What The _ Were They Thinking?

Yesterday was a rough day. This is by far the most difficult job I've ever had. Thank goodness for my mom and my best friend who let me vent and cry for hours on the phone. I don't know if I've had a happy conversation with either of them in the last week, which I feel bad about because 99% of the time I'm happy and loving my job, but that other 1% is awful. And without anyone else here as management, I can only vent to them. I am ready to go home and not be responsible for other people 24/7.

So this week, several counselors started the, "let's throw people in the lake" phase of the summer. At our staff debrief, I let them know I as cool with pranks as long as the kids aren't here. So this weekend was free. I didn't add, "don't destroy anything" and "make good choices" because I sort of assumed that was a given.

Never assume.

So some of the girls who'd been thrown in the lake decided to get back at the boys. Good plan. They decided to wake them up early this morning by throwing buckets of water on them. Unfortunately, the boys weren't in their cabin, they had fallen asleep in the staff lounge. The boys cabin has wood floors and plastic mattresses. The staff lounge has fabric couches. I would assume that since they were on the fabric couches, the plan would have changed.

Never assume.

On my one day off to sleep in, I was woken up at 5am by screams and running. At 6am, I had three wide awake counselors knocking on my door, letting me know the basement was all wet. I told them that unless someone was bleeding they needed to get out of my room and let me sleep. At 8am, I got up, went downstairs and was absolutely shocked to see soaking wet couches and standing water on the floor.

Oh no, they did not.

Yes, they did. I passed the word that there would be a meeting at 10:30 and then answered the ringing phone. It was out cleaning lady (she cleans the 10 bathrooms every weekend). She decided she didn't really want to do this job anymore and wouldn't be coming.

I spent the next 2 hours calming myself down so I would scream at the staff. I wrote notes of what I wanted to say... Well, actually, what I wanted to say was, "what the F were you thinking?" but I didn't write that. And then at 10:30 I calmly explained that I was disappointed by their bad choice and that we needed to clarify some expectations for behavior. I also gave instructions on how to better dry out a couch and the direction that it needed to be taken care of immediately. Then I let them know that even though they were all planning to leave right then to go to J's parent's cabin for the day, instead, they would be helping me clean bathrooms for the next hour. And yes, there was a small piece of me that enjoyed giving that bad news to them since I was still quite annoyed at the puppet show from that morning. But actually, it was necessary, because it took the whole group an hour to clean bathrooms and it would have taken me all day. So it was much more practical than me just being vindictive.

After we cleaned, they all got ready to enjoy a day on the lake, grilling and having fun. I really wanted to go and was super bummed to stay back, but one of our board members is here for the weekend, and I didn't feel like it was appropriate to leave her all day. Plus, the camp nurse always arrives Sunday night, and I didn't think we would be back in time to greet him. It would be really inappropriate to let our volunteer just roam around while I was nowhere to be found. So I had no choice. But it still made me unhappy. I am sick of being the adult here. I'm sick of being the one to enforce rules and give bad news and miss out on the fun. I am sick of being responsible for every person and every building and everything in sight, every minute of every day, including the hours I am sleeping/being woken up. Meanwhile, my boss, well, former boss actually, is busy enjoying rehab and not dealing with the budget he messed up, whining parents and maintenance issues. If I have the opportunity to see him again, I am quite sure I will have no words, but will just go up to him and shake him really hard, and ask him what the F he was thinking. But until then, I am literally 100% responsible for every single aspect of this camp by MYSELF. Which makes me wonder what the F was I thinking when I took this on???