Tuesday, August 23, 2011

When is vacation time again?

What a wonderful vacation I had! Now, it's back to the grind. Dean Suzy is greeted by:
  • A demand that she file a gazillion new statistics, issued one day after she left and due the day before she came back.
  • We have hired more new faculty than we actually have rooms for them. I'm going to have to tell a silverback to remove his research group squatting on professor real-estate. What fun!
  • I refused to renew the contract for the adjunct for squirrel-fur weaving on account of his having feelies with some of the women AND being constantly late for class. No one else can be found to teach this course.
  • The goons in the financial department denied reimbursements for all sorts of people for reasonable stuff.
  • The tenured staff can't read. I sent out some stuff before I left on vacation, they are also all back now, misreading the text, and firing off missives with CCs to everyone, including the president, complaining about the quality of the work my staff does.
  • The IT department has restructured the server landscape. Many things don't work.
  • Half of my staff is off sick.
  • We had 230 applications for a secretarial staff position. The pile is awaiting my attention.
How many more days until Christmas break?

6 comments:

  1. Responses:

    1. Shoot the IT department. Replace with geezers who know how the shit works.

    2. Beat the illiterates with a flaming chain.

    3. Delagate the rest to a subordinate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "I refused to renew the contract for the adjunct for squirrel-fur weaving on account of his having feelies with some of the women AND being constantly late for class. No one else can be found to teach this course."

    Not to drag issues from one post into another, but I suspect that this is not strictly true: there is undoubtedly a price point at which someone well-qualified (and prompt, and non-gropey) could be induced to come to your campus and teach the course. It's probably more than you're willing to pay, however, and would throw other parts of the budget out of whack, cause resentment in other faculty members, etc., etc.

    While I'm sorry for administrators dealing with the headache of finding faculty willing to teach for ridiculously low wages (especially since, in many cases, they'd raise those wages if they could), I have to admit: every time I hear a story like this, I feel a glimmer of hope that the revolution is beginning (and a twinge of fear that the edifice is crumbling, and that whatever arises from the rubble will be even worse).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cassandra! That's the point that stood out to me as well.

    Me: Sniff, what is that, a position? Oh, for only $2200 for 5 months' of work. Nevermind, maybe I'll just stay put. Or if I go, I'll respond to the unpaid work by groping undergrads.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Typical. A Dean talking about vacation, but refusing to solve the adjunct crisis in America. I'm enraged.

    How can you deny your groping adjunct the small amount of pleasure he was getting? You clearly don't understand what it's like, the deprivation, the sadness, the utter malaise of being an adjunct.

    As suggested elsewhere here at Junior College & Adjunct Misery, you should give that groper your parking space (and pay for it), let him have his choice of classes, let him come late, and obviously let him fondle students' goodies.

    Otherwise, you're as bad as the most evil person in the world. Rex, of course.

    Vacation? Fudge!

    ReplyDelete
  5. OK, heh heh, it was satire in the other thread. I'll take it, Tony!

    Suzy, you couldn't pay me enough to be a Dean. Your presence on this blog has quashed any administrative (i.e., high-salaried) dreams I might have.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love how everyone here is focused on the adjunct issue. That is what jumped out at me, too. ToyBox can enjoy posting the snark, of course. Some ideas - like the parking for adjuncts etc. - deserve it. But I'll admit that I _like_ reading that there is nobody available to teach the class at the price offered.
    CC and AM have it right here. I agree with CC in particular about the "revolution" or, more likely, the crumbling edifice. Time to get out of Dodge.

    ReplyDelete

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