details while also bring interrupted 28,000 times a day.

I'm a teacher nearing retirement age. Yes I've seen an awful lot of grumpy secretaries over the years. But those women have to deal with so much crap and make a very low wage. I've seen parents swear at them, ignore them, threaten them and generally be disrespectful. On a daily basis. I can't really blame them.

I don't know why FCPS ESes need five office people. They mostly seem to just be sitting around.

Anonymous wrote:Is it a title 1 school by any chance

Nope.

Oh my lord yes. Why oh why do you accept a front of the building job when you have anger management and attitude issues?

agreed they are horrible!!!

These are people who have no power/agency in their private lives, so they exert it on everyone else at work.

The front office staff in doctors offices can be pretty rude too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ours used to be pretty bad. She's much nicer now. That happened after the school did some sort of survey and I think they got feedback on her - i can't imagine what else drove such a big change in a pretty short time.

I think some school secretaries view their job as taking care of the 'trains running' part of the front office entirely rather than that but ALSO as the "face" of the school to most parents. The latter's pretty darn important since way more people interact with the the secretary at the front office regularly (in a non-Covid year) than with the principal.

I e-mailed her and she basically responded like a mean first grader would. Really lady? Why?? We are all struggling.

Forward to the principal. They are a representative of the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am excessively nice to our front office staff because I often need things from them whether it's related to my kid or the PTA, but we've had some true bears up there. The grumpiest left last year thank goodness. What I try to remember is that they are CONSTANTLY interrupted while doing their jobs and if you're a person who doesn't easily swing between tasks that would be a real struggle.

I can assure you that they have almost nothing to do other than help parents and teachers. FCPS has paid private consultants a lot of money to tell them that they have too many warm bodies in the front office and they don't need them all. In the school where I worked, there was one woman who literally did nothing at all, ever, except torment the other secretaries.

Well, this is simply not true.

They don't like people

I don’t know why but they sure are! It’s the worst. When my DS was in the special needs preschool program in FCPS, I had to go to the school one day for a meeting. Was not at all familiar with the school as it wasn’t our base school and had only been there with his teachers around, who were great. I was also very pregnant and the front desk staff were just barking orders at me about the guest badge system and this and that. I could tell that my DS’s teachers were mildly afraid of/irritated with them too!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am excessively nice to our front office staff because I often need things from them whether it's related to my kid or the PTA, but we've had some true bears up there. The grumpiest left last year thank goodness. What I try to remember is that they are CONSTANTLY interrupted while doing their jobs and if you're a person who doesn't easily swing between tasks that would be a real struggle.

I can assure you that they have almost nothing to do other than help parents and teachers. FCPS has paid private consultants a lot of money to tell them that they have too many warm bodies in the front office and they don't need them all. In the school where I worked, there was one woman who literally did nothing at all, ever, except torment the other secretaries.

Interesting. In HCPSS, we don't have that issue. Our front office has two people other than the principal and the vice principal. One is the outward facing one; she handles the phone, the door, student registrations, communication with families, attendance records, etc. The other one is essentially the internal secretary and coordinates communication between staff, when children come to the office for whatever reason (whether sent there or on an errand for a teacher), and helping coordinate during school hours. The two of them back each other up, but that's all there is. Fortunately both of them are very good and efficient because I've been in that office for periods of time and they are pretty much constantly hopping from task to task. It's really a bear when one of them takes leave.

I've seen a couple of other schools and we don't have a lot of extra front office staff in our county.