Confusion at the Office

"Leslie."
I looked up, confused. No one was speaking to me. Conclusion: someone was speaking about me.

It was Kimura-sensei, the female P.E. teacher. A little listening revealed that, apparently, I was supposed to teach the boy's P.E. class in 5th period to cover for Okada-sensei, the male P.E. teacher who wasn't in today.
Note: It was already 4th period.

Confusion. Why wasn't I told? Why would they have me teach a substitute class, especially considering the fact that I'm not legally allowed to be left with a class on my own? Why wasn't I told? Who came up with this plan? And, of course, why wasn't I told?

This is, unfortunately, a fairly common occurrence in the average ALT's life. Randomly you find you are to do something - no one told you, you're not supposed to according to your contract, and you have nothing prepared. For example, I've run around the school looking for a class that, because of a schedule change, wasn't meeting that period. Most of this comes from the fact that I don't understand (or pay attention to, for that matter) the meetings in the mornings, where I would learn about a lot of the bigger issues - schedule changes, upcoming class activities, and so on. But some of it is just because no one realized the ALT hasn't been told.

In this case, it was written on a schedule in the possession of the head of the 2nd year teachers (I am considered a 2nd year teacher) and he hadn't noticed it. More horrifying than this, however, was that this same schedule indicated that I should have taught a math class earlier that day, when I was scheduled to be in an English class, and was to teach one on Wednesday and Thursday.
Problem (outside of my intense hatred of math): I don't even COME to my middle school on Thursdays, as I'm scheduled to be at my elementary school on those days.

Lunch time rolled around and I was preparing myself for overseeing a game of soccer...my specialty, har har...with the 1st year boys. I found out that Kasahara-sensei was in charge of assigning teachers to oversee absentee-teacher classes, so I found him as the lunch period started and asked him about it.

"You're taking the P.E. class? That's great!"
"Yes, but...I can't teach this math class. I'm not here on Thursdays; I go to the elementary school."
"...waaaait, this is MY schedule! I just write it down where your name is because there's more space. But you should still join us for soccer!"
"...*cue throbbing headache*"

While I was reassured about not having to teach either P.E. or math, I must say that these occasional bouts of "Oh, you didn't know this vital and imminently pertinent piece of information?" in my office do seem a tad unnecessary.
Just a tad.