This morning after visiting the Social Security Administration to apply for a replacement SS card, I dropped by the Paradise Valley Community College campus to find out a few of the things I need to know: how to schedule time for the li’l students to visit the library and how to get set up in BlackBoard, the online learning tool where faculty can post course docs and students can turn in papers electronically.
Truth to tell, I was dreading it: expected a day fraught with hassles. The prospect of enduring a series of runarounds in the 110-degree heat, when what I most wanted to do was find an air-conditioning vent and stand under it, did not fill me with joy.
But nay! Hang onto your hats, folks: people were nice to me there!
Lordie. I hardly know what to make of it. The librarian (who at the moment had little to do) got up and gave me the grand tour, sat down at a computer with me and got me into the system, showed me how to sign up for library time. Then he personally accompanied me to one of the IT gurus, to whom he introduced me. From her I learned about a whole week of faculty learning seminars in August, some of them for really neat stuff. They were both very generous with their time and behaved as though they actually liked their jobs.
Weird.
At GDU, a newbie can’t get people to explain things for love nor money. When you ask how to get something done or where to go to find out, the answer invariably is “I dunno. It’s not my job.”
When GDU hired me to establish our office, they expected me to buy furniture, computers, printers, scanners, software, office supplies, reference works, and even the phones and ethernet connections. One woman in the dean’s office was assigned to find us office space, which she eventually did—in the engineering building—but she wasn’t very gracious about it. She acted like it was quite an imposition, even though that was her job…which has since been eliminated. Getting the phones installed was a memorable headache: it took a week or two just to find out where I was supposed to call to apply to have them installed. It then was another couple of weeks before they got around to doing it. Ethernet entailed a similar runaround. And the furniture…oh god! Don’t ask.
Think I’m making this up, don’t you? Well, I thought it was “just me” for the longest time: must be my curdled personality turning people off. Then my friend who had founded and developed a nationally prominent graduate editing program retired—this program functioned more or less as our sister program, because we hire(d) our research assistants from its students, providing rare, nicely paying twelve-month support for three graduate students. The new guy showed up, and we became soon became cordial. Pretty quick he’s asking me how to get this, that, and the other thing done. He voiced exactly the same complaint. No one would tell him where to go or how to find out how to do the most basic things!
So I felt weirdly gratified when the new director, who was an affable, gregarious fellow hired to run a prestigious program with national visibility, ran into the same brick walls. At least it wasn’t something I was doing.
At any rate, it felt very strange to have people who never saw me in their lives act as though they cared whether I lived or died. The pay’s not very good, but it’s beginning to look like the trade-off is huge: working someplace where people aren’t miserable in their jobs.
The staff at my place of employ are sometimes like that: “I don’t know.” Turn back to solitaire on computer screen. Most are helpful, as are most teachers and dept heads.
The scary stuff involves purchasing. Scary people. Scary forms. Hours and hours to get reimbursed for a tray of cookies.
Your example involves purchasing/money/etc so that might be part of it.
Maybe community colleges are less complex, also.
Whatever! Have fun there.