# Bullied Grandmother...really? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 21, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854 "2012-06-21T16:26:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/61 "2012-06-22T14:30:21Z")
I suspect this wasn’t the first time, other than being caught on video, and I’d bet the school knew about it but didn’t care and did nothing, which is why the woman did nothing and why the student, expecting it again, recorded it. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/62 "2012-06-22T14:30:51Z")
> [@LurkerInNJ](#): > > You don’t think that is the least of what is going to happen now? Sure, NOW these kids are going to be in huge trouble. Before this thing got totally out of hand, she needed to be nipping it in the bud by reminding them that “last day” doesn’t mean squat unless they’re moving/dropping out. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/63 "2012-06-22T14:36:02Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#): > > That’s great, but I would have been more impressed if he’d have made his kid do the apologizing. To the monitor, in person. Yep. My kid would also being mowing, raking, and shoveling snow in her yard for the next year. Apologies are nice but talks cheap and assholes can still fake it. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/64 "2012-06-22T14:42:20Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > As an actual, living and breathing middle school teacher, I feel like I have a bit of expertise in this area. First of all, it is clear to me that the lady hired to be a bus monitor was ill-suited or ill-prepared for the task. There are many places in the video where, in my opinion, the misbehavior could have been corrected or redirected. What strikes me is her complete lack of engagement with the students. They were talking to her, albeit impolitely. She did not speak back to them until the situation had progressed past a point of reasonable redemption. > > That said, do not excuse these kids’ behavior as simply kids being kids. Middle school is a trying time for all involved. However, middle school students can also be some of the most wonderful people around. Someone got these kids started in the wrong direction and it snowballed. I’ve seen middle school kids snowball in the right direction, too. The bus monitor may have been able to steer those kids in the right direction, had she tried. All of this sounds reasonable, but I think very little of the blame lies with the bus monitor. (Not that you’re assigning blame - I get that). This woman clearly just wasn’t trained properly; it’s possible training wouldn’t have mattered, and she isn’t suited for the job, in which case she shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. The fault lies with the district, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/65 "2012-06-22T14:58:40Z")
> [@Kenm](#): > > I suspect this wasn’t the first time, other than being caught on video, and I’d bet the school knew about it but didn’t care and did nothing, which is why the woman did nothing and why the student, expecting it again, recorded it. I’d have lost the bet. Klein [**tells Anderson Cooper**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/karen-klein-bullying-video-bullies-apologize-to-bus-monitor_n_1617404.html?ir=Canada&utm_hp_ref=canada) that it had not happened before. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/66 "2012-06-22T15:19:02Z")
> [@LaurenIpsum](#): > > Not that the bus monitors should beat the kids… What? ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/67 "2012-06-22T15:50:13Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > If you had a colleague who was caught not doing her job, wouldn’t it get under your skin if she was rewarded with $400k early retirement? I’m more worried about the future implications. “Okay kids, let’s go over it one more time. How’s the lighting? Are we good? Okay. When I yell “action,” you’re going to start in on Bessie here. And don’t be afraid to _really_ give it to her, because we want this thing to look good. You’re okay with getting slapped around a little, aren’t you dear? Of course she is. With the cut I’m giving her, she’d better be. All right then, everybody in position? Bessie, remember not to bite down on the blood capsule until _after_ you get hit with the breakaway bottle, okay? Over here, sweetheart. I know you do, but just try to hold it for a few more minutes. All right people, let’s get this thing in one take so we can all get paid. Annnnd… _ACTION_!” ---
**Author:** ![Chicagojeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@Chicagojeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicagojeff)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/68 "2012-06-22T15:52:34Z")
> [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > What makes bullying particularly cruel is when it has a kernel of truth to it. Obviously, she’s not in the best of shape, she’s elderly, and she’s probably not super well-off financially. None of these things, however, justify having salt rubbed in her wounds just to make her feel subhuman. > > That being said, nothing these kids said felt out of place for middle schoolers. Middle school can be a pretty cruel place where flaws are mercilessly targeted and relentlessly hammered on. > > I do take solace in the fact that asshole kids like that tend to grow up into nobodies, though. Really?? I grew up on the southside of Chicago in the 80’s. I cannot recall any of my peers during the busing years telling an adult they wanted to either defecate in their mouth of ejaculate in their mouth. Have you seen the link? [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/cS1rODoNevw/hqdefault.jpg "Bus Monitor Bullied (Update)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS1rODoNevw) ---
**Author:** ![Chicagojeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@Chicagojeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicagojeff)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/69 "2012-06-22T15:54:44Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#): > > That’s great, but I would have been more impressed if he’d have made his kid do the apologizing. To the monitor, in person. No.. no kudos.. not at all.. You’re a parenting fail. If your animal you are rearing acts like this.. thinks of things like this to do then you’ve failed as a parent. Please take a box of trojans and your appointment to the local urologist as your parting gift. We who actually parent wish to exclude you from our ranks. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/70 "2012-06-22T15:55:49Z")
Originally her fans wanted to raise enough to send her on a nice vacation, but they were thinking $5k or something, maybe $15k. Last night it was over $300k. I wonder if she’ll donate a lot of it to charity or something. Me, I’d keep it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/71 "2012-06-22T15:57:48Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > If you had a colleague who was caught not doing her job, wouldn’t it get under your skin if she was rewarded with $400k early retirement? > > People express their sympathy with money, I get it. And she was a victim. It’s just…it’s a strange thing to me. If I were a teacher who had to put up with this shit on a daily basis, with nary a thank you let alone a check for a kabillion dollars, I think I’d feel a little sting. I’d start playing with the idea of installing a hidden camera in my classroom. It’s their money. What’s it to you? (I think I’ve heard that from you before.) > [@Kenm](#): > > I suspect this wasn’t the first time, other than being caught on video, and I’d bet the school knew about it but didn’t care and did nothing, which is why the woman did nothing and why the student, expecting it again, recorded it. This is quite probable. And if she _needed_ that job, what else was she going to do? I feel sorry for the woman. Now everyone knows who she is and gets to make comments on how she can’t do her job. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/72 "2012-06-22T15:59:30Z")
> [@Chicagojeff](#): > > Really?? I grew up on the southside of Chicago in the 80’s. I cannot recall any of my peers during the busing years telling an adult they wanted to either defecate in their mouth of ejaculate in their mouth. Have you seen the link? > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS1rODoNevw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS1rODoNevw) Yup. That sounds about right! fn kids. This woman is now sitting on _half a million dollars_. Hell. Good for her! The woman was the victim of groupthink, and now she’s apparently benefiting from it. ---
**Author:** ![Chicagojeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@Chicagojeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicagojeff)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/73 "2012-06-22T15:59:44Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Yep. > > My kid would also being mowing, raking, and shoveling snow in her yard for the next year. Apologies are nice but talks cheap and assholes can still fake it. I’ll respectfully bow out of the discussion on this issue but I’ve seen this posted before and heard that one of the parents has mentioned this. What I don’t get is how working for this lady.. ie mowing her lawn.. trimming the hedges is somehow therapuetic (sic) to the issue of of verbally abusing her and making disgusting vile comments. How about instead you take advantage of your EAP plan at work and get you child some help since you’ve obviously fucked up as an example and disciplinarian and parent. Their are good kids who would like part time gigs doing this same work.. I think a lot of us.. myself included did these things for the 10 bucks a lawn.. or shoveling a sidewalk. I’m totally missing how putting these nutjobs to some kind of labor, which should be for the good kids, alleviates their actions? ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/74 "2012-06-22T16:03:39Z")
Sorry for the triple-post, but how many bullied _children_ don’t speak up? A bully is a bully anywhere. Just because it’s a 68 year old woman doesn’t make it less horrific. ---
**Author:** ![LaurenIpsum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@LaurenIpsum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LaurenIpsum)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/75 "2012-06-22T16:05:38Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > What? Sorry, I was trying to compare my experience as a student teacher, at a school where the teachers didn’t seem to have much power, to the bus monitor situation. At my school, we were encouraged to not touch the kids for any reason (even a pat on the back or something) because it could give parents cause to complain. And I sort of got the impression that the teachers were always walking on eggshells when a student needed to be punished for something, because the parents might complain about how their little snowflakes were being treated. I was wondering if the bus monitors had a situation where they didn’t really have any power over the kids - physical or verbal. My point was that the bus monitors would need to have some kind of power in order for the kids to fear the consequences of behavior. **Not** power to give physical punishment, as I stated in my post (with the use of the word “not”) but rather the power to get them kicked off the bus, or detention, or whatever. Or the kind of power that **monstro’s** bus driver had, where the kids knew they might get grabbed by the collar (obviously not to actually hurt them). ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/76 "2012-06-22T16:16:59Z")
> [@Chicagojeff](#): > > . I’m totally missing how putting these nutjobs to some kind of labor, which should be for the good kids, alleviates their actions? Good kids get paid to do it. Bad kids get punished by doing it for free. Making a kid apologize is rather lame punishment in my opinion (but its a start). Doing shit you don’t like for free and not getting to go play ball kinda sucks. Personally I’d rather they just bring back beatings but what are you gonna do? And this shit would have never gone down on a Chuck Norris or Al Pachino bus. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/77 "2012-06-22T16:26:53Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > The other top stories, locally: A man was arrested for getting into a protracted shootout with police on a dense residential street, and another was arrested for raping a nine-month-old baby. But, definitely, hire those thugs to take out the true menace- mean 8th graders. Yeah… it wasn’t an actual suggestion, and even if it was victims of the other crimes are not the topic of the thread and the victims didn’t receive a huge windfall, and nobody anywhere is suggesting this is the worst thing ever to happen, but thank you for your input. :rolleyes: Speaking of negativity, did anybody see the woman on Anderson Cooper last night? While admittedly she’s had a peculiar week, I have to say that she seems one of the most negative and unlikeable human beings ever; I somehow doubt she’s a regular at the local Karaoke bar. She basically dismissed the money that was donated as “I’ll believe it when I get it”, said she believes a couple of the kids should be banned from riding the bus or playing sports for at least a year, and when AC (with a really weird kind of disturbing smile) told her that an airline was giving her 10 roundtrip tickets and a 3 night stay at Disneyland she only marginally perked up and said she’d take her family, except for a couple of them. While the kids are little bastards and their actions are inexcusable I really do hope their lives are made temporarily hell over this (nothing permanent, but enough to let them know that assholery can have consequences), it’s easy to see why they didn’t like her to begin with. I hope she uses a part of the money for treatment for counseling because she seems to be broken and I doubt it started on the bus. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/78 "2012-06-22T16:35:34Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > Ok, this really makes no sense to me. If this is the case, and I’m not necessarily agreeing that it is, but if it is then _why_ would the school think having a totally powerless adult on the bus would deter bad behavior? _Power_ over the children is the only deterrent that sways their behavior. I again ask what point is there in having a random person on a schoolbus full of merciless middle school kids when this person is truly powerless? I think you would be shocked and amazed at just how incredibly stupid and incompetent some petty (as in low level) bureaucrats can be. I can easily imagine that if she had said or done anything, the parents would have gon crazy that their “litttle angel” was so " mistreated" and the school would have crucified this “monitor”. It’s not all that hard to imagine. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/79 "2012-06-22T16:37:00Z")
> [@rocking\_chair](#): > > there are times in the video where she does speak to the kids. not very forcefully, but it is there. > > it would help to know what her duties are and what they are told to do on the bus. if they are just to monitor, take names and report behaivour, or if they can stop the bus and reprimand, and if ness. have the child or children removed. > it is being reported that some of the kids thought that it would be cool to have a video made and on youtube. if so it was a planned thing and not a spontaneous thing. That just makes it worse in my view. It shows that this was no childish on the spot implulse, but deliberate malice. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854/80 "2012-06-22T16:43:12Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > ) told her that an airline was giving her 10 roundtrip tickets and a 3 night stay at Disneyland she only marginally perked up and said she’d take her family, **except for a couple of t** hem. > > . So, apparently and ironically she has a couple of bad kids 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullied-grandmother-really/625854.md?page=5)