Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

A Few Months of Rants (LONG)

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A Few Months of Rants (LONG)

    Hi everyone. I've been saving these for a while, so they're aged and delicious like cheese or something

    Recap: Library computer lab guy at a university (also student at said university)

    1) We have a rule that no one can talk on their cell phones in our library. If you're just talking to someone else in the room, you can be as loud as you like, as long as you're not on your cellphone. Stupid, I know, but not my rule. Nonetheless, everyone tries to get away with it. Instance 1: I'm pushing in some chairs. I turn around and see a student with his cell phone out looking at the circulation desk like he wants to see if any of my coworkers are looking. So I walk over to him and tell him he can't talk on his phone in there. He begins to leave to finish his call outside the library. I turn to push some more chairs in. then I turn back and HE'S WALKING BACK INTO THE LIBRARY STILL ON HIS PHONE. He hung up as soon as I caught him again, but damn... Instance 2: I see someone in the back of the library on their phone and I go and tell him to take his conversation outside. He says OK and I turn and go back to the circ desk. I look back, and instead of heading toward the library's door to leave, he's hiding back in a small corridor near some of our meeting rooms STILL ON THE PHONE. My shift was over and I didn't feel like dealing with it though :/

    2) We keep a color printer behind the circ desk. It's 20 pages per student only and only for academic use. After that it's 10 cents a sheet. This prevents abuse because I swear to god the students at our university murder a tree or more a day on the b/w printers alone. Well, it's not big deal to take a student's usb drive to print in color, but some people just take it for granted. The campus is rather new and the student life office is just getting started, so they constantly send up a guy from the basketball team to get color prints. I have several problems with this: 1: Not an academic usage of our resources. Damnit, sports does not need to take precedence over students that legitimately pay thousands in tuition to use our resources. 2: The paper is almost entirely black and white and it's just a stupid poorly designed damn survey. It would be MUCH cheaper to simply print the survey in B/W on school letterhead than to print the whole thing in color just for the damn logo. 3: The guy always wants 25 sheets and never pays for the extra over 20. I mean, c'mon, student life has a huge budget and since you never do anything I know you guys have extra money to give us. Quit wasting our budget. 4: The guy that comes up is such an arrogant jerk I wish I could punch him.

    3) I'm still a freshman, but because of my computer experience in highschool I have as many credits as most sophomores have. I am also like the only lab tutor who knows MS Excel. As such, every Excel student comes to me for help. One online instructor actually DOESN'T TEACH HIS CLASS THE MATERIAL. So guess what I end up having to do? I spend extra time teaching those students the entire course material. Recently I actually asked if I could teach the class online for the summer since I'm so good at it. I was told I probably wasn't experienced or trained well enough or something. Whatever.

    4) We're required to use this tutoring software that absolutely sucks. It takes longer to log the tutoring than it does to answer some of the questions. It really is better for our tutoring lab than the computer lab. And we can't log the time afterward - we have to have the student log in first, help them, then log out and leave feedback. It just slows things down and pisses the students off. However, as much as I hate it, there are certain students who are just so annoying on a regular basis that I always make them log in no matter what.

    5) Floppy disks are so outdated. WHY DO WE SELL THEM?? Well, apparently there are students whose computers still use them and not USB drives. And apparently the floppy drives in our computers don't like them. I mean, the disks can be read fine, but every time a student uses a floppy disk it gets stuck in the machines. The last one had the metal part get stuck in there and I almost electrocuted myself getting it out.

    I'll probably post some more later when I think of it. I rant so much to my friends that they've all gotten pissed at me and blocked me, so I felt this might be a good venue for my rant. Let me know what you guys think :P
    Library techie by day, web designer by night.
    No time for sleep.

  • #2
    One online instructor actually DOESN'T TEACH HIS CLASS THE MATERIAL. So guess what I end up having to do? I spend extra time teaching those students the entire course material. Recently I actually asked if I could teach the class online for the summer since I'm so good at it. I was told I probably wasn't experienced or trained well enough or something. Whatever.
    You should see if you can get some kind of academic credit for all the extra work you're doing there (maybe some kind of internship-type deal). Or start a side business and make some extra cash...
    I don't go in for ancient wisdom
    I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious
    It means that they're worthy - Tim Minchin, "White Wine in the Sun"

    Comment


    • #3
      Quoth BookstoreEscapee View Post
      You should see if you can get some kind of academic credit for all the extra work you're doing there (maybe some kind of internship-type deal). Or start a side business and make some extra cash...
      Well, it's part of my job to help students with whatever they need to know but don't know, but my boss is cool and there were a couple times she gave me extra hours or let me clock in and help out. The extra hours especially helped this week - I typically work Sundays but we're closed for Easter. (But my family lives 200 miles away and I really wouldn't mind working since students want to come in.)

      And here's another rant:

      We recently started an art exhibit in our library. It's cool and unobtrusive, but the opening was a nightmare. The guests for the opening were loud and pissing students off bad - even the students with headphones couldn't think straight. We ran out of meeting rooms for the students and I had trouble doing my normal job because all of the guests were swarming the food table that they set up right in front of the ONLY EXIT FROM THE CIRCULATION DESK. (Our desk is like a giant C but with a smaller opening.) Not to mention the librarians on duty were having fun while I fielded EVERY QUESTION AND PHONE CALL. Grr.
      Library techie by day, web designer by night.
      No time for sleep.

      Comment


      • #4
        Quoth BookstoreEscapee View Post
        Or start a side business and make some extra cash...
        When we were going through Flash at my college, I swear, more of my classmates came up to me to tell me, "Juwl, I learned so much more about Flash from you than from the professor."
        I joked at one of my classmates after I helped him out. He asked me if he owed me anything, and I told him I take payment in food, usually. He told me he could make pretty good spaghetti. I said that'd be good.
        And then, a few semesters later, he shoved me into a desk one day, just out of the blue. Supposedly, I grabbed his ass. Twice. He never returned after that day, though, so... um... no biggie, I guess...? But both times, he was walking on my bad side. There was no way I could've grabbed his ass without someone else noticing.

        Anyway, my Mom suggested at one point that I should've talked to a professor at the school to see if I couldn't become a Flash tutor or something.
        "I call murder on that!"

        Comment

        Working...
        X