nutshell

This little issue pretty much sums up the difference in efficiency for everyday needs at my old university and the current one. For the current institution, which prides itself on being on the cusp of technological advancement and know-how, there is a fucking hell of a lot of this kind of "management."

One of my classrooms this semester has no table or desk or anything in front for me to spread my crap out while I'm teaching. I only noticed because it's one of the (few - another incongruosity [which I know isn't a word but should be]) smart rooms in our building and it has slightly different equipment than the others so I went in to make sure I could get my mac to work with the projector, etc.

I wrote our main office admin...

"Mary Kate, could you please tell me whom I should contact if my room is missing its instructor table/desk at the front of the room? I would just steal one from a neighboring room but I'm guessing someone in charge of these things would have a problem with that."

The response at my old school for this kind of thing would have been the email for the building manager, and in my 6 years there every time I had similar issues it never took longer than 24 hours for a response from him and usually his crew would rectify the situation before my next class period.

The response from Mary Kate... verbatim:

"If you see one of the facilities ladies, like Linda, you can mention it to her and see what she says." (my emphasis)

What you don't know: Linda is basically one of the cleaning ladies for our building. This is the first I've ever heard of their being in charge of either managing or moving classroom furniture, to say nothing of the fact that the Ladies have no email or anything so on occasion there are issues like this where instead of having anyone to contact one has to simply seek out the Ladies and hope they can be found. (Last time it was that they decided to wax our office in the middle of a week during Summer II last year without checking to see whether any of us were teaching that session. I arrived at 8am for my 9am class expecting to print an exam for that day. Big surprise. In my anger and frustration I said, "Isn't there a way for you guys to warn us about these things or check with office admins first or send out a mass email or something?" One of the Ladies piped up saying, "Well we don't really have email." And why would they, really?! They're CLEANING LADIES. So of course they should be in charge of classroom furniture needs, too, especially as they are so easy to communicate with... gah!!!!!!)

My resolution: I'm heading in early tomorrow to steal a table from a neighboring classroom. If the problem persists I'll go the cleaning lady route.

What century is this again?

Or:

What drugs was the person on who set up these chains of command/responsibility?