It's the right length. It is so true. It even has one of the all time great fuzzy graphics and the killer caption. (I know you think it can't be as good as my hyperbolic pitch, but it is.)
I give to you, I share with you, I ask you to link it to the millions, the story of "Printer Problems With Anita."
You're welcome,
Kevin from Kalona
(insert Theme from Rocky music now)
[+]
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2010
Printer Problems With Anita.
Tell me if I'm crazy or not. I think my office mate purposely jams the printer at the end of the day so that I can't use it while she's gone.Does that sound insane?
Well, insane is exactly what my officemate is. Her name is Anita, and she's been a part-timer at this tiny junior college in the Pacific Northwest for twenty years. I'm a new full-time instructor who got paired with her because - as I've heard - she scared too many other part-timers away when she was in a much larger office with 5-6 others.
Well, insane is exactly what my officemate is. Her name is Anita, and she's been a part-timer at this tiny junior college in the Pacific Northwest for twenty years. I'm a new full-time instructor who got paired with her because - as I've heard - she scared too many other part-timers away when she was in a much larger office with 5-6 others.
Now it's just me and her in this office that she clearly thinks of as hers. Her books cover 7 of the ten shelves, although when I pointed that out she showed me that I actually had 2 books on shelf #4, and that seemed to be enough of a compromise to suit her.
She makes a weird kind of tea in the coffee maker each morning, and all day long it stinks like a cab I once took in Turkey. Her desk faces the office door, while my desk is pushed up against the side wall. I asked her one day if the little desk was supposed to mine or hers, and she said, "Seniority trumps everything."
"Even though I'm a full-timer," I ventured.
We aren't often in the same room, but when we are she talks on the phone loudly. Once while I was printing some pages she opened the toner door and pulled out the black ink thingie. "This is mine," she said. "I bought it, not the school. If you want to print, then get your own ink."
Well, I thought I'd foiled her when I properly requisitioned some toner and installed it myself. I showed her but she was unimpressed.
The next day I came to the office I saw the "JAM" light flashing on the printer. I opened it up and saw two long scissored strips of cardboard threaded through the various rollers inside. It looked deliberate to me. I couldn't budge them, and ended up printing in the departmental office.
But when I found her in the office the next day, the printer was humming away, and she was smiling.
Is this going to be a problem for me?
Aha, I remember this post.
ReplyDeleteYes, Anita is a control freak bordering on batshit. The cardboard in the printer was amusingly devious (and clearly unreasonable, given her colleague's attempt to compromise).
But I wonder: how many instances of departmental trodding-upon would it take for even a previously well-balanced person to resort to dominating bookshelves, hoarding ink, and jamming printers in order to feel some sense of autonomy in the workplace.
She may very well have been crazy from the start, but I imagine twenty years as the shuffled-around part-timer hasn't helped.
One word:
ReplyDeleteSpacecataz.
But I wonder: how many instances of departmental trodding-upon would it take for even a previously well-balanced person to resort to dominating bookshelves, hoarding ink, and jamming printers in order to feel some sense of autonomy in the workplace.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Just today I finally sat down and listed all the reasons I feel hosed at one of my adjunct gigs. Just the act of writing it down lowered my stress level. If I went 20 years without doing self-therapy like that, I'd probably be batshit crazy too.
AS
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ReplyDeleteIt's certainly true that organizations sow a lot of hostility in their part timers that ends up sometimes being reaped in the wrong places, but I think administrators should not put new employees in with known problem people. I wonder what ever happened with Anita! My first office mate was a pervert who showed me a picture of men wearing false breasts on the first day of work, just to see how I would take it. When I finally lodged a complaint about him (after a considerably too long time had gone by), my new boss told me that people had had a bet about how long I would last with him until I demanded to move out.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree that often, it's a case of misplaced rage and control being exerted in areas that don't always make sense. Good call on that.
DeleteAn advantage of working at a state university is being able to retort, "No, it AIN'T your printer! It's the state's printer!"
ReplyDelete