Useless Idiots

One of the amazing things about the pandemic, is how panic stricken and confused my colleagues have become. I've come to the conclusion that one of us doesn't know what they are supposed to be doing.
I work in higher education. Once the pandemic hit, we moved all instruction to online. That made me very happy. I had a lot more free time and everything I did could be focused on presenting material to the students. I thought that was my job. Of course, the students went in two directions. Those who were doing alright continued to do so. Those who were borderline, just disappeared. They refused to answer emails or do any work. That was expected. It was the reaction of my colleagues that was confusing.
Some of the things that confused me were:
- Daily briefings by the college president, even if there was nothing to say. Seriously, a 500 word daily briefing every day. It was amusing, but why?
- The school safety officer started sending out home and yard safety tips and ended up by asking for photos of our gardens or yards so we could show people what we had been up to during quarantine. Sorry, I thought we were supposed to be working from home, not gardening.
- Many of my colleagues started calling the students to make sure they were doing their homework. Seriously, they got the phone numbers of the students and started calling them. Should college instructors call their students to make sure they are doing their homework? Yes, American education is doing fine.
- I started receiving emails from colleagues telling me how much they were looking forward to coming back to work so that they could see me. I couldn't help but think that these people would run the other way if they saw me in the hallway, and they send me emails like this? Why?
- The president of the faculty sent out an email the other day with the closing line, "See, I'm still working".
-Basically, a lot of my colleagues showed that they couldn't function outside of a group telling them what to do 24/7. Of course, that's probably why they got hired in the first place.
The inescapable conclusion is that my colleagues don't know what they are doing. They think that hanging out with people and chatting and transmitting knowledge to students are the same things. It would explain a lot of  things. I think that transmitting knowledge to the students is my job and chatting is only to be done in furtherance of that goal. I seem to be alone in that attitude. There were others the thought like me at one point, but they all quit as soon as they could draw retirement. That should have been my first clue.
Of course, the pandemic has also shown that the school can run with about half of the current staffing and budget. Of course others have noticed this, and you can be sure that when the cuts come, they will be among the faculty, and not among those posting pictures of their yards.