The Venting Thread

[apl68]

Do other folks have totally incompetent people running their campus bookstore, or is it just us? I just found out today- from a student, that the bookstore lists NO books for one of my Fall courses. For one of the books, we are using (first time) one of these inclusive access deals, so I thought that might be why. But they should still have the listing for print custom lab manual that can ONLY be bought at the bookstore.
   But no! A later student email reveals that the inclusive access site says that my students are not enrolled in an eligible course. This after multiple emails from the bookstore about how it was all set up and what instructions to give the students.
    Now I would be more forgiving, if I don't have some sort of issue of this type with he bookstore EVERY semester. They seem incapable of ordering the correct books, or enough of them, and then seem shocked when there are issues.  And these same people have worked at the bookstore for several years now, so it's not due to turnover.

I really wish we could dump them as a whole. I just don't see what benefit the Uni gets from having them. An amazon outlet would have lower markup and better customer service.

Around the turn of the century, professors at the university where I used to work compared notes and found out that they weren't all just unlucky.  Ordering glitches for textbooks at the campus bookstore had become the norm, not the exception.  I forget the percentage reported in the news.  It was definitely over half of all courses that semester.  The university responded by taking textbook ordering out of the hands of the bookstore's staff and outsourcing it to some specialty outfit.  The bookstore staff had done themselves right out of a job!

I don't recall any follow-up regarding how well the outsourcers handled book orders after that.

[mamselle]

I've had interactions with three college bookstores.

1. I worked at one for six years in various departments, starting out with student books (after a year there, I took positions in other parts of the store, which was really like a small department store, but we all, always, were aware of book sale season). I was very impressed with the thoroughness of the buyers, who (despite pressures to keep costs down and last-minute submissions by very entitled professors) managed to have books on the shelves for nearly all classes by a week before the opening of the school.

Because the instructors ordered all the cool new books to teach from, researchers in the area would come and buy student books there, too....so we always had to get as much as 30% overage to be sure there were enough books for the students....

2. At another school where I taught, a seminary, the state Bible Society ran the bookstore. It was tiny, and it was fine.

3. At another, I was hired to adjunct a week before classes started one year, and the day before they started, the next. (In both cases, someone apparently resigned at the last moment...)

In the first instance, I was told the books had already been ordered--turned out they had not. I put the order in the second day I was hired, and they took two weeks to arrive. I didn't even have a book myself; fortunately the publishing company put the first chapter online as a "show-and-tell" for professors and I got to use that.

I was also observed that first week, and was dinged for not making assignments from the book for the week's classes. I refused to sign the assessment, instead adding my rebuttal, that no-one, including me, had any books, and signed that. I heard nothing more about it.

In the second instance, the next year (they hired me back, so it must have been OK), the books were indeed on order--but they'd changed which book was to be used and hadn't told me, so I had to re-do my whole syllabus. But again, that wasn't the bookstore's fault--it was the department office's misstep.

(At two other schools, they appeared to have phased out the bookstores and students apparently ordered all their books online. I had no interactions with them at all; I don't recall any major student )

I don't know what the exact solution would be, but the current tendency to hire new kids as buyers (and pay them very little) would be the first problem I would look at. The highly functional buyers I knew at the first store were year-round workers who'd been there a long time, valued their jobs, and were good at them. The third school actually had a pretty good buying team, too, and I believe they were full/time as well.

The reps I met were uniformly new to the work, young, and changing year-to-year as if there were a revolving door on their offices. They often seemed overwhelmed, more in need of chasing orders (and, really, commissions) than filling them, and clueless as to how to make it all work. They might also be repping for more than one company, unethical as that sounds, and just couldn't do the juggling required to keep it all ticking over.

Those are the weak links I'd look at. Good, longstanding book buyers can read the professor's minds from Capri to California and have their orders in by Christmas for next June (and usually did). Part-time kids not so much. And musical-chairs reps are a serious problem everywhere.

M.

[mythbuster]

Well, we half fixed the problem. The bookstore website now at least lists the appropriate books. One of them is out of stock, but this is because of the e-book inclusive access deal they supposedly set up. The manager is now looking into why none of my students are able to access the "inclusive access" site to purchase that. Right now the inclusive part just makes me laugh.
   I think it really helped that I sicced the Pearson rep on the bookstore the moment we had an issue. The last Pearson rep got fired for interfering with bookstore orders out of my department. I actually has the head poo-bah for the entire Eastern seaboard Pearson sales team in my office last Fall, to make sure we were happy and they picked a new rep who would work well with our department. I actually enjoyed making them sweat a bit. So our new rep is VERY hop-to to fix these type of issues, at least for the moment.

[mamselle]

Oh. Pearson.

M.

[AmLitHist]

IMHE, the only one worse than Pearson is Cengage.  I refuse to deal with either of them.

[mamselle]

Yep.

My gripe for the day:

I woke up to see a bright, shiny screen on my laptop, proudly proclaiming that it was all ready to download the "new" EDGE and wasn't I just ready and waiting for that to make my day??

Nope.

In fact, I realized it feels like an extension of rape culture, to be told you "should" want something you don't want, just because someone else wants you to have it and has projected their desire on you.

AND it is consistent with the followthrough required that I must now take MY time to figure out how to get this unwanted file OUT OF MY COMPUTER'S HARD DRIVE and OUT OF MY LIFE.

And they will make it harder to do than to just go along with what they want (at least in the short term) while I know what kinds of grief (overuse of memory, heating up computer, etc.) will result if I just go along, "lay back and take it," etc. (I did go through to remove it the first time, but it's more complicated now....they're more desperate to be wanted, loved, and paid...yuk.)

So...Very, very displeased.

And disgusted.

And underneath it all, feeling violated.

Whatever 'they' may think, I didn't "ask for" this.

No means no.

M.

[histchick]

Classes.  On campus.  Ugh. 

[mamselle]

Oh, no!

Sorry....very sorry.

M.

[histchick]

Oh, no!

Sorry....very sorry.

M.

Thanks, mamselle.  I have health accommodations, as does my spouse, but it still requires an on-campus component.  We're in a serious hot spot right now, and faculty and staff morale is lower than I've seen it in some time.  Our system runs things in such a way that individual institutions can't go virtual even if they wanted to, and the governor seems bound and determined to ride this wave. 

First day was bad.  Not so much the masks, even though that was weird.  It was the having to remind students that they needed to stay more than six feet away from me, and knowing that the virus can go farther than that. 

But "we're open!" And we're constantly reminded that layoffs might have been on the table if we were virtual this semester.  You know what?  I would rather be laid off and keep my family from paying health care bills out the wazoo and dealing with the physical long-term ramifications of this thing if either or both of us get it. 

Further, I am tired of the administrators who keep telling us that they care about us and our students. I don't doubt that they do, but if they can't do anything to help, then just shut up and leave me alone. 

[the_geneticist]

Dear parental units,
I do not have "summers off".  I do not have a "summer break".  I have a full-time, 12-month, yes-that-means-summers-too JOB.
No, I do not have plans to travel/vacation/camp/road-trip. 
Why?
1) JOB 2) Pandemic 3) my state is on fire 4) I have to get ready for Fall classes

[apl68]

The glacial test of getting back test results has been hitting home locally.  They're taking at least a week around here.  We have a staff member who seems to have recovered from COVID-19 whose return to work is being held up by the delay in getting a (we anticipate) negative test result.

[ab_grp]

Hello.  It's a small vent in comparison, but I think I just discovered that I may have neglected to copy some files to take with me when I left my previous position.  Files that I need to complete the revisions on my journal article.  Totally forgot those would go away when I left, so the co-authors I shared the folder with won't have access.  I am still hoping I have at least some of them somewhere.  F^%&^%*^ OneDrive.  My fault.  I can probably recreate, but good grief.   At least they are not data, but I also don't have journal database access anymore, and I don't have some summary files we put together a long time back.  I am going to go have some wine now.   Watch out for shared folders owned by others (or just don't be as dumb as me when you are the other).

[mamselle]

Did you ever email the files to anyone (or yourself, to print, or something?)

That's saved me a few times when my XHDD has gone mysteriously kaput (so, same sort of result).

Time travel is always so tempting then, too....

Hope you find a work-around.

M.

[AmLitHist]

Yesterday was the first day of mandatory Service Week online meetings.  Clearly a faculty group of MA, MS, and PhD holders are incapable of understanding that everyone should wear a mask and wash their hands--that's why every meeting involved repeated exhortations about it.  (Seriously:  in the chancellor's opening, which lasted an hour, I counted and stopped after I reached 45 mentions in the first 40 minutes.)

Other assorted lunacies:  our union has filed two "class action" grievances, one against the requirement for all faculty to use Courses of Record in all online classes.  (One such COR I'm supposed to use makes zero pedagogical sense:  students can fail every essay and still pass the class on the basis of BS busywork assignments.)  I'm seriously thinking of going rogue and changing the class; the union will back me on academic freedom and "best interests of the students" grounds.  Also, a panel of those who taught "live virtual lecture" classes in spring confirmed my worst fears about the stupidity of being required to do so in all non-F2F sections this fall. Dandy.

One day down, four more to go.  Sigh.   (The bright spot:  I didn't have to use a week of sick time to avoid the meetings as I usually do; I just turn on Collaborate and crochet, surf the web, or do whatever else I want.)  And yes, I know:  at least I still have a job.  SIGH.

[mythbuster]

Well now even our Pearson rep is fed up with the incompetence of our bookstore. Apparently our bookstore is actively sending students emails about how to register for e-books etc that contain the wrong information.
   I just sent my class an announcement abut this. The gist was 1) stay calm 2) yes I'm frustrated too, 3) here are the correct instructions, 4) don't blame me, blame the bookstore.

Of course, many of the students who are having issues are also the type who don't read announcements. I know from experience that this too will pass, but I really just want to kick the bookstore to the curb.