of Smug SOBs

I am not going to lie. I am very judgmental. If I don't know you and you walk into a room, I will stare you from top to bottom and judge you by your clothes, your makeup, your haircut and whether or not you drag your feet slash your attitude. Don't hate. You do it too.
I went to this district meeting this morning, to meet up with all of the LPS Spanish 1 teachers. We are trying to come up with this common assessment for the end of the year, to make sure everyone from Middle Schools to High Schools are at a certain pre-determined point in Spanish so that when kids get to Spanish 2, the teachers at that level know where to start from.
I luckily missed the first district meeting because I had to take the day off (102 degree fever). Then they called teachers interested in being in the committee, and I declined... but today I could not escape. It was mandatory to all.
Now, if you are not in the teaching industry you will probably not know that teachers always want to think their school/department/philosophy/whatever is better than another school's... it does not matter whether you are in the same district or not. If you do not work under the same roof -- you are rivals. Not enemies at war. Just rivals -- you teach better, you know better; therefore, you want to impose your beliefs on the rival school.
I.DID.NOT.WANT.TO.GO. Committees = DRAMA.
But I had to go. I do want a job next year after all.
Remember my intro about being very judgmental?
Well, today I felt like one of the nicest and least judgmental people on earth. Never have I ever been in a room of people -- colleagues -- where I have felt more belittled, disrespected, robbed of a voice, judged, mistreated, silenced.
WHY call a "teacher meeting" if your department of 109156 Spanish 1 teachers has already made a choice? Obviously a team of 3 Spanish 1 teachers can't OUT-VOTE a team of 9 Spanish 1 teachers! Why call the meeting if you are going to be rude? or if you are going to look the people coming in up and down as if they are going to take something away from you? moreover... why call a meeting if you do not want to have an open, amicable discussion in the first place?
SO. DUMB.
It was a wasted 2 hours of my life that I will never get back. It was 2 hours looking over a set of questions that had already been set in stone no matter what the rest of the people in the room thought.
Then I decided that my being judgmental isn't so terrible when I actually give people a chance to show me who they are. These teachers didn't let me - or anyone else in that room - show true colors, or opinions!
They called us in, stared us down and shot us out.
Being judgmental is one thing, but being a douche is a completely different matter! I suddenly feel so much better about myself haha.