Colleagues leaving you high and dry

I’m so fucking annoyed.

I work at a further education college in the UK, we teach 16-19 year olds. Because we’re not attached to secondary schools in particular we rely solely on open days and evenings to recruit students for the following year to take our courses. So we have one a month.

Well our open day for December is today - it starts in a few hours.

Staff attendance at these open days isn’t compulsory, you’d don’t get paid extra for them but you do get the time back to take off. It’s more of a good Will gesture and even though theyre not compulsory, you’re a pretty shitty person if you do NONE because you’re showing youre not dedicated to improving numbers in your subject.

I’ve been working there for two years, and I’ve missed two. Turns out for this one I was one of only 4 members of staff who agreed (there are 20 in our department) - fine, whatever, we will make it work and will hand our subject info sheets for those who aren’t there.

Except that I’ve just got a text now from one of the four who was supposed to be there saying she’s not coming in because “weather is awful, I’m coughing, and this shouldn’t have gone ahead with so few people.”

Well now there’s going to be one less person isn’t there you selfish bitch.

I’m so fucking mad. I’m pregnant, been feeling ill recently anyway but have been forcing myself into work because I know I’m going to have to have days off soon for scans and appointments, and I don’t want to let my students down.

She’s really fucking pissed me off but I don’t know how I can handle it. She’s my friend at work as we work in the same subject and she sits right opposite me. I don’t know what to do.

ALSO I want to add that she used to be a really reliable member of staff, but this academic year she’s got really lazy. We’re all stressed because the workload has increased massively with us getting new management, but she conveniently gets “sick” at times where we have deadlines to meet and because I work for the same subject it falls to me to set work for her classes. Two weeks ago she had a whole week off because “she wasn’t feeling too well” and we had a massive deadline on the Friday. Oh look she managed to submit all of her work. So did I, but amongst teaching my classes and setting work for hers. It’s just fucking shitty and I don’t know how to handle it