Chapter 15

There are all kinds of jobs on a college campus. There are student aides who work in department offices with university administrators and learn how to mismanage things. There are teaching assistants, research assistants, and lab assistants who get to work with the faculty and learn more about their area of study. There are even tutors who get to teach tough material to clueless students thereby giving nerdy looking guys a chance to seduce very attractive girls.

Not all jobs on a college campus are so nice. There are jobs in the cafeteria washing dishes, preparing food, and cleaning up the facilities. There are jobs of a janitorial nature including picking up trash, cleaning toilets, and mopping floors. There are groundskeeper jobs involving mowing the grass, digging holes, filling in holes, and transferring dirt from one hole to another.

Sean walked into the office of student employment hoping to find a job on campus. He strolled over to the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist was a rather bored college student who was reading her history book.

“Hello.”

“What do you want?” she snarled.

Her rudeness was not a mistake or a result of having a bad day. Even this early in the semester, she had learned the first rule of effective administration – greet all people in a rude and surly manner in the hope that you’ll chase them away. Sean was not deterred.

“A job.”

“The list of available jobs is posted on that wall over there,” the young woman said pointing in the general direction of a cork board with a single sheet of paper tacked on it.

Sean went over to the board and read the paper. The first and only line on the paper read, Veterinarian Assistant. He figured that he’d give it a try since his last gift of magic concerned animals.

He said, “There’s only one job here.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s not much of list with just one item on it.”

“It’s the only list we’ve got around here,” the young woman said.

“What if didn’t have even a single item on it?”

“It would still be a list.”

Much to her credit, she had also learned the second lesson of effective administration – the administrator is always right no matter how illogical things are. Logic, correctness, fairness, internal consistency, and every other thing one expects in a proper argument have no place in administration. The people in administration are above all of those petty things.

Sean said, “If you say so.”

The young woman screeched in frustration.

“What’s the matter?” Sean asked.

The young woman said, “How can this history book be factually incorrect? I mean, it’s a college text book. It’s supposed to be right!”

“What does it say?”

“It says that Sam Adams was a President. Everyone knows that Sam Adams is a well known beer.”

Sean said, “He was a President.”

The woman snorted and said, “If I go into a bar and order a Sam Adams, then I expect to get a beer and not some dusty old geezer.”

“I’d definitely mention that to your professor,” Sean said wishing he could be there to see that particular discussion.

“I will. I paid good money for this textbook and I expect it to be factually correct.”

“I don’t blame you,” Sean said.

“I’ve got to get a proper education if I’m going to be a wife to an executive. Boy, wouldn’t I look stupid telling people that Sam Adams was a President? My husband would be so embarrassed for me to act like that in front of the other executives that he’d probably have an affair with his secretary and end up divorcing me,” the young woman said.

“You’re engaged to an executive?”

“Not yet. I have to find a smart guy majoring in business who is going somewhere and trap him with my womanly wiles,” she said.

“It sounds like you have a plan,” Sean said.

“What are you majoring in?”

“Physics.”

The young woman said, “You’re out. I don’t need to get hooked up with a gym coach.”

“I’m already taken,” Sean said.

“I don’t see why.”

“It’s my good looks,” Sean said.

The young woman burst out laughing.

Sean looked over at the list of jobs, it was actually a list of a job, and said, “So how do I get the Veterinarian Assistant job?”

The young woman grabbed a form off of the desk and handed it Sean. She said, “You go over to the Veterinarian department and talk to the person who posted the job. They’ll fill the form out and you return it here. We’ll stamp it. You’ll take it back to the person who filled out the form. They’ll stamp it. Then you’ll bring the form back to here where we’ll file it.”

“You mean you’ll misfile it,” Sean said knowing how things really worked.

“We only misfile half of the forms.”

“What happens to the other half?” Sean asked.

“We lose them and you get to go through the process again,” the young woman answered.

“How does the form get filed correctly?” Sean asked.

The young woman said, “That’s easy. After you’ve misfiled enough forms, some of them miraculously become properly filed. It’s one of those administrative tricks that can delay things for years.”

“I learned something new already,” Sean said.

Locating places on a college campus may sound easy since there are usually signs placed about every twelve feet pointing out the locations of various places on campus. As stated, it may sound easy, but it isn’t. One reason for that is that the individuals tasked with putting up the direction signs are Freshman students who don’t know where anything is. Occasionally, one might find a sign post at an intersection with four signs to the same place, but pointing in four different directions. One can argue that at least one of the signs is correct, but campuses often have buildings that can not be reached from intersections, so even that is not a given.

One would think that such a practice serves no real purpose and should be discontinued. Anyone believing that would be wrong. Hiding the locations of places on campus is integral to the proper functioning of the educational environment, at least as far the administrators and faculty are concerned.

Students have spent entire semesters searching for the building in which their 8:00 am class is held. This does not excuse their absences, but it does reduce the number of homework assignments that professors have to grade. Some professors have gotten wise and change classrooms in the middle of the semester so that the number of students attending class are further reduced.

Administrators like this practice since students end up registering for the same class year after year until they finally stumble across the proper classroom. This increases revenue without requiring much, if any, investment. That really makes an administrator look good with subsequent bonuses far in excess of the money made by the practice.

One university with multiple campus locations across the state even went so far as to put maps for one campus on the grounds of another campus. That caused endless confusion even amongst the faculty and administrators. It was so bad that they moved the signs to a different campus the next year. By that time, everyone, except the students, knew where they were supposed to go so it didn’t really matter.

It only took Sean a day to locate the building hosting the Veterinarian department. He had Henri the duck to thank for that since all of the signs to the building pointed in the wrong direction. Henri flew around until he spotted some cows and then led Sean to the building next to the cows. Sean knew he was in the right place when he saw the Accounting Building sign on the exterior of the building.

Sean entered the building and found a woman seated at the front desk with a large sign behind her announcing that it was the agricultural department.

He went over to her and said, “I’m here about the Veterinarian Assistant job.”

“Wow! Someone finally found our building. We’ve had that job posted for eight years,” the woman said.

“Why does the building say Accounting on it?” Sean asked.

“We had a professor who raised beans one year. Some administrator figured that we were just a bunch of bean counters and renamed the building,” the woman answered.

“That makes sense,” Sean said.

The woman said, “Hand me your form.”

Sean handed her the form. She filled it out. She then grabbed a stamp and stamped it twice.

Sean said, “I thought I was supposed to take it back to student employment, get it stamped, bring it back here, get it stamped by you, and then take it back to student employment.”

“I saved you a trip. They’ll never know that I stamped it twice. They’ll just figure that you went there, came back here, and then brought it back to them,” the woman said with a smile.

“You really know how to work the system,” Sean said.

The woman said, “I do.”

“That’s great,” Sean said looking at the form. It even looked properly filled out as far as he could tell.

“When you take the form back to student employment tell them to file it under e. That’s important,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well, it’s supposed to be filed under v for veterinarian assistant. However, the file cabinets are ordered from z to a rather than a to z. The person filing it will walk along going ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, and stop when they reach ‘e’. They’ll file it in that cabinet which is actually the v filing cabinet.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to let the secrets out like that,” Sean said.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. We really need a veterinarian assistant,” she said.

“That’s great. I’m really good with animals,” Sean said.

“That’s not a requirement.”

“Okay,” Sean said.

He wasn’t sure why being good with animals wasn’t a job requirement for a veterinary assistant. He figured that would be one of the primary requirements for such a position. He mused for a moment that the world was truly a strange place for someone who was as normal as he was.

“Run over to student employment, drop off the form, and come right back. You can get started right away,” she said.

Sean asked, “How much does this job pay?”

“Minimum wage. After taxes and other miscellaneous deductions, you’ll be getting two dollars an hour,” she said.

“That’s ... uh ... great,” Sean said.

“How many hours a week can I work?”

“Twenty.”

“At least I’ll be able to eat a couple of meals off campus,” Sean said.

“Maybe,” she replied. “You better get that form over to the student employment office. We’d really like you to start working as soon as possible.”

“Good,” Sean said.

Sean went over to the student employment office carrying the all important piece of paper with him. He knew it was important because it actually had a statement across the bottom saying that it was important with important in large capital letters. He move his thumb and realized that it had been covering the word, not.

He reached the employment office. There was a different girl behind the counter. She was reading a history book.

She shouted, “How can this history book be so wrong? It says that Sam Adams was a President. Everyone knows that Sam Adams is a well known beer.”

“I’d definitely mention that to your professor,” Sean said thinking that he’d had this discussion before.

“I will. I paid good money for this textbook and I expect it to be factually correct.”

“I don’t blame you,” Sean said.

“I’ve got to get a proper education if I’m going to be a wife to an executive. Boy, wouldn’t I look stupid telling people that Sam Adams was a President. My husband would be so embarrassed for me to act like that in front of the other executives that he’d probably have an affair with his secretary and then divorce me,” the young woman said.

“You’re engaged to an executive?”

“Not yet. I have to find a smart guy majoring in business who is going somewhere and trap him with my womanly wiles,” she said.

“It sounds like you have a plan,” Sean said.

“What are you majoring in?”

“Physics.”

The young woman said, “You’re out. I don’t need to get hooked up with a gym coach.”