“Of course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshman bring a little in, the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.”
– Abbott Lawrence Lowell
It's alright, dears. This feeling of being overwhelmed is entirely normal. And here's a tip, it doesn't really ever go away.
I swear, every year the Freshmen get younger! It’s orientation time/first week of school so herds of these infants are roaming across campus with dazed and confused looks on their faces, prodded along by overbearing parents.
These parents are walking their “children” (who are usually 18 and above) to classes, arguing that their little darlings should be able to park in the Provost’s parking space because it’s closer and widdle babykins can’t possibly be expected to walk all the way from the dorms to class, and if they are out of state, calling us in a state of panic because they their kids didn’t answer the phone when they called, and can we send out a search party now?!
We at the University Police department, hate such parents. We hate even more explaining to them, that if their child has been robbed, accosted, or got a splinter, we actually have to work with the child (who again, is over 18) and not the parents themselves, as said child is a legal adult. Ooh, they hate that.
All I’m saying is, my parents dropped me in middle America somewhere and bunked off to Belgium. I got myself to school, into a dorm, registered for classes, text books and supplies , and off to classes in two days, requiring only a ride from Fairy from the airport to campus.
As if we were not already desperately busy, especially with Fall semester looming, this is also when the University hosts a conference open to the public. For a mere $44 dollars, you can come spend week going to classes about academic topics, theology, personal development, and probably basket weaving for all I know. This wouldn’t be so bad if it were not for the people.
And we're not leaving without our commemorative mugs!
It is impossible to convey how boorish these invaders are. You’d think they owned the place! Office supplies go missing, we have to lock classrooms so that they can’t get in, they knock people down rushing to classes, they yell at everyone…genuine menaces to society. However, it’s their propensity to complain about everything, usually consequences they’ve brought on themselves by their rude behavior, that really bleaches us of all sympathy. Some favorite complaints:
I couldn’t find a parking space so I had to park in the road against oncoming traffic.
No. You didn’t. That’s like saying, “There were no cigarettes so I had to smoke crack.” Not at all. The circumstances are probably aggravating and cause withdrawals and make you irritable (not unlike frustration with parking), but the solution you propose is still illegal.
We paid good money to come to this conference, get out of our way!
We pay much, much more money to go to school here for four years. Full time. And do you think any of us get our way?
We paid good money to come here [again, please note $44], so we should be able to park wherever we want.
Hm…not really. This is, in fact, a fully functioning university 365 days a year. Which means that we have anywhere between 20,000 and 60,000 people here on a daily basis who are actually working and taking classes who need to park. To put it simply, we trump you. You are visitors, we are permanent.
We can’t find anything on this campus of yours. Don’t you label anything?And where are we supposed to park?
Yes. You will find them on those handy maps you were given on your first day. And you can park in any one of the half-of-the-entire-campus-lots we took away from those mentioned in the complaint above this one and gave them to you to use. For a week. For free. Ingrates.
The bishop encouraged us to come so, since the bishop sent us, you should give us food for free, because of the bishop.
This is not the parish potluck!
We drove a long way to come here, why can’t we leave our car in a handicapped stall?
I don’t care if the Vatican called you personally and declared all your sins would be forgiven if you invaded campus. I don’t care if we get an email from Mecca declaring this the site of this year’s pilgrimage. I don’t care if St. Thomas a Becket re-capitates himself and orders Chaucer resurrected to write another masterpiece about our humble university town. You do not, under any circumstances, get to get away with such unpardonable behavior!
(Cutting in front of whole lines of people, including one in a wheelchair, to buy things at the campus store and then snapping at the people who ask you to move to the back of the queue, “We’re with the conference!”)
Who raised you?!
“All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.”
– Denis Diderot
One of my annual duties is to process raises for all of the student employees, all 150-200 of them. Each of these raises must be individually entered, then individual added to two separate databases (before I hand them off to Susie who enters them into another worksheet). As you may imagine, this takes quite a bit of time. I usually clear my entire schedule to work solely on this project so that I can get it done in a couple of days.
These couple of days are brain melting. I stare at the computer screen without breaks from the moment I get into work until the moment I leave. By the time I limp out to my car, my eyes are crossing and uncrossing beyond my control. I swear I’ve developed carpal syndrome in my right index finger.
Note: NOT Dave Matthews.
Funny things happen to my head, such as yesterday when I had to do a double take because Pandora (which often doesn’t make sense anyway), playing in my peripherals suddenly flashed a picture of King Leonidas from 300…no…wait. It wasn’t a naked, roaring barbarian, it was Dave Matthews. I rubbed my eyes and prayed for 5pm. But it pays off to do it all at once because within three days I can usually get back to my normal schedule only slightly worse for wear.
The only way I am able to get it all done in a timely matter is by carefully cultivating the idea that anyone who disturbs me during this process will be marched out into the parking lot, lined up, and summarily shot. This year, to facilitate the speedy processing of raises, I put up the following sign:
And, much to my royal irritation, everyone has been ignoring it. Cretins.
“No supervisor becomes the quarterback in this situation.”
– Richard Hirsch
About this time last year, we organized a meeting in which to hold student supervisor’s feet to the fire about their negligent hiring practices. The Great Uprising of the Secretaries had some effect since the University complimented our department on having no hiring errors since then. HA!
However, seeing as it’s been a whole year, and what with some people being raised to the position of student without being trained how to do the job, the fact that some supervisors don’t like to read forms, and that the same supervisors have developed the habit of letting the University auto-terminate their students instead of doing the work themselves (actually, telling us to do the work) and not telling us students have quit…we must again go over the same information we did last year. And none of the information has changed.
I am imagining throwing this phone at you.
I long to be able to shake a stack of paperwork, uniforms, and gear in their faces and say, “We do all of this. We get them hired, outfitted, in compliance with state and federal laws, and keep them that way. We keep track of the last time you, their supervisor, with whom they have contact every day, gave them a raise. We get them access to all secured areas, programs, and even sometimes personally hand them pepper spray (at great personal risk). We do this, for 150 of them a year. Literally all we ask of you is to have this form filled out so we know what timetable to do all this on…please explain to me, WHY IS THAT SO HARD?”
“If idiots could fly, this place would be an airport.”
– Sign on Lauper’s desk
I am constantly amazed at some of the conversations that we, as a police department, get to be a part of. Read on for a sampling of THIS week’s pearls of wisdom:
“My child’s backpack went missing at your university over the weekend. I’ve checked the Lost and Found, all the custodial departments, and with his camp counselors. What do you think happened to it?”
“Honestly, ma’am, I think it very likely it was stolen.”
“(Gasp!) Would someone do that?!” *
“I just thought that if I didn’t pay these tickets they would just go away.”
“Sorry, sir, that’s not correct. If you don’t pay tickets they go to collections after a certain number of months. That information is found both on our website and printed on the ticket you recieved.”
“Well, I still wasn’t going to pay them. It was the principle of the thing.” **
“I’ve been driving around for an hour looking for your pink parking lots.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“The pink parking lots! They’re pink on your map, but I haven’t found any parking lots painted pink.”
“Ma’am, we only depict them in pink on the maps to distinguish visitor parking lots from all the other lots on campus, they are really just normal parking lots.”
“What do you mean? This is false information!” ***
“So, on Craigslist we found a listing for a scooter that we’re interested in, but I wanted a police opinion first.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, it’s listed for $50, the guy says he doesn’t have paperwork for it, and doesn’t even have a key for it. Does that sound normal to you?”
“…?” ****
* Yes, ma’am, they would. Which is why we have police departments.
** Congratulations. Your principles, which apparently do not include being a law abiding citizen, have just ruined your credit score.
*** I don’t think we’re going to be able to help you.
**** Let me guess, the owner is Mr. Jean Boogaloo from Nigeria.
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop the story.”
– Orson Welles
Nothing.
Two weeks of nail biting, confusion, misdirection, and finally to be sat down, asked my side of the story (which apparently filled some gaping holes left by other people’s), and told, “Well, we’d never stand in the way of your trying to better yourself. Sorry it didn’t happen, but we’re glad to still have you.”
And then, back to my desk to hire two new students, sort mail, and ponder.
Small Dog has perfect 20/20 hindsight.
Apparently, from what I can deduce, the Dean is Not Happy with Dr. F about this whole thing. And, frankly neither am I. Looking back, I think that putting me in the position of informing people or asking for permission seems ***backwards. He should have had HR make the request and process the whole event, not the girl he was trying to get to transfer out of her department. With 20/20 hindsight I can see that he put me in a professionally sticky spot which I don’t appreciate and wonder why he did it.
All I can think is that this transfer was a way to get around the Dean, who had previously refused to fill his gap. The Dean confirmed Kiki’s theory that if he could get a new secretary he’d have about three or four other offices he’d put her first before IS. I’m sorry if Dr. F is going to be inconvenienced or disgraced…but I don’t think he worked to hard to keep me from being inconvenienced or disgraced, indeed I rather wonder if he was willing to throw me under the bus rather than have any backlash come to him.
Which is too bad. I really enjoyed working for him as a student, I love the office and the people who work there, I adore Dr. S and Kiki and would have loved to be their co-workers. But on the other hand, I am absolutely positive that Susie would stand up for me and back me up, and I’m equally positive that the Dean would not if it meant he’d look bad in any way. So I think I must conclude that I’m in the office that’s best for me in the long run.
So. Something has happened: Not a lot. But I think it’s given me a greater appreciation for where I work now, and more importantly the people I work with. All’s well that ends well.
Responsibility without power, the fate of the secretary through the ages.
– Ariel Dorfman
Tomorrow I’ll finally (hopefully) have that long-awaited talk with Chief about this big to-do that went nowhere. The whole experience has been more than a little ridiculous, a lot of drama and politicking for next to nothing to show for it, and I feel that I may be on the chopping block for it. Now, Common Sense is arguing pretty solidly that Chief isn’t going to fire me for trying to accept an offer that would have bettered my long-term work circumstances…but Paranoia is hinting darkly that he may for no other reason than he feels I tried to betray him and the department. Which isn’t true in the slightest, but I know by now that if someone wants to think the worst nothing will dissuade them.
Little known 11th plague, whch wiped out all the scribes and secretaries.
The truth is, Dr. F’s offer meant the one thing that the Police Department cannot give me: a promotion. By moving to the IS office I would have become the office manager and supervisor (what Susie is to me now). Promotions in the PD are hard to come by. Something truly biblical would have to happen, at least three other people would have to die suddenly in order for me to receive a new position, and as those people are my close friends the whole situation would probably prove traumatic. Even Wise, when she left my position for her current one, didn’t move UP the proverbial ladder at all, her new responsibilities didn’t come with a higher grade or more money or more recognition, if anything it was a big step sideways. Now although Dr. F implied more money for me (certainly with the upcoming University annual raise), the reason I wanted to accept this position is not so mercenary as that.
J. and I have no idea where we will be next year for his graduate program. California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, Utah, or Gibraltar, for all I know. And we won’t know for several months yet. But there is a good chance that we will be moving and now is the time to start brushing up my resume. I’ve been encouraged to take IT training classes to fill my free hours during the Spring/Summer, but I’m also taking them to add to my list of hireable skills. I’ve been reviewing past projects I’ve worked on to see what else I could do to make me appealing to potential future employers. And when Dr. F offered me the chance to move up to a manager’s position, I wanted to accept it because the additional experience and responsibilities would have made me more desireable in the workplace (because, if you haven’t noticed, it’s a cold, cold, dark hiring situation out there and a girl needs all the help she can get).
I hope I’m not going to be punished for trying to improve my situation, but I’m forced to entertain the possibility that I might. My dark humor cannot help but picture me at job interviews, “So, why did you leave your job at the PD?” “Well, I wasn’t trying to…” but I don’t totally expect it. Que sera sera. However, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this whole event from a new perspective and I’ve come to some conclusions.
First, there is no way that being a secretary is going to make me perfectly happy, fulfilled, or satisfy the immortal longings of my soul. It is, in many ways, an utterly thankless job and acts of recognition are few and far between. This irks me because I am a pretty ambitious woman, I like to move forward (and hopefully up) and dislike doing good work and receiving no credit for trying to be a good employee. However, that is the nature of the beast. I’m extremely well-educated but not at all qualified to do anything. Margot and Venice are trained teachers, Janssen is a trained librarian, Brando is a trained stockbroker, Dad is a trained lawyer, Mum is a trained scholar…most of the people I know are a trained something. What I’ve got (besides an encyclopedic knowledge of useless facts) is a good brain, common sense, and organizational skills, and these are apparently in pretty high demand because not everyone in my office has those.
Second, I get frustrated, annoyed, and downright furious sometimes at how ridiculous my office can be and what I really need to learn is to let that go. I can’t fix it, I can’t make the powers that be see sense, and things are not going to change. I often feel that I’m smarter than my job, and I don’t think I’m entirely wrong. In fact I think I’m positively right, but dwelling on that fact doesn’t change my circumstances and usually only serves to make me angry at my situation. And hey! I’ve got a job! That’s a lot to be thankful for.
Third, my job does not challenge me. And I need to be challenged, as anyone who knows me at all will attest. But it doesn’t and won’t and I need to stop fighting that fact. What I need to do is adopt an Edwardian attitude towards it and make my life, as a secretary, my art. Being an office monkey isn’t difficult, but being a class act and making it appear easy…now that’s a challenge!
While I'm confessing, though, I think what I really want is the sense of value she gets. It's subtle but it's real. I'd love to be called into a meeting and have someone's reaction be, "C.. What a good idea."
In fact, while working out with Margot, it came to me in a flash of brilliance. What I need to be, is Joan Halloway. Er, minus the having salacious affairs with the men of my office (shudder). Joan doesn’t necessarily want to be a secretary, but she enjoys being good at what she does and likes working. She’s impeccably put together. You don’t mess with her because she will take you apart (classily, but viciously). And if you’re making an office coup, or some guy’s foot gets chopped off by a lawn mower, or someone is out because they’re having a baby and didn’t know they’re pregnant to begin with – Joan will locate your files, make a tourniquet out of a scarf, and step in to take over your correspondence.
I don’t have to adore being a secretary…but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a damn good one anyway.
“A great source of calamity lies in…anticipation.”
– Oliver Goldsmith
Don’t hold your breath, ducklings.
The big news is that there is no news. Instead of meeting with the Dean, I was going to meet with Chief instead, so Susie informed me. At two. Well, that was fine enough, although I was a bit nervous. But then Chief, who’d been out all last week, had too much to catch up on so he told Susie to tell me that the meeting was going to be pushed back a bit. And when he finally called me in at about three, he told me that he was actually too busy to meet and – since he was going to be out of the office the rest of this week as well – he was postponing meeting with me until next Monday.
Anger is firmly in the collective driving seat right now. I’m sick of being shunted around while people have discussions about me but don’t actually discuss anything with me. I hate this looming, threatening feeling which is, I feel, pretty well undeserved. I was offered a a good opportunity, I chose to pursue it. Mostly, I’m sick of feeling like a target. If the department is going to exact revenge (which I worried about from the beginning), I’d rather them just sack me now instead of letting my stomach slowly corrode itself with stress ulcers for a week.
None of this whole experience has made a lot of sense. This latest event shows no signs of changing that fact.
“And I hate waiting!’ – Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil campaign
In 12 hours all will be revealed I suppose. I’m prepared: I’ve pre-panicked (a useful skill I learned for piano recitals – get the messy emotions done with and out of the way early and the performance goes much better. The needs of Panic and Practicality are both met . I wish I could just not be nervous about public performance, messy office politics, or the other unpleasantries of life, but since I can’t get rid of the fear, displacing it a little is about the most massively useful self-taught trick I’ve got).
Which isn’t to say that Panic and Paranoia aren’t trying to sneak back in and raise rebellion among the masses. Common Sense has been playing the role of bouncer rather effectively, however, and whenever they show their pinched faces, she grabs them and grimly escorts them off the premises. Guilt has shut up finally, being replaced by Insatiable Curiosity. I’m still a bit nervous to find out what’s going on, but I’m not dreading the consequences so much any more. Obviously a nest of snakes has been stirred up…but I just seem to be the stick used to provoke them, I’m curious as to see who’s holding the other end.
“I hate committees. I much prefer a nice clean chain of command.”
“Only if you’re at the top of it…”
…”Well, yes.”
– A Civil Campaign, Louis McMaster Bujold
After Panic and Paranoia’s inelegant exit yesterday afternoon, I managed to calm down and step back a bit from the situation. Freak outs aside, there were several things that didn’t add up.
Now, it would seem that Chief did decide (rather grudgingly) to let me transfer as it was a good opportunity, and Dr. F had followed his supervisor (who for lack of any other name, we will call Salzburg) to the letter in making sure that the transfer was in keeping with university policy at large, and it’s narrower hiring-freeze-bound interpretations. So both sides had agreed, the person approving it all had agreed…when suddenly the Dean swooped down from nowhere and put everything on hold and demanded to meet with me.
And the question that I keep going back to, is why on earth is a Dean descending to personally look into the buying and selling of secretaries far beneath his normal purview?
Same principle
Theory the First – I know, both from student experience and updated frequently by Kiki, that the Dean and Dr. F do not get on well at all. There seems to be an embarrassing amount of workplace territorial-ism that goes on betwixt them. Dr. F dislikes the higher ups making decisions about his department, which often go against international and visa law, without even consulting him. The higher ups don’t like an entire department (consisting of four full time advisors…which to their minds constitutes potential revolutionary numbers) answering to the Federal Government instead of the University. This animosity has shown itself in strange ways across the years. In this case, Dr. F has applied for exceptions to the freeze to fill his empty position and has been repeated turned down. But suddenly he discovers a way around it that does not answer to the Dean. Could this be a revenge ploy?
Dear, dear! How silly of you to think you could make those decisions without me.
Theory the Second – In our office, Lt. Figaro insists on appearing to be the one making final hiring decisions about the student employees under him, even though it’s Red and Lauper who open the position for hiring, interview candidates, and make the initial offer to their chosen ones. Figaro still insists on meeting with them, normally to talk about nothing for an hour, before releasing them and congratulating himself to the entire department on discovering such a nice student employee. One of the last girls we hired had to listen to him talk about a family member who breeds snakes for 45 minutes, before reemerging with a shell shocked expression on her face, which took all of us collectively to remove by assuring her was more or less business as usual. Could this be a higher up version of this sort of thing? Does the Dean wish to appear to be the person who fills the gaps in his organization?
"What are you doing?" "...Sneaking."
Theory the Third – Kiki, my ear to the ground over at ISS, has passed on an interesting tidbit. Apparently, after Chief agreed, Salzburg called up Dr. F and told him so but that the Dean had declared, “…but I’m not going to give her to you [ISS].” The emphasis there is interesting. Kiki also says that the Dean has at least 5 unfilled full time secretarial positions in the various departments beneath him. Could he be trying to move me into a department of his choosing instead of ISS?
Alright, my loves, weigh in. Do any of these seem plausible? Any other theories? No matter how I try to look at it, a Dean sticking his fingers into this just doesn’t make sense for anything besides personal reasons. The whole thing smells of politics. The problem of course, is that I’m more a less a pawn in all of this and no one is giving me any hints about which square I should move to. Monday needs to hurry up and get here (words no mortal will ever speak again).
Small Dog Syndrome 