Damn the man

Before I get to the other posts I’ve got lined up in the queue, I wanted to post about what happened yesterday. I was all set to have a relaxing day, do some work and hopefully post to the blog – which I really have been meaning to do for so long.

I began to realize that there were other plans for me as I soon found myself in a bureaucratic nightmare. I really felt like THE MAN was against me all day.

The highlights:

• I went to the other university I’ll be teaching at in the fall to fill out payroll information. Within minutes I realized that I couldn’t fill out the most important form because I didn’t have my passport with me. Of course I wasn’t told that I needed it.

• I came home to make a phone call to the transportation department at my main university because I was never contacted about the parking permit I signed up for over a month ago. I got the voice mail. Why is it so difficult to get humans on the phone anymore?

• I decided to stop by the transportation office in person, which is notoriously one of the offices on campus that is less than friendly. They gave me the run around. They told me that had no record of my original request and that I couldn’t buy a permit until next week because I was a temporary employee. I’m a full-time employee with benefits and monthly payment. They sent me off to my department with paperwork, which would mean I would have to drive to the other side of campus and use the 45 cents I had for a parking meter (which gets me around 20 minutes).

• I raced up to the department to get the paperwork filled out. The HR person was fuming when I told her about transportation. She was already having a bad day and sick of their attitudes. She called them to curse them out about refusing to give me a permit. It always pays to make friends with the HR people and secretaries in your offices!

• I went back to the transportation office, but they still refused to give me my permit with payroll deduction instead of flat payment. I didn’t feel like shelling out $300 for it, but they told me I didn’t qualify for payroll deduction because I’m on a year-to-year contract. I didn’t argue and paid for the thing even though I can’t afford it.

• With one last stop to make, I stopped at the post office to mail three things (2 of which were work related). One was stamped already, but I needed to buy two stamps to mail the others. I stopped at the slot outside the office to drop the stamped one in, but frazzled I dropped the wrong one in. I walked inside to ask for it to be retrieved. The post worker seemed miffed at my request. He rifled around in the bin, pulled a letter out and asked me the name of the addressee. I remembered it partially, but it didn’t satisfy him. I didn’t know the address. He refused to give it to me. Since it will be returned to the return address with an insufficient postage warning, he claimed I’d have to wait. Unfortunately, it’s for the summer job and it will be returned to an address where our office no longer exists.

Like I said: damn the man.

I was so peeved at that point. I came home and waited for TK to come over. We decompressed by eating the tacos I made for dinner, playing a game of Rummikub and watching Harry Potter (the first one) - we've both started reading the books. I should be reading for the classes I'll be teaching in the fall, but sssh about that.