Workplace rant... it's long.

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Courtney

... and the Dynamic Duo!
Joined
Jan 29, 2009
Messages
642
Location
Edmonton, AB
Excuse me for a minute, but I have to rant about my job to somebody. Anybody!

I work in the Registrar’s Office of a large college here in Edmonton. I moved down here in September, after working in the Facilities Management office for a year prior. I moved because the job could offer me a more permanent job as well as benefits.

However, they didn’t say taking the job would involve babysitting 35 menopausal women and a handful of people my age who can’t think beyond their desk.

I was hired as an assistant to the Registrar and Associate Registrars. I was to take minutes and aid them in their daily activities, which includes setting up meetings, arranging catering and on occasion, arranging travel. That was the job in a nutshell, nice and straightforward.

On any given day, this is what I actually do:
  • 7:45 am: Arrive at office due to carpool. This gives me half an hour to eat breakfast, grab some tea or whatever and wake up a bit before my day is supposed to start.
  • 8:00 am: Without fail, someone jams the printer and can’t comprehend how to fix it, so they call me.
  • 8:05 am: A printer runs out of paper. Rather than walking halfway across the office to grab a package and refill it themselves, they walk all the way across the office, tell me, follow me to the paper area, watch me grab a few packs and then follow me to the printer in question. At this point, they stand and watch me as I refill the printer because if I don’t, no one will.
  • 8:15 am: I’m officially on the clock, so I check and respond to any emails that require immediate attention. I flag those ones that can wait a bit and quickly reorganize the inventory shelves. Yes, I have to do this every day because no one in the office knows how to put things back where they find them. I also check the inventory because very few people actually tell me when they’ve used something up.
  • 8:30 am: Nearly every day, someone spills coffee or tea. Rather than grabbing a rag to blot up the mess, they call me and ask me to call our maintenance people to deal with it. Most times, I blot up the excess myself and then dab at it with a damp cloth so the carpet doesn’t stain. I then put a request to Maintenance to quickly clean that area of the carpet, “but don’t worry, I’ve removed the majority of it”.
  • 9:00 am: I collect any outgoing mail and remind people to seal their envelopes. Yes, some people have decided it’s far too much work to seal their own envelopes.
  • 9:30 am to 12:00 pm: This is when I actually do my job. It varies, but most mornings, I take minutes, deliver important documents for my bosses and generally make myself useful. At the moment, I’m also working on an Academic calendar which involves harassing various departments to submit their program pages, editing (because they don’t want to pay an editor because it’s a “useless step”), and clarifying. In this time, there’s always another paper jam to fix and a “Courtney! The printer is flashing and I don’t know why!”
  • 12:00 to 1:00 pm: This is supposed to be my lunch hour, but I usually have to eat my lunch at my desk because I’m so busy smoothing problems that I fall behind in my actual job. When I do manage to sneak away, I come back to a pile of papers on my desk, chair and generally littered all over my desk. If I’m REALLY lucky, I also have a few voicemails from people telling me about empty toner, jammed printers and various other problems.
  • 1:00 to 4:30 pm: I do mail again, remind people to seal their envelopes and distribute documents. I set up meetings, quickly reorganize the office and work like a devil to do my normal job so I’m not behind the next day. Every second day or so, I field a very stupid question. My favourite one is, “Can you bring my mail to me rather than putting it in my mail box? It’s a waste of time for me to walk all the way over here.”

To add even more fun to my day, the Dean lost her Administrative Assistant. You know what that means? Starting next week, I spend my mornings doing all the admin work for that office, and then I spend my afternoons doing my job here, plus the Calendar stuff. That’s two full time jobs that I have to cram into one day, plus organize that other office. I guess it’s in a state of disarray and I have to figure out how to align it with this one. In addition, I’m also redesigning our application forms, transcript paper, certificates and diplomas so I have to shove that job in my day somewhere too.

And yes, this is the very same job that denied me vacation for my wedding. I asked for 3 weeks off and was given the “generous” offer of one day before and 2 days after – one of the days is a stat holiday and everyone gets it off. The wedding is out of town, and the week leading up to the event is full of hair trials, meetings with vendors to confirm everything and make sure everything will go off without a hitch. The two weeks after is a honeymoon. This is no surprise to my bosses, because I told them the exact days I wanted off before I was hired. They said it would be no problem then, and no… it’s a problem.

Sorry for the length, but MAN! I feel better! Who else feels overworked and grossly under-appreciated? Is this a normal aspect of the workforce, to be expected to do much more than any one person should be expected to? I’ve worked in this office since September, and I’m completely burned out.
 
All of that truly sucks. I also babysit people at my job and it does get really old. I honestly don't have any advice since I deal with the same thing, but I wanted you to know that you aren't alone.
 
Denying you time off you notified them about before you were hired is definitely underhanded and low. Can you find a new job? Cause I'd be so tempted to take their "generous" three days and tack the rest of the 3 weeks on after leaving a resignation letter on the Registrar's desk. It might be interesting to see what the Provost/Dean thinks about what you've just described here too.
 
And what would happen if you got the "blue flue" and took a week off? Do you get sick days without needing a Dr. note?
I did that once, as a manager, and even the owner said; "we never knew how much you really did," and gave me a raise! Might be the right time!
 
I plan to keep resubmitting my vacation request each month until August. Eventually, they'll either get sick of seeing it and approve it for me... or they'll get a resignation letter instead.

I am looking for another job, but the economy here sucks too, and I'm not quite willing to go from making just over $3000/month to $1800/month. I can't live on that, especially because Adam and I are planning to get a place sometime between now and the wedding.

3Cs - I could take it to the Dean... but she's one of the problems. Heh. I'm filling in for her Admin person until they decide to hire someone new and at present time, there's no intention of that.

Rick - I could do that, except they require a doctors note for illnesses exceeding 3 days.
 
From what you've said it sounds like your job is stressful and frustrating, and that sucks.

Do take a minute and be glad you have a job. I am one of the hundreds of thousands laid of due to the US economy right now (and a greedy business... CC). I'd work anything, but there is nothing here.
 
Thankfully, that recession hasn't hit Canada. I realize I'm very lucky to have a steady job and income, and I feel somewhat guilty to complain so much when others have it so much worse than I do.

Funny story for the day though. I started Job 1 of my 3 job day and straight away, I received an email with 9 files attached. My part-time boss asked me to print off these files and give them to her. This task took all of 30 seconds. In the time it took her to write the email, attach all the documents and send it, she could have printed these documents herself and been on her way. This is the type of stuff that annoys me, because it's all stuff that they could do themselves with no effort at all. I don't mind helping, but sometimes... it's not so much helping as being completely taken advantage of. LOL.
 
I work in the Registrar’s Office of a large college here in Edmonton.

That's all I had to read to feel your pain.

I used to be a server administrator for a registrar's office. I won't mention the college, they'd know. Let's just say that going home and puking my guts out due to the stress and horror of that job was not uncommon. Universities are 100% politicial bull**** and computer people get no respect. Also, as I'm sure you are well aware, you can't go to anyone. They'll all find out anyway, likely the registrar and the human resources head are old golf buddies...

My job (in reality) was helldesk duties for the entire university, if some lackey called from the Economics department, complaining our grading program didn't work, I had to troubleshoot their computer over the phone. Couldn't hang up, arg!! More often then not they had major issues, be it virus/dumbass/pebkac origin and they'd scream and yell. I hated it. Then of course I had our in-house staff, 25 of them, and all of their computer breakage. Plus the 14 servers to maintain.

Some friends from LA offered me a place to stay, I packed up, gave two weeks, took 1.5 of it vacation, flew my bud up and hauled *** down. Rest is history!

To this day I can not handle being asked PC support questions, I just loose it. That job destroyed what joy I had in building machines, and I used to love custom PC building... Now I own macs, though still do work with Windows server.

LOL, just typing about that job made me chew the last three nails of my left hand off. Talk about residual angst! It's been three years... :rolleyes:
 
Thankfully, that recession hasn't hit Canada.
It hasn't? There thousands of people that would disagree with you, jobs being cut, factories closing, the housing market dead, welfare lines growing as peoples EI runs out because there are NO jobs, to name just a few things. While on paper we might not be as bad as the US, but we are still bad.
 
It hasn't? There thousands of people that would disagree with you, jobs being cut, factories closing, the housing market dead, welfare lines growing as peoples EI runs out because there are NO jobs, to name just a few things. While on paper we might not be as bad as the US, but we are still bad.
I guess that's what I meant. It hasn't hit as bad.
 
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