Disappointed In My Team

I was scared as to how I would be as a leader.  Well, I don't think I did well.  But I am kind of surprised at my sort-of sense of superiority over my team.

That opinion has hardened over the past couple days.  Part of our job is basically cleaning up disparate scores between scorers.  We used to print out as many papers with the "incorrect" grades and return them to the people responsible in order to "re-educate" them, but with the project winding down and the need to just get this done, we didn't do that anymore for fear we would just be slowing down.  Since then, I've been correct a lot of scores, many of them for papers that have obvious answers that should have counted or howling mistakes that should not, and yet my guys have missed the former and accepted the latter.  It gets really disheartening when I see a response with a score I actually agree with, get ready to write the number of the person whose score needs to be changed to give it to one of my co-workers because I think it's one of his or her people, then realize that the person who fucked up is also my guy.  That to me tells me one of two things: That either my people have gotten lazy or stupid, or that I taught them inconsistently.

The personalities don't help.  Two of the people, both the gregarious type, were throwing a paper airplane back and forth.  Leave aside the fact that that bullshit alone is childish and that the people throwing them are in their fifties and sixties; I don't remember seeing anyone throwing an airplane since I was in elementary school.  Who throws a paper airplane these days?  Did the note on it invite the person you're throwing it to the sock hop?  There is another person who is incredibly sweet but also incredibly slow and deliberate; I answer a question and she starts giving me a cry of the soul about how well the answer she's seeing on her computer screen matches one on the notes.  Once she's done I realize I've lost half an hour.  I can't begin to talk about the one who got in trouble with my boss for keeping her cellphone on at work.  And finally there's the quiet one, whom I consider to be one of the good ones.  She often did not like the feedback I gave her; when I finally tried to explain myself, she'd toss the response I copied for her to the side and say, "OK, I don't get it, but whatever."  Don't whatever me, babe -- I need you to get what I'm saying.  Oh, hell, sometimes I don't get what I'm saying.  I don't think she respects me, and that worries me the most because I need to keep this job.

I had planned a long time to treat my team to expensive craft chocolates, as a reward or at least as a peace offering.  Wednesday after work I ordered them online.  My frustration with the way they're scoring now started Thursday, but it's too late.  I ordered them, they'll be here Wednesday, the gang's all back together Thursday.  The timing's too perfect not to have them all together to treat them with these chocolates.

Oh, well.  One more day and then scoring for real is done.  I'll just have to clean up after them, and maybe learn from what I did and did not do next year -- if I get a next year.