I have been away a long time. It has taken all the energy I
have just to get through most days. It is a shame really. But it is the best I
can do right now.
I know this blog was supposed to chronicle my quest for
happiness. Most days, even still, it eludes me.
But I know there are readers out there that work a job they
dislike and are in the same position I am in. Not that my job is bad, it is
very cut and dried – if you can add and subtract – which apparently most young
college students cannot do.
Because math or critical thinking is apparently not taught
in schools anymore, it falls to me to teach these young saplings how to grow
into a tree, how to stretch their limbs to reach for the sky, AND how many leaves
it is going to cost to do so.
It boggles my mind how many stupid questions I receive in a
day. Questions that make me want to yell, “IT
– IS – FIRST – GRADE – MATH!” But I am not allowed to do that, so I meekly
answer the questions like they are not stupid and simple at all in order to
keep this job that makes my blood pressure skyrocket.
On top of the stupid, there is a constant barrage of the attitude from these saplings. They come
at us with an immediate attitude that if something is wrong with their student account
it is OUR fault – not theirs
because THEY couldn’t have possibly
done anything wrong or misunderstood any information or added and subtracted erroneously. The arrogance we get from
some of these young sprouts makes me wonder if their parents were nonexistent, chewed
down by beavers, home to squirrels, or if they were raised by the Hell’s Angels.
WTH.
It boggles my mind.
Some persistent
unkind students call with the same complaint, excuse, argument, or grievance
each semester. They are the ones that really make me wish that I could say what
I really think; the ones that are repeatedly sure that every semester we have
done something horrible to them by actually charging them tuition and fees with
the expectation that they actually have to PAY
for college. How dare we! We must be
monsters!
One particularly pernicious student comes to mind lately. A
student that does not think he has to follow the rules, does not have to do
what he says he will do, does not to pay, and then blames US for reminders that his account
balance is past due. Because of this behavior he routinely has a hold on his account and cannot register for
an upcoming semester.
After he was nasty to my office repeatedly, he then felt the
need to expel his nastiness to another employee, charging and blaming us for
all kinds of wrong doing and mistreatment.
But you see, sometimes the student picks the wrong person to
spew their lies to. Ahhhh, I love it when this happens. Such was the case for
this one student. He sent his rant to a friend of mine. One that knew his 5
points of grievances/errors diatribe about what he perceived we had done to
him – was not even remotely true.
So she emailed me to ask what to say to him, and she
included his original email at the bottom just so I could see how venomous he was. I could not believe the shit he was
slinging. We had tried to help him at every turn – yet he did nothing because
he believed WE should fix HIS errors.
I wanted so badly to respond to the student with what I thought via our email server about how he really needed to calm the hell down and quit being an jerk, but I could not as I think Big Brother Is Watching Us, so I sent my friend a text. A text that answered all his one liners for how inept he thought we were. It is below:
1. This student and his father are ASSHATS.
2. His
remark about no one picking up a telephone in my office is a lie. I bet if he
got the voicemail - IT WAS BECAUSE WE WERE ALREADY ON THE PHONE – and I bet he didn't leave a
message just so he could complain that he can't ever get a hold of us –
because he is an ASSHAT!
3. His
remark about ‘they were supposed to fix it last week’ is another fabrication an
ASSHAT would tell.
4. HE screwed up his college prepaid plan
by choosing the wrong plan and then also became delinquent on payments to that
plan – so they would not pay us. He
was notified MULTIPLE times over the course of 3 months but did not FIX that error until about 3 weeks ago
when he found out he couldn’t register. His dad called and cussed out Lois
(name changed to protect victimized), saying we did not do our job, when what
was wrong was their own damn fault – another sign of being a total ASSHAT.
5. I
received the corrected college prepaid payment today and posted it to his
account and took his holds off (because there were MULTIPLE holds on his account – brought on by being an irresponsible
ASSHAT)
6. There wasn’t a 6th point from the
student but I have to say – just ASSHAT!
WOW! Boy that felt good to get off my chest!
Asshat became the word of the day that day....
