Skip The Budgie

The actual ceremonies go pretty well, thankyouverymuch. During the events - of which there are three - I actually have one of the easiest jobs. I have to catch the prizewinners after they leave the stage and send them up in the correct order at the end to get their prizes. Oh how they laugh at the students who win more than one and I have to get them back in time to go on stage again.

There are a couple of awkward moments as the reader reads out a name that he shouldn't and no-one steps up. The same man panics as he realises he is about to read a boy's name and it is quite clearly a blond girl waiting in line. Eventually he sees me jumping up and down and gesticulating wildly at the student on crutches in the front row, who is now thoroughly confused about whether he should try to stand up or not.

The rest of the time I spend wandering about while people come running up to me in a panic demanding answers. This student is on crutches, so-and-so has disappeared and it starts in two minutes, I'm NOT reading this! Where is the lunch? Not on the list... debtors... they're dead... I battle with the security goons and a girl offers me a fiver for getting her a seat. But the bloke in charge said... the Goon splutters. I AM The Bloke in charge! I say.

All in all it goes surprisingly well, there are comments on how calm everything is this year. My predecessor was somewhat disposed to panic and stress - this is not something I suffer, although I do have nervous butterflies all day. The Dean sends out a congratulatory email and most of the hilarious errors he mentions didn't happen at our event. Except for the Pro Vice-Chancellor knocking a glass of water off the pulpit, but who could prevent that? And the Pro Chancellor getting really upset when our staff kept calling her Pro VICE instead. She punishes us all by giving the most boring speech ever written in the most boring way imaginable.

The night before, I am home at about 8 because everyone else always works to 5pm, don't they? This means that I am sent the final list of registrations at 5, so that someone ELSE can go home on time with the knowledge of a job well done.

Except that she sends me the wrong list.

In fact, she sends the wrong list to the wrong person and goes home, so I have to phone someone else in her office, get them to log in to her machine, find the last thing she was looking at and send that to me.

And then send me the right list after I realise I will be here all night checking things the long way.

In an incredible twist of fate, I encounter someone in the kitchen this morning who is not only using the EXACT SAME cafetiere model as me, but also has the EXACT SAME tasty organic coffee! I worry about parallel universes until three month old minutes take over my life.

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.

The kitchen is crowded. The thing about Geographers, the Academic in front of me is saying, is that they always know where the coffee is! There is polite laughter, murmurs of assent. Presumably builders, architects, surveyors and admin and all the other plebs don't know where the coffee is? Some sort of catch-all small talk that is, as usual, utterly meaningless and merely serves to cover up his embarrassment at being the one holding everybody up?

People ask me how sick people who are sick are. What do they have, is it a cold or flu? Are they okay? When are they coming back? I walk away, mumbling platitudes. I DON'T ask those sorts of questions. I tell myself it is out of respect for other's privacy and it is - sort of - but mostly I just don't care.

It is not a good day. The back wheel of my bike splits, I ride into the back of a car on the way to work and some little pikey on a scooter hurls abuse at me after veering into me on the road. I pray that he gets crushed by a lorry and I can get the GF to not bother anaesthetising him before surgery.

Worst of all, my new colleague who seemed to be doing so well quits out of the blue and doesn't seem to want to talk to us. I'm sure it's nothing I've said - I thought we were getting on quite well. She seems to want to conduct her resignation over email, which seems well dodgy - but you just can't tell, can you? Regardless, this little bombshell means that I am organising the graduation ceremony on my own - at least for a little while - I have to decide whether to have one of the Terrible Temps back for a bit until they find me a suitable replacement.

I get my bike back, I have to endure a little lecture on keeping my brake blocks clean and looking after the front dérailleur and such. It rains and rains and rains.

The rain drums down outside, coming down harder than ever. I'm struggling to concentrate, they've been talking about the same student for half an hour now. Someone who has chronic reasons for not being here, for not doing well. Serious reasons. One of the academics has taught her. He says she is the most disengaged student he has ever taught. She has been here four years.

The argument is about whether we let her off the last few credits and give her a degree (if she wants it), or whether we make her come back next year, even though she can only get a third anyway. This would mean doing a module for a third time. Eventually reason wins over, it's just not fair to make her go through it again, a third is pretty crap anyway - what employer would want her? or rather we just want to be rid of her AND her personal problems...

Another discussion involves whether someone who was charged with rape but let off should be allowed to carry on being a student, and whether we should inform the University. The charges were dropped! Just goes to show the power of suggestion. There is also an ongoing investigation for murder but I'm not supposed to minute this.

All afternoon this goes on, my new member of staff has to sit through it for two days, I tell her she should probably practice writing some minutes too, just to stop her chewing her own arm off. Or at least spend a couple of days eating pies, girls are just TOO skinny these days...

Afterwards, it's all panicking and results and having to shuffle students around and fix disasters that we should have fixed in the summer. I am the one who writes FA and FU next to your name, if they decide that you've failed. There is a long and tedious process of click print tick click check print ok check sign click publish, which should have been over two days ago but the idiotic control freak who is supposed to be doing the signing has booked herself into meetings all day. I am supposed to be at home today, helping the GF to decorate the front room but oh no, I have to come in and wait until I'm allowed to publish.

At 1630 I manage to catch her¹ and she says it's fine for someone else to check them as she won't be doing it tonight. By some miracle I manage not to strangle her there and then and resign myself to being in work past 6 for the fourth day this week.

My little helper feels bad that she has to go home, but she has been very kind and helpful this week. We'll see how she feels after I've left her with the aftermath tomorrow.

They come in thick and fast. The marks fly in, the lecturers look at me questioningly, pleadingly. I point at the red tray, beneath the sign that says INSERT MARKS HERE. Generally it is okay. It is the people who have been here for years that pretend they don't know what's going on that really wind me up. You WERE here in the summer, weren't you? I ask, as someone asks me where he is supposed to sign. It was only a couple of months ago, after all.

I arrange a few exams overseas for some of our students. It is a nightmarish process, primarily because there is no clear directive on what I am supposed to do, let alone how much I am supposed to charge. I talk to the British Councils in Bahrain and Khazkstan, send off the exams, it all goes smoothly... In Bahrain, the student is caught sneaking furtive looks at bits of tissue paper. He begs the invigilators to ignore the incident, but they confiscate them and send them to me. I am only mildly surprised that I am not sent a hand as well.

Three new people start work this week and I'm in charge of two of them, such timing! We struggle to find them things to do, the office is getting more and more organised as we direct them to all the piles of crap we've been ignoring for years. There's stuff lying around from the 90's that we just keep for the hell of it. We are all so busy and you couldn't ask a new person to check people's results! I have two more days of boards starting today, the new girl in my office will be doing this with me next year, but for now it's just me. I have in fact been doing more than half her job since I took over, because we just haven't had anyone we can trust doing it. No-one who is capable of more than one thing at a time, anyway.

A lecturer dies suddenly over the weekend. Rumours of suicide abound, until a heartfelt email goes out from one of his friends. Now we all believe it's just a tragic accident. Too early for jokes, thanks.

Tonight I am going to a gig for the first time in like, forever. It will be awesome, presuming the world doesn't end...

One of our temps quits. There is a some muted rejoicing, although he was going to be replaced by this latest round of interviews anyway. His replacement will be one of our own students, with next to no experience, which is ideal really and hopefully she will be much easier to get along with. Just weird, is all.¹

He quits under a cloud of minor controversy, discovering that I am his boss the moment after he tells me to fsck off! in a jokey sort of way. He quits that same evening in tears (of the crocodile variety I suspect), even though it was taken in the spirit in which it was intended (like I give a fsck). My boss says that she wishes she had set me on him before, we've had to put up with a lot of crap for quite a while now.²

The other annoying temp is coming to the end of his tenure, surprising us all by not causing complete chaos as he is the one who is packing all the exam papers together. A little bit stressed but life goes on... HIS replacement starts on Monday (thank God!) and we might actually have some people who work and care about what they do, rather than talk about films all day or wind me up by just being. Perhaps I am too hopeful?

He is very grumpy today, has been for a while, perhaps it's that I keep asking / telling him to get on and do mundane jobs for me. There is a lot more to his role, but I have been doing most of it for the last few months as he can't cope / be trusted with more than one thing at a time. There is one thing I've been trying to get him to do for weeks, it involves going through a load of boxes, taking out old stuff, putting in new stuff. I suspect that I'll be doing it myself when work finishes because it has to be done by tomorrow.

The string tightens, and frays.

Amazingly, I'm not at all angry. I am in work and I am soaking wet. My trainers squelch when I walk and my jeans have a tell-tale dark tide mark, which is slowly moving down my legs as the water evaporates. I get in to work at 10:30 and all I can think is how ridiculous it all is. I mean farcically ridiculous.

The morning begins innocently enough, I get up with a Plan, to put the last coat of gloss on the kitchen windowsill and go to the bank. The painting goes well and I venture out into the rain on my bike. The task is simple: go to the bank, pay in some money, then buy a paintbrush.

I arrive at the bank. Then I get back on my bike and go home again, to pick up the credit cards one generally requires when visiting the bank. It is raining pretty hard now. When I arrive at work it has been an hour cycling in the pouring rain and I'm pretty wet through.

Never mind I think to myself, At least you had the good sense to wrap your change of clothes in a couple of plastic bags, you'll be nice and dry in no time. Well think again. I first realise something is wrong when, after having thoroughly rung out my socks into the sink, the jeans appear to be a little tight...

Hot Tip for a Rainy Day Number One: DON'T pack your girlfriends jeans to wear at work.

But I am not in the slightest bit angry or annoyed. Perhaps this is part of the whole why isn't Dave panicking thing. But I think that it is a result of years of realising that you just can't get upset about this stuff. There's just no point. In India, we had to wait an entire day for a train. Nobody over there cares, it's all just a big excuse for a party on the platform.

So we all have a good laugh about it, I am offered a skirt to wear, but I prefer to stay in my damp clothes, squelching along the corridors. It brightens up an otherwise dull day, if not for me.

The worst thing about all of this is that we are interviewing this week, to replace our difficult Temp Period and today it is my turn to greet the interviewees and lock them in a little side room for the obligatory admin test. This time the test consists of prioritising a load of random stuff and explaining why.

It is the usual crop of eager, nervous young females.¹ you always think you have to impress everybody with how wonderfully efficient you are and ask lots of questions, even of the person escorting you up the stairs. I'm probably the wrong sort of person for that particular job, wet or no. I mean, I just don't really care about your journey in, where you live, how precise and punctual you are.

I am beginning to smell. So first impressions last hey?

Somehow I find myself lumbered with the impressively tedious task of providing references for students. It is a job that seems to have been tagged on to the role, more of a Well they've always done it, than it actually having any relevance to anything else I do. So I look up students, demand signatures, write brief unrevealing letters and palm as many off onto absent academics as I am allowed.

I don't do character assassinations, only dates and awards - I am only admin after all and can't be expected to know them all personally¹. Usually this is all that's required, they are usually temp agencies. Occasionally there are some corkers. I receive a call from an agency, who are disappointed to learn that I have told them that a student has withdrawn after 2 years without getting anything. He essentially failed first year and didn't turn up for second year. But we have a certificate here, saying he got a 2:1 they assure me. Naturally I am interested to learn how someone manages to get a 2:1 when they failed after year 2, so I ask for a copy.

The 'certificate' is on headed paper, sure. It has our fancy certificate logo on it, certainly. There is a bit of formal wording saying that the Academic and Administrative Staff are please to commend the award of... (as if the admin staff care), which bears no resemblance whatsoever with any genuine certificates. The crowning glory of the forgery is the signature of our current Vice Chancellor (circa 2008), poorly copied and dated 2005. Someone is now in a lot of trouble.

British Airways are at great pains to point out that they will hold me legally responsible if it turns out I get a date slightly wrong:

A student applies for a job with a hippy-hating security company:

Lastly, to entertain oneself during those long hours at work, why not hide in the loos until you hear some important people having a conversation outside,² then flush, step out and with great deliberation place the CAUTION: Wet Floor sign outside. Take photos of their faces.

I take a well-earned holiday during which I manage to finish off our dining room and paint the extension. It DOES count as a holiday, because I am not running around panicking and being at work until 9pm trying to get the little bastards’ results out on time.

That’s all over now.

I return to the usual piles of paper work and hundreds of emails inviting me to this retirement party and that pile of cakes in the kitchen. One of the good temps has moved out of my office and one of the bad temps has moved in. At least there will be plenty of entertainment as I slowly pick apart his misplaced confidence and try to teach him how human beings are supposed to behave.¹

Towards the end, there are hysterics and tears and tempers soar. After we surface and realise that nobody actually died my boss says that she is very pleased with my efforts and that I have really borne out her confidence that I could do the job. Aww. So pleased in fact, that they are considering swapping me into doing enrollment in September because I’m so laid back about everything – there is no pay rise for this you understand, just a satisfied feeling that I (probably) won’t have to worry about resit exam boards.

The big boss tells me I should take up bell ringing, which is incidentally where she buggers off to on Thursday night while the rest of us scream bloody murder in her absence.²

Today I am required to produce a detailed statistical report³ on all the students we have had this year. How many were under five, black, blue green, you know the score. Normally this takes me about two weeks. Normally I’m not asked to do it when there are 50 employers screaming at me for references and 500 students after certificates and a nice stack of minutes to write. Normally I say it’ll take two weeks and then play on the internet.

That’s all over now, too.

I do it in one day. Next week, I will probably have to do it again, but I might just get away with it so I figure it’s worth the gamble.

A complaint wings its way across the office. The foolish temp who was filling in before I took on my current job (see this story for more details) is still receiving emails and forwarding them to me. This is a Good Thing and yet it reminds us of what an insufferable idiot the man is, and how bitter and twisted people can become for no apparent reason. He isn't in the meeting this morning. He writes:

Due to some nonsensical management in the faculty I don't work for [them] any more, you need to talk to [dash] (who now has my old job) about this, if you can prise him away from Facebook and Module timetabling

So naturally I demand a Court Marshall, how dare he besmirch my Good Name? I am only on Facebook at lunchtimes these days!

Out of the kindness of my heart I visit an Exam Officers' Meeting, in which the exploits of our students over the recent exam period are celebrated. We have more incidents of insolence, cheating and mobile phone rings than ever before. Calculators are too clever these days and one of the invigilators is assaulted by a student who refuses to put his pen down when the exam is over. Students are caught in the toilets with crib sheets or on the phone and they are aggressive and upset when challenged.

Is it that cool to cheat so much? Are you so addicted to your iPods and mobile phones that you don't 'understand' when or why you're asked to switch them off? Yes, someone even hid his headphone wire inside one of his dreadlocks and his iPod inside a big hat! Are you really that selfish and or stupid?

I am 13. I am sitting a history exam about which I know nothing. I need a poo about half an hour in. Does the teacher let me go? You should have gone before he says as he puts me on Punishment Squad for distracting the other kids with my squirming. I swear my bowel could have ruptured and he would still have punished me. One of the other students writes the story of WWII as if it were a football match, with the countries being the players. Or so he claims.

The highest mark in the year is 17% and this is a Public School.

We suggest having a bucket of water by the door for your phones, or perhaps a magnetic field round the door that nukes them anyway. We suggest providing calculators so that no-one brings any of them Pocket PC thingies. We decide that it is cheating to have a scribe that speaks German for your German exam. We think that perhaps students should be taught bladder control, tie a knot in it for goodness sake, are you that pathetic?

Ah society, how we lament thee.