Fair Game

Someone left a couple of big packages of chips in the teacher's lounge.

Unless you are a teacher, I don't think you can fully appreciate our obsession with food in the lounge. When someone brings food for us...well, can you picture a bunch of hyenas tearing into a zebra? Snarling and snapping, gorging and slavering, slinking back to the cave, tummies tight. Yeah, that's us.

Maybe it's because our stress level is high. Maybe it's because we feel so much pressure to make our students successful. Maybe it's because we work such long hours with few breaks for food or even the bathroom. Or maybe it's because we are just a bunch of hogs.

People bring us food for teacher appreciation week, several groups of teachers often bring snacks, and groups will put leftovers in the lounge when they have an event. So, food in the lounge is considered fair game. We are not sure who left the chips in there. They haven't been opened because we just weren't sure. We discussed it yesterday. But we left them alone for one more day.

We figured 24 hours is the absolute longest length of time food should be left alone in there. After then, it's fair game for the hyenas. We think that's perfectly fair.

Don't you?