Another Dean Day

It was another one of those days.

• A student asked a question about something another department is responsible for on the ticket system of my dean's office (I'm a techie and have installed all sorts of fancy tech stuff like one email address for all concerns at the dean's office, if the subject line makes sense it gets sent to the right person, if not, someone is assigned to sort at regular intervals). One of my administrators answered promptly and politely: "Please contact the Other Department about this issue." The student wrote back: "That does not answer my question!!!!!" then wrote to me to complain about how nasty my administrators are and suggested the ticket system is useless.
  
• The president's office sent around the statistics for the past semester. Printed on paper and sent by mail. I have to prepare my yearly report using these statistics. This is one I would like to have had stuffed in an Excel file and sent by email.
  
• I have to fill out one copy of the "Workplace Safety Assessment Form" for every person working in the department. This includes measuring the distance of the screen from the eyes of each person while seated at the desk and measuring angles and counting wheels and on and on for 4 (four) pages. I wonder if anyone will notice if I make up random values.
• Someone had been calculating some value and requested that I keep track for the past three months of how long I spent on a particular task. I filled out the forms and sent them in. They were returned to me because I didn't fill in the TIME_START and TIME_FINISH for each instance, I had just noted down the TIME_USED. I made up useful numbers, including putting down 9:15-10:30 and then only noting down 60 minutes. I'll take a box of chocolates around if anyone notices.
• A professor requests a $2000 stipend to attend a conference. In Aruba. Yeah, the call for papers is still running, so I really believe your paper was accepted.
• Reviewing the inventory data we discover that the lab engineers have been adding inventory for years, but never bothered to remove old inventory from the list. One tiny office supposedly has 3 desks, 4 shelving units, 2 chairs and 3 ancient computers. I don't dare open the door to this office to check, I'm afraid it might all be there.
  
• On the bright side, we had some sun today - that's that thing you see during the daytime when the clouds quit raining/snowing for a moment and pull apart!

Weekend! Where's JackieD?

Dean Suzy