Skip The Budgie

I am not sure where all this anger has come from, I knew what to expect when I took on the job, pretty young colleagues quitting on you for no reason¹, recycling temps til the cows come home, academics who really should know better NOT knowing better and for some reason being quite happy to appear utterly gormless...

• Me: Hi everyone, please let me know if you want to come to the VIP lunch at 12pm
• Prof. X: Hi, I can only come before 1400, what time is the lunch?
• Me: Hi everyone, please see the attached list, people marked in red have told me they aren't coming and I don't know who should be taking their place?
• The head of Postgraduate Programmes: David, have the staff marked in red let you know of any substitutes?
• Me: If you don't come and empty your boxes by the end of the week we'll do it for you!
• Them (two months later): I am dismayed to hear that anything has been removed. Who authorises anyone, other than the module leaders, to do this?

A student gives me SEVEN DAYS to retrieve her certificate, which was signed for by someone at an address which is apparently now empty. I changed my address online, she says - only for some inexplicable reason she put it down as a placement address, so naturally I assume that HOME would be best. I have given out her Personal Information to a stranger. She has emails to prove that we said it was all okay. She sends us the emails:

• Us (8/05): Can you confirm what date you will be moving?
• Her (8/05): I will be leaving my current home address ([...]) on 29th May...
• Us (21/05): Please be advised that I will be unable to update your student records, until the actual date that you move in to your new address. It would be ADVISABLE FOR YOU TO UPDATE YOUR HOME DETAILS ONLINE.
• Her: Okay, can you update my address?
• Us: ...

There is nothing after this, but I am sure that the highly paid solicitors investigating this Traumatic and Important case will question why she replies to an email saying she has to do it online with a request for us to do it, sent to someone who has just said they are going on holiday? And how is this proof that we said it was all okay? Why does it even matter - I narrowly manage to stop myself going door to door to get it back... I have SEVEN DAYS to PREVENT FURTHER ACTION.

I suppose the small point I am making is that this is really all I have to deal with. Yes, there's rather more incompetence than I can politely deflect, but that is all there is. I was IN CHARGE of coordinating the graduation ceremony for our School², the hard work is done - the programme was written in good time³, all I had left was making lists and hoping that people turn up on the day. Which they did.

Now of course I have to catch up with all the things I put off doing because I was doing Graduation. My job is once again coming to an unsettling time as this maternity cover ends and nobody knows what to do with me, although they all assure me that I'm not going to lose my grade, or my job. My three years here make me one of the three most experienced people in the office, and they are trying to bully me into doing the timetable again because everyone is leaving.

One of our new members of staff puts up a big notice by her computer with the alphabet on it.