I swear to god the reason my supervisor panicked when he saw my resume up on my screen the other month is because he knows everything will fall apart if I just leave without giving him full notice... no one else listens or thinks in our staff one or two have fully just entered the I don’t care and do as little as possible too
The reason for saying this. Wednesday, one of our grad students sent our new admin staff in the upstairs department her dissertation committee form. Which needs to be forwarded to the grad college for processing.
New admin emailed our joint supervisor with, what do I do with this?
Not a problem. He is in fact correct. (Except I’m on vacation. She emailed me the form with, Craig said these go to you!
I glanced at the form and there’s an external committee member I’ve never seen before. Which means grad college will need his CV. So I email the student and cc admin asking for said CV’s
In email to student, I menation sending all three PDFs in as a packet of sorts. We need the CVS so we can send ALL OF THEM in as a group.
I email admin separately asking her, if the CVS are returned before I’m back for vacation if she can send them and the form (ALL THREE) to Jim over at the grad college, and supply his email.
Jim processed ALL of these forms across the University, so they get added to the bottom of the stack when they come in. Not by dissertation or prelim exam date. The stack wait time is between a month to a month and a half during semester end, even summer semester (now).
I get she’s new. I do. But the instructions are right there in the email you had to open to get Jim’s email to forward those along. That the committee form had to go with the CVS...
So now I still have to fucking pop into my email super quick and slide Jim the committee form so he doesn’t WTF too badly at getting two random CVS...
ᴋᴀᴢɪᴇ
: they won’t learn, but my heart is like, but the student followed the instructions in a timely manner and she shouldn’t be getting punished because our new person can’t follow directions? sometimes I’m too nice, I know
yeah but you're on vacation. they'll never leave you alone on your vacations now because you're setting a precedent that you can and you will fix anything that comes up.
ᴋᴀᴢɪᴇ
: they don’t already. I’ve gotten a call Wednesday and Thursday, apologizing but keeping me on the phone for fifteen minutes because the department head, after being part of the department for years, and DH for almost five years didn’t remember we DO NOT give certificates at the ceremony. So no. They do NOT have to be done by next Friday.
i get that it's nice to feel needed and important and people can't do shit without you but... you'll never get away from that trap now. just saying. lol
Lol that is fair. And true. And as much as it’s nice to have cells of co workers for emergencies, this is the legit problem. Now they call you when you’re off and you never get away. (At least here)
ᴋᴀᴢɪᴇ
: yeah, that disappeared with COVID and work from home a lot, but Craig basically asks for everyone’s personal cells so he can get ahold of you when things happen so everyone ends up having everyone’s personal cells
ɪᴄᴇ ᴛ'ᴍᴇᴇᴛ yᴀ;
: you use teams which helps too. Only IT guy is on teams lol. Most of our convos go “so what are we ordering for lunch today??” On teams
yeah if I get any messages on vacation it's Nikki on Teams apologizing profusely for bothering me but she's super stuck on my reports and they need to be done. it takes me 5 mins tops to help her
at first i felt bad (like many years ago when i still didn't have the guts to set boundaries lol), then people learned that i wasn't available anymore, so they also stopped bothering me hahaha
ᴋᴀᴢɪᴇ
: I will ignore 99% of them. exceptions have been travel-related issues for techs flying out from Brazil over the weekend and Nikki needing a question answered because I've been the only other person who can do things.
Nikki is a precious cinnamon roll who has never done anything wrong in her life and I love her. I have no problem helping her off the clock if she's panicking.
oh i do that too! there are few people i'd make exceptions for, but often those are the people too who know they shouldn't bother me and are so apologetic when they do
i got a new boss just lately and i already knew him from before, but i had to go "so i work 8am-4pm and i can stretch to 5pm but i'll come in at 9am. but after that i have to cook, so i'm not coming back until the next day" and the bloke just laughed and said okay lol
but you're not keeping it 9-5. so instead of having time for books and craft things, you run out of it and run out of energy too. it's a vicious cycle lmao
(and honestly, for some people they need to quit the 9-5 to make the other things work, because they'll have no choice but to make it work. and it's worked for others.)
one or two have fully just entered the I don’t care and do as little as possible tooNew admin emailed our joint supervisor with, what do I do with this?
He answered, these go to Liz.
I glanced at the form and there’s an external committee member I’ve never seen before. Which means grad college will need his CV. So I email the student and cc admin asking for said CV’s
I email admin separately asking her, if the CVS are returned before I’m back for vacation if she can send them and the form (ALL THREE) to Jim over at the grad college, and supply his email.
Admin just emailed Jim the CVs...but didn’t include the committee form...
So now I still have to fucking pop into my email super quick and slide Jim the committee form so he doesn’t WTF too badly at getting two random CVS...
sometimes I’m too nice, I knowNo. Wait. I had one faculty reach out when she saw I was available and had a residency question too.