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Marriage, parenting, family drama — someone's gotta say what we're all thinking, and Joseph Tito is just unhinged enough to do it. Every week Joseph — gay dad of twin girls, bestselling author, and a menace with a microphone — reads your messiest letters and torches the villains with savage wit, brutal honesty, and just enough heart to remind you you're not alone in the chaos. From husbands who treat wives like free secretaries with dental benefits, to in-laws who think love has a rulebook, nothing is safe from the roast. Therapy meets stand-up meets that friend who's three glasses of wine deep and finally telling the truth. Send your mess to betweenthecoversmag.com. This is Joseph Tito — and I bitch so you don't have to.
Three weeks. My daughter has been back at school for about three weeks, and I get an email telling me she's being switched to another class. And I handled it beautifully. If by beautifully, you mean I went into that school like I was about to personally replace the Ministry of Education. Because apparently, somewhere between reading the email and getting there, I became qualified to run a school.
Joseph Tito:No training, no experience, just a daughter and a fucking opinion. Welcome to Bitch Fest.
Theme song:Welcome to the Bitch Fest. Sisterhood Supreme. Sip that tea, spill the shade, hear our sassy dreams. Yes. I'm a mic, this phone and mic, we're loud and unfiltered.
Theme song:Stay tuned, hon. The sass is about to get tilted. Oh, la la, Bitch Fest.
Joseph Tito:I'm Joseph Tito. Gay dad. Twin girls. King City, Ontario. And today, we're talking about what happens when you go into your child's school absolutely certain you know who to be furious with.
Joseph Tito:And discover the people behind the desk are also wondering what the fuck is going on. It's September 25. We have barely started. You're getting used to the teacher, the classroom, where things go, what comes home on which day. I'm still trying to establish which school email requires action and which one is just telling me something a pumpkin is doing.
Joseph Tito:And now, one of my daughters is changing classes. So, yes. I went in upset. I didn't want it. And you know that parent version of yourself?
Joseph Tito:The one who thinks they're being very reasonable because they haven't technically raised their voice? I'm just trying to understand. No, you're not. You've understood the email, you're trying to make it unhappen. That was me.
Joseph Tito:I wanted somebody to look at the situation, recognize that I was Joseph Tito, a man who had arrived with feelings, and immediately produce a different outcome, preferably before I left. And then they explained what was happening. What I was told was that funding cuts meant a class was being cut. Teachers and students had to be moved around. The secretary would be splitting her time between this school and another school.
Joseph Tito:The vice principal? Same thing. Half here, half there. And suddenly, the conversation I thought I was having was a completely different fucking conversation. Because I'd walked in thinking somebody had unnecessarily rearranged my daughter.
Joseph Tito:Meanwhile, they were trying to rearrange an entire school around people and resources they were losing. I had come in to complain about the mess. They were the ones trying to make the mess work.
Theme song:Bitch vest on, honey spill that
Theme song:tea, shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:People don't appreciate the school office until they need the school office. Then, suddenly, that woman is the most important person in the province. You forgot something. Your child forgot something. Somebody's picking up early.
Joseph Tito:Somebody's picking up who wasn't on the list. You sent an email. You sent it to the wrong person. You would now like her to find the email you sent to the wrong person. And you begin every single interaction with: Sorry, just a quick thing.
Joseph Tito:It is never a quick thing. You don't even know your child's teacher's last name. The room near the thing. Wonderful. She'll check the thing.
Joseph Tito:I've got twins. I can make one administrative problem into two before I've finished introducing myself. And now this person is being shared between two schools. Shared. I love that word.
Joseph Tito:Sounds lovely. Cooperative. Like she's a plate of cookies. She is a human woman with a job in a building. Putting her name on a second schedule does not create a second woman.
Joseph Tito:You've created a commute. Congratulations. And I'm not saying nobody's covering anything while she's elsewhere. I'm saying the work at the first school hasn't magically gone away because she's at the second one. The phone doesn't know.
Joseph Tito:It doesn't go, Oh, she's at the other location. I'll ring Thursday. Parents don't become less confused on alternate afternoons. I certainly don't. I can be confused five days a week.
Joseph Tito:Reliably. And the vice principal is doing the same thing. Two schools, two sets of staff, two sets of parents, two sets of things that apparently need to be dealt with immediately. If I had someone helping me run my business and suddenly I only had them half the time, I would notice. Immediately.
Joseph Tito:I would not be standing there going, what an exciting opportunity to become more efficient. I'd be going, who's doing the other half? That is my question. Who's doing the other half? Because every time somebody says, we'll make it work, I want to know whose lunch that means, whose evening, who's staying, who's answering the extra email, who's getting home and sitting in the driveway because they need five minutes before another human being asks them for something.
Joseph Tito:And then here comes me. Sorry, just a quick thing. Perfect timing, Joseph.
Theme song:Bitch vest on, honey spill that
Theme song:tea, shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:Now, let's talk about cutting a class. Because on paper, I imagine that looks very tidy. One fewer class, A number changes. Someone presses save. In the school, children change rooms.
Joseph Tito:Teachers get different groups. Parents get emails. Everybody has to adjust. And we love telling children to adjust. Children are resilient.
Joseph Tito:Yes, and apparently, we have decided to really fucking test that. Can we let them be resilient about losing a game? Or having the wrong color cup? Why are we using a child's ability to eventually cope as a reason to keep changing things around them? She'll settle.
Joseph Tito:I hope so. Of course, I hope so. But we were already doing that. That was the September activity, settling. We had only just taken it out of the box.
Joseph Tito:And now the people in the school have to make this change feel manageable. They have to explain it, organize it, reassure everybody. They're doing the disruption and the customer service for the disruption. And they didn't even get to choose the fucking disruption. There was no point standing in front of these people demanding they put back something they didn't have the authority to put back.
Joseph Tito:What did I think was going to happen? The secretary would open a drawer? Oh, you're upset? We do have another class. We keep it under the stamps.
Joseph Tito:The teacher can't pull funding out of her bag. She's got enough shit in that bag. And yet she's the person we can reach. That's the problem. We know her name.
Joseph Tito:We have her email. We can picture her face. So when something goes wrong, that's where we send everything. Meanwhile, the funding decision doesn't have to stand in front of me while I say, I'm just trying to understand. So, school board, ministry of education, politicians whoever made these decisions, approved them or decided this was an acceptable result?
Joseph Tito:Come explain it. In the school. With the people who have to make it work. And please speak normally. I do not want to hear optimizing resources.
Joseph Tito:Tell me who's there on Monday. I do not want a commitment to student success. Excellent. Who's answering the phone? And if you say doing more with less, I'm going to need you to demonstrate personally.
Joseph Tito:Let's put you in the school office. Nine in the morning. Someone's at the door. A parent is trying to explain a pickup arrangement that involves three adults who are not speaking to each other. And here I come.
Joseph Tito:Hi, I'm Joseph. You'll fund the fucking position by recess. What gets me is how different this would look if it were a photo opportunity. Imagine announcing that we're unveiling a new sign outside the school. A SIGN!
Joseph Tito:Suddenly, there's a ceremony, a schedule, people in jackets, a man who needs to know where to stand, someone checking whether the logo is visible. The sign has more adults attending to it than the problem the sign is standing outside. And I'm supposed to be grateful somebody found time to say children are the future? We know. That's why we've brought them to the school.
Joseph Tito:We're asking about the people currently working with them. You can skip the speech. Use that time to explain why a school that needed its staff yesterday is expected to manage with less of their time today. And don't tell me it's complicated like that ends the conversation. I believe you.
Joseph Tito:I have a family group chat. I understand complicated. Explain it anyway. Where was the decision made? What was considered?
Joseph Tito:And why does the solution keep arriving at the classroom door looking like another thing the staff have to absorb?
Theme song:Bitch vest, some honey spill that tea,
Theme song:shoe bop dish, the dirt can party with me.
Joseph Tito:Because they do absorb it. That's what struck me. They still have to open the school. The children still come in. The day still happens.
Joseph Tito:And because the day happens, the rest of us can mistake that for everything being fine. Well, my child came home. There was homework. Nobody called me. Must be working.
Joseph Tito:Until your email arrives. Until your child gets moved. Until the thing happening inside the school becomes the thing happening inside your house. Then suddenly you have questions. I did.
Joseph Tito:I had all the questions. Apparently, my interest in education funding was waiting for a personal invitation, and it arrived in my inbox. That's not flattering, but it's true. I wasn't walking in there to investigate staffing. I wanted my daughter to stay in her class.
Joseph Tito:That was my starting point, and I still care about that. Understanding why something happened doesn't mean I suddenly like it. I haven't come home and gone, Wonderful news everybody, the disruption has context. But now I know the people I was confronting weren't sitting there casually deciding to make our September more difficult. They were dealing with it too.
Joseph Tito:And we need to stop responding to that with nothing but compliments. They're amazing, yes! They go above and beyond, clearly! I don't know how she does it. Neither does she.
Joseph Tito:She hasn't sat down. And please don't solve this with another appreciation mug. There must be school staff out there who could build an additional classroom out of the mugs we've given them. Best teacher, you make a difference. It takes a big heart.
Joseph Tito:Does it take another employee? Because we seem willing to print absolutely anything except a job posting. Give her the mug if you want. Put a properly staffed school behind it. Quick thing before
Joseph Tito:I go. My memoir, The Dad Diaries, is out now. It's the story of how I became a father to my girls and everything it took to get there. Signed copies are at thedaddiaries.com. It's also on Amazon and Indigo.
Joseph Tito:And the BTC Magazine app is free. App Store, Google Play. That's where you can send in your stories. Teachers, EAs, secretaries, parents, Tell me what's happening. I went into that school wanting one thing changed.
Joseph Tito:I came out understanding that a lot more had already changed than I knew, and I'm still angry. I'm angry that the children and the staff are the ones doing the adjusting, and I'm angry that the people keeping the place running also have to stand there and take our complaints about how it's being run. There's a difference between the person who caused the problem and the person who's been assigned to explain it to 18 angry parents before lunch. So to the staff who had to explain all of this while I was being Joseph Tito at full volume, Thank you. And to whoever thinks half a secretary, half a vice principal, and one less class sounds perfectly manageable, I have an idea.
Joseph Tito:Take half your communications team, share the other half with another office, then answer your own fucking emails. Mine's coming. It starts, hi. Just a quick thing. This is Joseph Tito, and I bitch so you don't have to.
Theme song:Well, darlings, that's our scene tonight, but the tea's still hot and the spark still ignite. So stick around, honey, for the next contest. We'll see you soon at the next Bitch Fest.