Occupational hazards
Wednesday, 23 July, 2003
Sometimes I think I'm a lot like Wendy who ends up hating her job and wants to move on. Almost every single job I've had has had problems and the problems have made me depressed. (I've come to the conclusion I get situational depression—ie. particular circumstances cause me to feel down; when the circumstances change, then I get better.) Well, maybe that's not true. I've only ever had four jobs in my life—four jobs that are more than just contractual/limited term stuff:
- I worked for four years as a casual retail assistant at Dymocks Miranda. What made me stressed was that I was no good at talking to customers and providing good customer service however the job pushed me to develop those skills so I was much better at it at the end of the four years than I was at the start. What I really loved about the job was the team I worked with; the management was very much “family”-oriented (two of the managers were brothers) and I believe that the feeling of being united became more pervasive amongst the rest of the full-time and casual staff. I was very sad when the managers had to give up the store and sometimes I dream I'm back there;
- I worked for a year in the School of English at the University of New South Wales. The academics were all very nice but could be demanding in their own ways. Sometimes there was conflicts of authority; I knew I was there to obey the orders of the academic staff and the Head of School, but what if the academic staff and the Head of School conflicted? I hated the undercurrent of politics. I also got very depressed about the situation with my fellow administrative assistant and subordinate, who was quite incompetent at what she did. This resulted in me taking on more of her workload. I know that at times I did not handle myself in such a way so that I was above reproach; perhaps I even contributed to the problem because I have a hot temper and hadn't learn to control it then. But I was disappointed at the way everything was handled; she didn't improve and I eventually left the job.
- I worked for a year and a half in the Arts Faculty Office at the University of New South Wales with a great team of people who were a joy to work with. I especially admired my manager who could accept bad situations and difficult people with such grace and poise it made me long to be just like her. Every day as I was leaving she would thank me for what I had done that day. There were no internal politics in my unit and for that I was very thankful; there were plenty of politics outside the unit but they didn't matter because they didn't directly concern me and I could side-step most of them and not put my foot in it. The down side of the job was that we saw the worst of student problems every single day and some of the students could be quite rude. It was sad and difficult when they were aggressive or when they lied to us and we could clearly tell they were lying. In addition, we were working with a very counter-intuitive system which was in its implementation period. I've lost count of the number of students who complained to me about the process they had to go through to enrol online and the number of staff who complained to me about the things they had to do to set up timetables/enter marks/print transcripts on the system. I spent a great deal writing manuals on how to use the silly thing so now it seems quite strange to me that I no longer spend my days looking at it. I had a terrible mix of duties: graduations and timetabling. One or the other would have fine (preferably graduations!) but both was gruelling. Needless to say, I don't miss it.
So now I'm in my fourth job as administrative assistant in CAPSTRANS and I'm been getting upset at work every day of this week. It might be because I'm premenstrual and my hormones are going crazy (I suppose it is a good trade-off from having cramps or period pain [I've never had them]). I've been trying to work out whether the reason I'm depressed about work is because I'm a perfectionist and naturally anything out of perfection upsets me, or whether it really is, objectively, a situation that should “rightly” make me upset. I've come to the conclusion that it's the latter but then perhaps I'm biased because it is this week. Why do I think this?
- When I started my job, I was told by my old supervisor, Margaret, that she wanted me to learn how to do all the financial stuff as back-up but I didn't have to actually do it; Colleen, because she had experience in Personnel and Finance, would do it all. I'm not scared of financials; I've done it before in English and I know roughly how the whole thing works in a university setting. My new supervisor, Susan, is now telling me that she doesn't think it's fair that Colleen is doing everything and that I should take some of the financial stuff on board. Okay, fair enough. Now I'm getting stuff left for me that I don't know how to do so I guess I'm going to have to learn in a hurry. We also haven't quite worked out who is supposed to be doing what so I get the leftovers of what Colleen wasn't able to complete on her two days, whereas the things I think I'm supposed to be doing (the website and the advisory board) I never do because at the moment there is nothing to do for them.
- My new supervisor, Susan, is very nice but also very honest; you can tell when she's frazzled whereas, with Margaret, you also felt like she was on top of things (even if she wasn't in reality). She doesn't like being the go-between for me and Colleen but I guess this problem will be rectified in the meantime. She also has this false impression that I know stuff because I've been there longer than her but really I was only there three weeks before she started and I know nothing.
- The Director is implementing all sorts of changes. Some of the changes involve putting pin codes on the photocopier (I did that this week) and locking the stationery cupboard so the staff have to come to see me or Colleen if they want anything. They are simple enough and I guess the staff will grumble a bit about the inconvenience of having to remember their pin codes but they'll have to live with it. Some of the other changes will affect major things like funding and I'm sure the staff won't be happy about that. Problem is, the Director is getting Susan to inform them of these changes and she doesn't like coming across as being the big “meanie” and thinks that he should take responsibility for letting them know himself. I hate office politics.
- Particular academic staff are difficult, much like in the School of English. There are also conflicts between academic staff and the Director which makes it hard to know what to do since I'm supposed to be obeying both of them. Two of them are not talking about pulling out of a conference that they were registered to attend in Singapore. The cost of cancelling their airfare is half the price of the airfare itself which I think is terribly irresponsible and a terrific waste of money. I feel like telling them so but I don't. One staff changed the time of her postgrad tutorial today without consulting me about the room (I do the bookings for that particular room) and then complained to me about the fact she couldn't have the room because other non-CAPSTRANS people had booked it. I find myself doing a lot of tech support just because I know how to do things and they don't (one of them had no idea how to move files from one folder to another; one of them didn't know that he had to open Microsoft Word to actually type up a document; one of them has no conception of how to use templates). We have a new associate starting with us who wants a room on our floor (fair enough) but he has told me that he won't work on any computer but a PC and I don't think we have any spares.
- Often I have no idea what is going on and then things get dumped in my lap that I'm “supposed” to know about. I assume that Colleen knows about them somehow ... why don't I?
Am I right to get upset about these things? And yet I find these things upsetting. The fluid job description is perhaps the most upsetting as often I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want this job to take over my life because one of the reasons I took it up was so it could free me up to do MTS on the other days. The problems that arise in the job are all because of sin sin sin. I should expect that because of the doctrine of total depravity, right? Maybe I'll feel better about it next week ...
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Issues organised by tale.
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Hey, Karen. I saw your blog mentioned on blogs4God, so I thought I’d drop by to say I’m thinking of you.
Hope you’re having a good day, and feel free to keep in touch!
Thanks Dan! I appreciate you stopping by!
I think you’re right to be upset. From 5.5 years experience in uni administration, at UNSW and UTS, I think the situation of the university environment will upset any administrator who is actually intelligent and academically-inclined enough to be an academic themselves. I have no advice on how to avoid it - which is why I’ve decided to return to full-time study next year and move into another occupation. All I can do is give you my impression of the situation of intelligent administrators, and see if you feel the same.
My experience is slightly different in that I’ve always worked in a central admin unit rather than a faculty. In central admin, apart from having my own supervisor (a more senior administrator), I have connections with particular academics (often associate deans) in the faculties. Although they are not my supervisors, they act as if they are, and expect me to do what they say. I used to just obey, but the pressure of working for 11 different ‘supervisors’ is a bit much. Now I just let them know, quietly but firmly, that I work for the University Graduate School, and not their faculty, so they can ask me to do something for them, but not expect me to respond to them as if I am their admin assistant. (In fact, it’s easier in this position ‘cos I’m the Scholarships Manager, so I have some clout going with the title…not much though!) I guess what I feel is that most academics - no matter where they are from in the uni - believe they are above the administrators, and can tell them what to do. It can become a rather aggressive ‘us against them’ situation (ie. academics vs administrators). Now, as for myself, as someone who is academically inclinded and has some designs on becoming an academic one day (I have done contract work as an academic at UNSW as well as admin work) I am extremely offended when academics treat administrators disrespectfully, as if administrators are a collective class of serfs, and academics are a class of lords (to use an analogy from the feudal mode of production). They seem to act as if administrators are not smart enough to be academics - and as someone who has lectured and is pursuing a PhD, that makes me rather upset. This has happened constantly for the whole of my career in uni admin, so I think it’s part of the system. It’s the thing that makes me most depressed about working in admin - so I’ve decided to get out - as soon as I work out what to do in the medium term! (Of course, to be fair, I should also say that I’ve had working relationships with some fantastic academics at UNSW who knew the value of administration, knew administrators could be highly intelligent, and treated administrators with ‘workplace’ respect - Dr Mary-Lou McLaws (Med), Dr Bill Lawson (Blt Env), Angus Corbett (Law) and Dr Peter Ross (Arts) stand out here! Mary-Lou even gave me a box of chocolates at Christmas to thank me for all the advice I’d given her!) Furthermore, from my experience in central admin at UNSW, it seems that the more intelligent administrators hit a glass ceiling, whereas the stupid ones seem to move into senior management positions - no wonder intelligent administrators get depressed: treated as a second class citizens by academics, and passed over for promotions in the world of administration. Two of my previous immediate supervisors were in this situation.
Anyway, maybe this is just my opinion. I might be perpetuating the situation by subconsciously telling myself I’m too smart to be an administrator, and if I applied myself a bit more I could be an academic. Nevertheless, the whole treatment of administrators in central admin depresses me. Part of the problem is that you don’t develop close working relationships with a group of academics (like in a school), so they tend to think of central admin as a monolithic obstacle to aggressively subdued.
You’re comments on the computer-illiterateness of some academics is very amusing and accurate. But you see, computers are an admin thing, not an academic thing, so why would they bother learning how to do it when they can palm it off to an administrator?
Do you think you feel something similar to this? Not that I’m trying to discourage you from your job. It’s perfect for your situation - it allows you to do MTS on the same campus. I’m just offereing some support and ideas since I’m familiar with the lot of uni admin. Oh, the other thing is that you’re part-time: in my experience part-time administrators are usually p/t in hours but f/t in workload. One of my old supervisors went to p/t from f/t, but her workload increased! Try to make sure they give you the amount of work commensurate with your hours, and not give you f/t responsibilities.
Anyway, I hope this kinda helps…
Thanks Andrew: I did find it helpful! I guess it was just comforting to know that someone else finds it just as frustrating as I do. I think sometimes I end up thinking that the way I feel is my fault and that there’s something wrong with me. I think I’ve gotten that idea from Ben.
I’m not sure what to do from here. I can understand why you’ve wanted to get out! I wonder whether administration in other non-university places is the same. Surely doing admin in a place like Moore College would be completely different. I guess I have to keep putting everything into perspective somehow and stop taking it personally ... develop a thick skin.
I feel good now but it’s because I’ve been away from work for three days. Unfortunately I have to go back tomorrow ...
I once had a boss in England say “You better get this done or I’ll slit your throat!” in a very angry tone.
Good fun
Sounds quite pointy-haired!! I’m glad my boss is not like that.