by Ann Henry

For most DOS types, I will use the pronoun It. This is because after a Delta or an MA in Linguistics you are effectively neutered, so there is no reason to resort to the awkward he/she locution. The exceptions are Mommy Dearest, and a creature I will call Randall Thomas, aka Randy the Tom, as they are gender specific.

Pity your poor DOS. Your DOS is by definition lonely and overworked (unless your DOS has developed the fine art of doing no work at all). While your job consists of preparing your classes (HA!), pretending to teach and running off to drink and shag yourselves silly, your DOS has to deal with mountains of tedious paperwork, cope with owners, upper management and whingeing students, and think up ways to shorten your lives, you lazy little drunken sods with your knickers round your knees, your tongues hanging out for local booze and talent.

You can roll into class with a hangover, can’t you? Your DOS has to set an example, and confine drinking into a rare, usually solitary, weekend binge. You can shag students, and, in an emergency, one another, but your DOS must remain pristine so as not to erode its tenuous grip on authority. Thus it must resort to compulsive wanking, so that when you call you DOS a stupid wanker you are never far from wrong, unless your DOS isn’t stupid, in which case it won’t be your DOS for very long.

The sooner you identify your DOS type and learn to play on their many weaknesses, the surer you are of keeping your job, getting undeserved bonuses, a reduced class schedule while you “develop original materials,” and other special little favours that make your job more like the cocktail beach vacation you imagined it to be, while you were sitting in your nasty Hackney bedsit sobbing over your debts.

1. The Hands-Off School of Management
It never wanted to be DOS, except for the part about more money and not teaching. It is lazier than you are, and cuts you vast quantities of slack. Its workday is devoted to sitting in front of its computer emailing its friends, looking for better jobs, and playing Tetris. It is devoted to performing no useful function whatsoever. Beware of impinging on its time, such as showing up drunk, so that it is Forced to Speak to You, skipping your classes, so that it has to sub for you, or receiving so many student complaints that it is forced to observe your class. Then it will look for an excuse to fire you and replace you with someone less troublesome. Sucking up to this DOS is easy—email it jokes, and tell it who is shagging whom.

Unfortunately, upper management wants actual work performed. Since the only marketable skill this DOS has is the ability to seem overworked while doing nothing, an Assistant DOS is hired. Uh-oh.

2. The Ass DOS
This DOS is a snide, hyperactive power-crazed martinet. The DOS fears it, and leaves, fulfilling the Ass DOS’s dream of becoming ruler of all it surveys.

Since it was hired for its ability to create useless forms, it generates a spate of them for teachers to fill out. It announces that it will run a tight ship. Think Titanic. Think Captain Queeg. Think Captain Queeg sending out memos on brass polishing as the Titanic sinks. There is always a temptation to slip LSD into its coffee, but don’t. You are wasting perfectly good LSD.

Play on its ambition and paranoia. Go into its office and say, I just want you to know those hideous rumours about you can’t possibly be true. When asked what hideous rumours those are, say you couldn’t stand to repeat such horrid calumnies. The Ass DOS is without imagination, but it has a profound capacity for paranoid ideation. It wants a better job—email it every opening you can think of, and suggest its many talents are wasted in this shithole.

3. Mommy Dearest
She doesn’t need to work, but is omnipresent, because her diplomat/businessman husband loathes her and wants her out of the house. She fulfils all the functions of the Snide Martinet but in a cutesy way, decorating her office with pillows sporting inspirational sayings, pictures of her family, etc. Her only topics of conversation are her hair, her figure, her tiresome family, diets, clothes, and how lovely it is to work when you don’t actually have to. This is annoying to women to who work because they have to. This DOS institutes a dress code. “I just love a man in a tie,” she coos. She resents younger, prettier women, and will complain that they are unprofessional if they wear anything more alluring than sackcloth and ashes.

She says things like, “We’re all just like a big family.” You went around the world to get away from your family. There is nothing you can do about this DOS, except wait for her husband to get transferred.

4. Randy the Tom
Randall went abroad because women in his own culture found him repugnant. Randy thinks he may have a chance with women who don’t speak English. Since Randall devotes a lot of time to his futile efforts to get laid, he is actually not the worst sort of DOS. He generally leaves female staff alone, having been rejected time and again. He will, however, regale male staff with salacious jokes and tales of his largely imaginary exploits. Getting him to leave you alone is best achieved by coming out of the closet. To drive him mad, reveal that all the other men on staff are gay as well. Chose the least prepossessing of your colleagues and tell Randall that he fancies him.

5. The Afflicted One
It hates being DOS, but unlike Hands-Off, feels a need to do its job. It drags itself woefully around the corridors speaking in a whine, exuding a rank odour of misery. It feels abused by its job, the country, and you. It is, as it is the sort of creature who attracts misfortune.

The worst things about this DOS are that it depresses everyone around it, making you feel responsible for its misery, and awakening your latent sadism. It feels it deserves to be tormented, and after a while, you can’t help but agree. The best things about this DOS are that it is too absorbed in its own pain to bother you much, and if it does, it is easily encouraged into suicide.

6. The Menopausal Nutcase
This is not a gender specific DOS, despite its title. Severe mental imbalance is equally divided between the genders. It has all the hideous features of the Snide Martinet—pettiness, absorption with detail, and an utter lack of humour, without the martinet’s semi-efficiency. It makes grave mistakes constantly, as its brain does not work. Its only talent is finding ways to blame you for them. Unlike the Martinet, who humiliated you with crisp little sneers, this DOS conducts its abuse at full lung capacity. It announces that it would rather be respected than loved, but it is neither. It is merely feared. Getting rid of it is simple. Wait until it conducts one of its charming displays in the presence of management, or to a student with influential parents, though this may take some time, as it is capable of appearing normal in front of people in a position to hurt it.

7. Ms/Mr Jolly Hockey Sticks
After the Menopausal Nutcase, Jolly Hockey Sticks seems like a real joy. It is cheerful. It never loses its temper. It is efficient without being obsessive, since it isn’t really interested in education as such. It is interested in making sure that everyone is forced to have its idea of fun. It dearly loves Sports Days, and will organize as many as it can, so that you wonder why you sweated through a Celta in order to carry water balloons on your head and balance eggs on spoons.

It does not seem to realize that your idea of sport is pint hoisting. It is wildly popular with students and management, until all the students fail their exams. Like all DOS’s, it is expert at shifting the onus, so that it informs you that you are not doing your jobs, and unless test scores improve, you will all be fired. Send it job openings for kindergartens, or arrange a nasty accident at the next sack race.

8. The Dream DOS
This DOS is helpful, friendly, and kind. When it must have faculty meetings, it keeps them short and serves food. It listens to your problems and genuinely seems to care. Sometimes, it even solves them.

Personally, it has a good sense of humour, a sense of proportion, and an ability to bend the rules when it is the only sensible option.

It defends the teachers against students and management. It makes sure school equipment actually functions, and that you can find materials. The only problem with this DOS is that, like Santa and the Tooth Fairy, it does not exist. When you begin to dream of this DOS, you have fallen into a regressed state. The next step is thumb sucking and baby talk. You must leave the teaching profession immediately.