Arrrgh.
Some weeks my job is a sinecure, and other weeks it’s purgatory. This, being the first full week of a new semester, has been a week of the latter type.
I’ve been extraordinarily busy (you’ve probably noticed I haven’t blogged all week), and it’s been the bad kind of busy. “Good busy” is having some structure to the busyness; I know what I have to do, when it needs to be done, and how to do it. “Bad busy” is when top-priority, unexpected things get dropped into my lap while I’m already simultaneously working on a couple of other top-priority things and dealing with constant interruptions.
High points of the week:
- Getting awoken two full hours before my alarm by a cow-orker calling to tell me, “I just flushed my toilet and it came back up into the bathtub. I won’t be in today.”
- Discovering that Disgusting Cow-orker has been using my desk in the mornings (I work afternoons). How did I deduce this? The piles (yes, literal piles) of dandruff on my desk were a clue. I now have to start every shift by shaking loose dandruff out of my keyboard, wiping down my entire desk surface, keyboard and mouse with a Clorox wipe, and Febrezing my chair. Ah, the joys of working with a 350-lb slob who considers bathing an optional monthly activity. And not one. fuckin’. word. of this is an exaggeration.
- Calling in Campus Safety to remove a student. He’d already decided to start his college career by throwing a pen at his teacher on the first day of class. She immediately (and rightly) booted him. He showed up again for the next session, protesting that he’d done nothing wrong and wasn’t going to be kicked out. Amazingly enough, he was wrong on both points.
- Having 25 clueless freshmen show up at my desk, ask for me by name, and then ask what they’re supposed to do. No one had told me anything about these 25 clueless freshmen and their instructor was nowhere to be found. I still don’t know what the hell that was all about.
On the up side, I’m now on a four-day weekend. Unfortunately I’m too damn broke to do anything since, due to the inexplicable vagaries of the payroll department, I’m in the middle of a six-week gap between paychecks.
As Squeaky would say, O GOD MY LIFE!
if you share a phone, better check for ear grease, too. i hated sharing a desk. deskmates get away with stuff you could never think of, like eating greasy shit and smearing it all over, or getting crumbs in everything, or worse, bringing in pests from their domiciles, and i don’t mean the human kind.
you have my deepest sympathy, and empathy.
Comment by sidhe_demon — August 29, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
The bright spot about Soviet Russia is that with a little time you could probably convince the head apparatchik of the institution to lead both co-worker and penthrowing sprog outside to the coal pile (because there’ll be a coal pile for the furnaces, natch) for a little strategic lead injection.
In Soviet Russia, there are many ways school gets into your head.
Comment by drstrangegun — August 31, 2008 @ 12:04 am