tgiao?

My job is not that hard. There are some organizational issues which end up making more work for everyone, but providing it gets shared fully among the people whose slack caused the extra work, it's not so bad. There have been I think two days that I've been annoyed by this, and on both days I was feeling shitty enough physically to have it impact my mood and general outlook.

Our boss is kind of hands off, assuming we'll all self organize into a more or less efficient system. What makes for problems is that the system which academics naturally self organize into when confronted with tasks like those at this job (e.g. filing, organizing paperwork, tracking down administrative details) is not a more or less efficient one. For that goal to be achieved, someone has to take on the job of herding, coaching, cajoling, or whatever. It's a largely thankless, rarely respected, and much maligned job and so I can't blame my boss for avoiding it somewhat. And perhaps it has worked out in the past, however I think a few factors conspired against a more efficient outcome this year. One is that we had a shitload of students accept admission this year. Another is that the office was down a program assistant. That would be one of the people who would at least peripherally herd. And a final factor is that the staff consists of a lot of new people who didn't come in with a good idea of what needed doing or the best way to do it.

Anyhow, aside from the extra work we sometimes make for ourselves due to our tendency to self organize into a mini-goat screw, it's a decent job. I like it ok and I thought my coworkers did too. It has nice hours aside from being up early but I thought lots of people were early risers. Several of my coworkers have told me they are up and out by 7 most days even when they are not working here. There are reasonably decent people to work with, e.g., there is not a single person who is chronically tweeking or zombified, who is angry all the time, or who is all up in your face with whatever ("let's have a birthday party!!!"). Everyone says "good morning" and usually talks to one another if they are in the same room.

My coworkers are not disgruntled or maltreated workers. Our work is not physically or emotionally draining. It is not terribly cognitively demanding and while there are challenges and some problems to be solved, we have at our disposal the tools to meet and solve them. Many of us leave quite early most days because we think that although we were hired to work until 4:00, if we are done by 2:30 with whatever routine work we were doing in the afternoon, then 2:30 or very shortly after is quitting time. Sometimes this is true. Either way, we are actually underworking and getting paid for lots of time we aren't even there. Generally, no one gets too uptight about that either. Sometimes something slips through the cracks and it sets of a flurry of catching up and running around later but it's not like anyone gets viciously chastised or ostracized for having ditched out.

And finally, the students we work with (who do tend to make up the larger topic of complaint when any specific complaint is made) rotate through so fast that if there are some not so great ones in the bunch, they are out of your hair quite soon after they start getting on your nerves.

Thus, by all accounts, I'd say this job is a pretty sweet gig. Therefore, it strikes me as odd that over the last week or so, a lot of people have been making statements like "Thank god it's almost over!" While I consistently question what the motivation for this attitude is, I have different overt responses to these statements. Sometimes I try to look and sound agreeable because I know they assume we all share this sense of relief and to indicate otherwise would mean touching on a disclosure moment I'm fairly certain is not considered terribly polite. I sometimes ask "why?" And sometimes, when I'm feeling a little tetchy, I can't stop myself from saying I'm having a hard time feeling psyched about being unemployed. Yeah, gotta work on that.

Anyhow, I've decided that this "thank god it's almost over" attitude is similar to the "you don't have to be crazy to work here... but it helps!" type of comment/attitude which is repeated without much thought about whether a job or place of work really is all that nutty/rough/busy/hard/etc. This line of thought naturally called to mind Maria Bamford's "Crazy Office" routine, which I present below for your viewing pleasure.