Skip The Budgie

It's more that a little frustrating when you spend the entire day saying I just do the timetable and nope, I don't know about furniture/phones/money. Worse still, is the way they just sort of stand there in the doorway, waiting for me to tell them what to do, despite the fact that I've just told them I don't know. Sometimes I'm brutal and just say no, sometimes I'm nice and say I'll think about it... Then say no anyway.

The problem is that they've all conveniently forgotten that the girl I've replaced was here for six years, when she started she didn't even get properly trained (isn't this always the way?) and just made the job up as she went along. The result is that when I come to take over everyone assumes I know as much as her. Which I don't. Why? Because it was all in her head! In a good way, I hasten to add. She has effectively been replaced by four people. This is quite an achievement.

When's she coming back? they whine, SHE would know straight away. I say that she's never coming back, just to see the abject terror on their faces. Yes that's right, you're not getting away with anything any more.

I come into work on Friday to find that someone important has gone off sick and I have to clerk one of the exam boards. It's an emergency, they say, and give me the first one of the day, telling me it'll probably turn into a witch-hunt for a particularly useless academic. It is chaos. The useless academic doesn't do herself any favours by appearing not to be able to understand English at all and denies all knowledge of any sort of student unrest. I have a day to write my minutes.

So I spend the morning trading emails with an academic who demands to know why I haven't done the things she asked me to do. I insist I have, correct the timetables where I haven't and she still insists that nothing is updating. Some time later I discover that she is looking at my 'work in progress' folders, at timetables that are weeks old, rather than the ones on the web which are the latest version. Oh how we laugh.

The minutes have to wait again, as panic after panic sets in - after all, it is only a week to go before all the students come back and the lecturers have all been on holiday, so instead of checking my plans for them before they go, they do it now, when it's far too late.

Are you the one who deals with room numbers? You know, with what goes in what room? - You mean like the T I M E T A B L E? Never heard of it.

There are four near-accidents on the way to work, not one of them is my fault.