“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
– Ovid
I must be looking my age. Yesterday Susie came up to my desk and asked what I was doing for my birthday (today).
“I’m not sure. Dinner with J.’s family I think, and my godmother is doing a friends and family dinner on Sunday.”
“That sounds nice,” Susie said. “But what are you doing the day of?”
“Er, not much.”
“Are you taking the day off?”
“Hadn’t really thought of it.”
“You can, you know.”
“Well, thanks, but I’m not sure. I mean, it would be lovely but it’s not like I’m sick or anything. I’m weird and feel guilty about not coming into work when nothing’s actually wrong.”
“Don’t. It’s good to have a day off. You should take one.”
“Uh, ok…”
“Good!”
So I am!
Either I’m looking haggard and everyone has commented to her about it, or she’s planning some kind of office coup and wants me out of the way for the day. No matter. Have a nice day, kittens, Small Dog is in the spa. And not taking phone calls, although you are welcome to join me.
“I’d have you lot up in front of the University authorities first thing in the morning, if it wasn’t for the fact that you are the University authorities…”
– Terry Prachett
We are moving into one of the worst months of year at work: June is the month building up to the annual July 4th celebration. This usually involves celebrity VIPs, nearly 100,000 additional people on campus, parades, hiring up to 100 more students for less than a week, and other assorted headaches. Last year I got lucky and got married instead so I was out of town for the final crisis.
This year I may not get as lucky unless J. and I can come up with a cheap vacation idea. And then there’s the guilt. I’d be leaving some of the other girls in an awful lurch skiving off like that. Plus Hennessy is getting married mere days before and it would rather shabby for both of us to disappear.
However, this nobility of purpose doesn’t make the impending event any less irksome. It’s my job to get those darling student employees outfitted and, more importantly, in fear of the personal Hell that will await them if they don’t return every last piece of gear to me. At the end of football season this past year, I was somehow seconded to be responsible for collecting and minding this stuff permanently even though I hadn’t been in charge of distributing it, recording who got what, or when it should be returned at the beginning of the year. You may imagine the resulting confusion. And my attitude about it.
Die.
This year will run much smoother since Hennessy and I have teamed up to tackle it, but problems are already creeping up. Such as the fact that the Special Events department hasn’t given us a time to distribute stuff, and has decided that these students need only three hours of training (to take place three days before this nearly 100,000 people plus pyrotechnics rolls into town).
The real problem with this university is, as I see it, is that it’s a combination of a business, a school district with too many children and not enough teachers, and (due to the religious background and funding) a monastery. Which doesn’t combine too well, professionally speaking. As a bureaucracy, resources are not always well-managed. Administration errors are overlooked in the spirit of Brotherly Kindness, but minor problems lower down on the chain of command are punished with all the fervor of an inquisition. And, completely at odds with religious teaching, good work is not rewarded while bad work is not scrutinized or punished. It’s baffling.
“If you wait a few minutes you can have a piece of cake. Baked it chock-full of love, actually chock-full of unrelenting, all-consuming rage and hostility. But still tasty.”
-Grey’s Anatomy
I made light of it but yesterday’s brush off (you know, when I delivered fifty years of an otherwise undocumented perspective on the growth of the university, state, and country through some of the most turbulent social decades of the previous century…nothing big) was a crushing blow. I’ve been coasting along blissfully at work ever since my rage stroke without caring too much about the administrative snafus that I seem to see everywhere.
But then this happened and my entire academic life flashed before my eyes. I wondered if all my education even mattered, if I’d ever be able to use it again, what would become of me, blah blah blah. It was rough. To make it worse it was compounded with hormones and J. wanting to talk about our future (grad school, loans, working now, internships). The overwhelming sense of uncertainty blended nicely into the tempest already brewing in my teapot.
Cue minor meltdown. I started baking immediately. I hate cooking of all forms so for me it’s the ultimate cathartic experience: I can take out my emotions by beating eggs, shredding carrots, and pummeling dough into submission, and come out with something sugary at the end. Perfect. Luckily Venice and I met somewhere in the middle – she needed butter, I needed Midol – and I got a nice heaping dose of perspective, as she’d had a pretty wretched day too.
She’s been suffering at work for years now. And unlike me, she doesn’t have lots of really great co-workers and supervisors to make the stupidity and drudgery less irksome. (Don’t go, Venice! Er…ahem…) Twenty minutes complaining about work, mutual resolve to learn to cope better, and I was ready to talk grad school with J.
Summary: Friends and muffins make everything, even the occasional crisis of faith, better.
“We have top men working on it right now.”
“Who?”
“Top men.”
– Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Pictured: a villain immediately preceeding his revalation of exactly how badly he has been behaving for the last hour and a half.
In almost every movie there is that incredibly silly moment when the villain is confronted with the fruits of his or her destruction and, looking over the rivers of lava/ looming black hole/ annihilation of an entire civilization/ etc., murmurs in despair, “My god, what have I done?!”
I had one of those moments today. After getting all the archives into chronological order (which you’d think they’d already be in, right? Hah!), tagging them by date, pulling original photos and making notes on when/where they originally occurred in print, and hauling it one massive armload at a time to the library, I asked for the archivist. Student employees helped me carry the stacks of papers and binders and asked what I was doing. I couldn’t very well shout, “Saving history!” in the library, so I quietly whispered the tale of the iniquitous order to dispose of fifty years of information.
“He told you to shred it!” one girl squeaked in horror.
“I know,” I squeaked back.
We were all awash with the enthusiasm of the young until the archivist appeared. He looked like Eeyore the donkey in human form: droopy, awkward, exhausted, and less than thrilled to see me with my arms full of documents.
“Hi, I’m C. from the police department. We talked on the phone and–”
“Oh, right,” he sighed, “Follow me.”
The whole cavalcade meandered down some halls and through secured doors…to a lonely room, lined with shelves and piled with papers.
“Here’s a project for you,” he mumbled to what appeared to be a heinously overworked student employee, and ordered us to drop the whole pile on her (already covered) desk.
My project is somewhere alongside the Ark, I'm sure.
Which is when I had my cinema-villain-is-confronted-by-what-she’s-done moment. I’d committed the most rookie of cardinal sins: I’d just turned over fifty years of history to a bureaucracy!
I’ve gained all sorts of skills and experiences at this job, but law enforcement is not my calling, to say the least. But history! Oh, yes. And this project is the first thing in over a year and a half that’s come close to the things I’ve studied and feel passionate about. Certainly it’s the only thing that’s got me excited enough to annoy my co-workers with my near constant cries of, “Read this!” And now, I’ve an awful premonition that my precious bundles are only going to slowly decompose in the bowels of the library. There is no justice in the world.
“All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon.”
-Voltaire
Yesterday Lt. Citrus called me into his office and waved his hand at a pile of binders. It was the media files archives of our department, newspaper clippings mostly, and it went back to 1960.
“We don’t need these anymore,” he said. “Can you get rid of them and save the binders?”
?!?!?!?!
I stretched out my hands dumbly and let him plop a stack in my hands and then tottered back to my desk where I opened them up.
The Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the first female officer to graduate from the state’s police academy…the earliest documented complaints about parking (an as yet unresolved problem!) when we had a fraction of the student number we do now…a completely unique perspective on the history of the campus was sitting on my desk and I was supposed to just shred it?! Clearly they forgot I majored in history!
I begged off my other chores and began putting things in order. I’ve spent the last day and a half scanning articles and photos that document the history of the department (beginning back when we had an ex-LA cop fish a bunch of wallets out of the campus pond and search for the owners, all the way to the 40+ full time, state-certified officers we have now along with nearly 200 student employees). And come across some real gems!
Throw this stuff away. Pfft! I’m already in contact with the university archivist.
Showing off items abandoned in the Lost and Found. The one on the right kind of looks like Peggy Olson from Mad Men.Contrary to popular belief, we neither live in Mayberry, nor whistle frequently.
In happier news, it would seem my Lord and Lady Stompington may have moved out! Building gossip suggests it, and the unnatural quiet we’ve been enjoying seconds the idea, but it has not been positively confirmed yet. Fingers crossed, all. Good fortune and goodbye!
Also, Sav and her husband CK may be moving into our building. Which would be lovely! When Venice basely abandons me, it would be nice to have someone I know and like in easy cup-of-sugar borrowing distance.
“Electricity is really just organized lightening.”
– George Carlin
Small Dog is positively charged.
We have card swipes on the doors to the secure areas of the department. Today while sliding my card through the reader, I got a jolt of power through my arm. Much like the time I unscrewed the bulb from a night light when I was seven (old enough to know better) and stuck my finger in the gap to see what it felt like. Don’t recommend it.
Later in the room where I take peoples’ fingerprints, the light wasn’t turning on. I flipped it a couple of times with no result until suddenly the lights buzzed into life…while the switch was in the “Off” position.
I’ve also been on the receiving end of two static shocks today.
“Hear now a sorry tale of mortal man…”
– Aeschylus
The story of Prometheus is well known, but to recap… He was a titan who apparently sided with the Olympians when they wandered into Greece, looked around, and said, “We’ll take it.” Even though Zeus declares himself supreme-overlord-of-all-and-if-you-challenge-me-you-will-get-struck-by-bloody-lightning-I-am-not-kidding!, Prometheus demonstrates over and over again that he is far more clever than the majority of the pantheon. While Zeus is sneaking around behind his wife’s back, preening in a mirror, and trying (unsuccessfully) to keep his growing horde of illegitimate children quiet, Prometheus decides that he feels like creating humans and developing agriculture, writing, and the other civilizing arts.
"That'll learn you, thinking you're smarter than me..." "Wow. You're a huge jerk. Ow ow OW!"
But when he decided to steal fire (usually symbolizing technology in general) for mankind and smuggled it off Mount Olympus, Zeus finally lost it. Fed up with his tricks, overwhelming cleverness, and making him (Zeus) look bad, he chained Prometheus to a mountain and sent an eagle to eat his liver everyday, which miraculously regrew each night so he could be tortured in the same way daily, ad infinitum. One of the pesky downsides to being immortal.
The modern retelling of this myth is currently taking place on our front counter.
In an effort to help transition patrons to the new parking system, an unnamed officer bought two tiny laptops that our employees could use to walk individuals through the online process of registering their cars. Trouble was that for months the system was hovering in a state of semi-productivity limbo, even on a good day the internet connection on the laptops is shoddy at best, and the computers are almost never used. Not money well spent, in my opinion.
Not aesthetically pleasing, I feel.
However, one of the more obvious problems with this idea has been the method devised for keeping them in place (as it would be embarrassing for computers to get stolen from a police department); to wit, a tangled mass of wires, power strips, and chains wrapped around one another, the computers themselves, and drawer handles. Looking both ghetto and ridiculous.
Moral of the story: trying to bring enlightenment and ease to the populace will probably make you an object of aggravation, fit only to be tied up and left to rot.
“‘Tis pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures; And all are to be sold, if you consider Their passions, and are dext’rous; some by features Are brought up, others by a warlike leader; Some by a place–as tend their years or natures; The most by ready cash–but all have prices, From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.”
– Lord Byron, Don Juan canto V, st. 27
Holidays are fun, regardless of nationality. Take today: Cindo de Mayo. Some people celebrate with chips and salsa, some with a fiesta, some with mariachi bands. And some with bribery.
A certain student is banned from driving on campus. This is due in large part to him accumulating up to four tickets in one day, parking in service/handicapped stalls, trying to fight our student officers, and claiming that he never received information that three people all told him (at the same time, in the same room together). He was informed he had the ability to appeal the ban but would not be able to bring his car onto campus until a final decision had been made. He said he understood and left.
Pictured: the filthy tool of corruption!
Today he came into our office, and asked for Red.
“You know about Cinco de Mayo, right?” he asked. “It’s today. So I brought you this.”
He held out a small packaged piece of tres leches cake with a meaningful expression.
“K, bye” he said quickly and hurried out.
Five minutes later we found his car in a non-student parking lot.
The real mystery here is, if he were trying to circumvent parking rules, why did he draw attention to himself by 1) attempted bribery and, 2) (and this is more perplexing) leaving his emergency lights flashing merrily away for over an hour?
How do you celebrate Cinco de Mayo? Or any holiday for that matter?
Small Dog Syndrome 