Everybody loves you when you let everything slide, but as soon as you start checking things and creating boundaries, you become the most hated.

As an administrator at my school, my day can swing wildly from receiving good news one moment to managing a full-blown crisis the next. What baffles me is how things can suddenly blow up, with no clear buildup or warning signs. One minute everything seems fine, and then suddenly—it’s all climax, no plot. Things don’t just "happen." They escalate because, along the chain of command, people let things slide. Then, eventually, someone decides to step in and say “stop,” and by then, the situation has snowballed into something far worse than it needed to be. Today, I was that person. I stepped in and stopped things before they could escalate further. And because of that, I became the "hated" one, the one who got the curt “Well, thank you so much for that conversation. Really helpful.” As if I was the one who did something wrong. The amount of gaslighting I experienced left a bitter taste. And then, after all of this, I was asked if I could complete a reference for this teacher. feon.substack.com