I hear that March 28 will be your last day. Why are you retiring now?
I’d like to say that my work here is done but I actually still have no idea what I’m doing. Let’s just say, I’m old.
You’ve been working for forty years. You must have done a million different things during your long career. I know it wouldn’t be possible to name them all …
No problem. I started in 1973 doing registration processing at UR. Then I scheduled classrooms at MCC, did grading and created final exams.
And …
That’s it. That’s all I’ve done for forty years … register, grade, schedule.
Yikes. Well, you’ve been at MCC for 21 years. You must have seen a lot fantastic changes. Can you tell us a few highlights?
Buildings 11 and 12 used to be called North and South. We used to have a MAC computer lab in building 11. The 9A rooms were temporary when they were built 15 years ago. I used to be able to get through the day without taking Advil.
That’s it?
You said you just wanted the highlights.
I assume you’ve accomplished a lot. You’ve been here over 20 years. Are there things you would still like to accomplish before you leave?
Several. I’ve always wanted to run around campus after dark and toilet paper faculty offices. I’d love to schedule every single class on the master schedule in 9A-101. I’d like to tell people I made a room change for them but not actually do it. Wait, I have done that. We can check that off the list. Likewise with writing offensive Trib articles. I guess that’s it then.
Have you accomplished anything in your life outside the office?
No.
You have children. Surely you can take pride in how you raised them.
Not really. They were pretty much born perfect and then they took after their father so once I left the hospital I really didn’t need to do anything else. In retrospect I should have had about a dozen more. Who knew it was so easy?
I did a little research prior to this interview and the majority of people on campus have no idea who you are. Don’t you ever leave your office?
Very rarely. I was on Faculty Senate for three years in the 90’s but I didn’t continue after my term was up.
Why?
All we talked about was changing the academic calendar when we all knew that we had no intention of doing so. Three years of that is about all a person can take. And they stopped serving food.
Do you have a motto you live by?
“If you can’t be a good example perhaps you can serve as a terrible warning.” It’s so much easier to be a terrible warning than a good example.
There can be a lot of turmoil in the Registrar’s Office. Somehow you have to keep track of registrations, records, grades and forms for 18,000 students. It must be chaotic. How do you deal with a staff member who is having a meltdown under the stress?
Simple. I just say, “Is anyone dead?” and stare at them. That helps put it back in perspective.
So you don’t give them any practical advice?
There’s no need. If we don’t have a dead body to get rid of, what’s the big problem? People need to dial down the drama.
What do you plan to do when you retire?
Oh, I’ll be busy.
I‘m going to grocery shop in daylight.
I’m never answering another phone in my life. I may go days without speaking.
I’m going to swear out loud rather than under my breath.
When I go to the bathroom I’m not going to let my husband come in and talk on his cell phone next to me.
If someone calls me and says, “I’m sorry to bother you …” I’m going to scream, “Then don’t,” and hang up on them.
I’m going to stop buying Tops cookies and pretending I made them.
When someone says to me, “Remember when you helped me six years ago when I had psoriasis on the bottoms of my feet?” I’m not going to say, “Of course I do. What do you need?” I bet you can guess what my retirement answer will be.
I’m not going to have to remember if it’s the MWF schedule or TR schedule when timing when I go to the ladies room.
When someone says, “What can I do to thank you?” I’m going to give them a laundry list of my needs. No more, “Oh, I’m just doing my job.” I’m getting rid of that simpering fool.
When I get tired mid-afternoon I won’t have to lie and say, “I’m thinking,” when people see me with my head down on my desk.
When someone gives me Godiva chocolate I won’t have to hide it under a pile of papers so I’m not forced to offer it to anyone.
Girl Scout cookies. Candy bars. Wrapping paper. Greeting cards. Football pools. No More! I will still go in on the mega millions lottery though.
Anything else you’d like to say?
I can’t really think of anything … um … well maybe just one more thing.
Why are there never any orange tootsie roll pops in the bookstore bin? That is the only flavor I like. There are a million cherry ones but never any orange ones. Don’t they deliver orange ones? Are they obsolete? Does someone who works in the bookstore buy them all? Where are they?
Why do people send me room change requests and never tell me what course they are teaching? I have a 3 digit IQ but I’m not the Amazing Kreskin.
And just because my name is the first one on the list of people working in the Registrar’s Office that doesn’t mean that everyone who has any question about anything on campus should call me. I hardly know anything about anything. I’m the very last person anyone should call to get information. I’m Little Miss Not-Know-It-All.
Why is the water temperature in the ladies room violently hot or frigidly cold? I’ve yanked my hands out from under the water so many times I now have a torn rotator cuff. Is it that difficult to regulate the temperature? Apparently so.
Why doesn’t someone install automatic service window openers in the Registrar’s Office? The Student Accounts Office just pushes a button and their service windows open and close. In the Registrar’s Office we have to climb up on the counter carrying a medieval torture instrument to try to wrestle our windows into submission. This is an office of middle-aged women. Unless someone is filming this for YouTube, it’s really not necessary to put us through this twice a day.
Why aren’t there crunchy Cheetos in the Brighton Room? I don’t have time to stop in two places to assemble my lunch. I need one stop shopping. How hard is it to grab a couple bags of Cheetos from the Marketplace and sell them in the Brighton Room? A girl needs her Cheetos. Help me out.
I’ve been doing room scheduling for 20 years so I think I’m safe in saying that we have no skyscrapers on campus. Someone needs to tell that to the elevator in building 1. It’s not fooling anyone by taking five minutes to get from floor 4 to floor 2. We can see the numbers---4,3,2. Get a move on. I want to go home.
Does anyone other than me worry about those skeletons in building 7 coming alive at night? I won’t work any overtime. I know those things walk around after dark.
Why did they make the ladies room in building 1 look like the bathroom in a movie theater. When I am in there I’m excited thinking I’m at a movie theater. Then I exit and I’m disappointed and depressed. This happens 30 times a day, 5 days a week. That’s a lot of disappointment for one person to handle. Give us back our institutional bathroom so we have a sense of place when we are at work.
If your motor is running and your windows are rolled up and I’m twenty feet away and your music is hurting my ears, what must it be doing to you? Can I make a noise violation citizen’s arrest?
Why are students wearing shorts in the middle of winter? Do I have to be everyone’s mother? And when you change your shorts please tell your friends to take their pajamas off before they come to school. And pull up their pants. And pull up their blouses.
OK. I have to say it. Whoever drives an SUV and parks in Lot K, for the love of God, park within the lines. I’m not talking about when there is snow on the ground. It’s an accepted free for all then. But when the lot is clear, get out of your car and look. If you can’t see a yellow line on each side of the car, MOVE IT. You’re taking up two parking spaces and it’s driving me insane. INSANE I tell you.
And what’s with the people who pull up to the parking lot gate and just sit there. What are you doing? Either the gate is going to open or it’s not. DO SOMETHING. Are you reading the paper? Putting on makeup? Why aren’t you doing something? Don’t make me get out of my car …
And why doesn’t the license plate reader open the gate for me. I’m still using my key card. I went, in person, to Public Safety to register my license by the deadline and I’m the only person on campus who can’t get the gate to open for them.
While I’m at it, why does the entrance to building 8 have to smell like sulphur? Come on people, this is how I start my day. First I have to fight my way into the parking lot, then I have to curse out the SUV and then I have to walk into building 8 and be attacked by sulphur smell all before 8:00 a.m. My only consolation is that after I retire I’ll never see 8:00 a.m. again in my life.
At this point I considered the interview over and ran away. She was still ranting about something like not getting free refills on diet coke in the Brighton Room anymore.
Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
02/11/2014 |