The Venting Thread

[Puget]

How would a .5 section release even work?  You teach the class only an hour and a half a week?  You give (or grade) only half as many assignments?  You teach the class for only half the semester?  Maybe it's usually a lab course, but this time you don't do the labs?

It means you don't teach a class--so unless you find another admin task worth .5 (or two at .25, which is more common), you've accepted a salary reduction to 7.5 (we're all paid by thte course...). You're also not allowed to overload except in emergencies...

In practice, it means you teach 7 from September-June, then teach one in July-Aust (since, inexplicably, those count as half a section). So, in tthe end, you just end up not having actually been released from anything.


Incidentally, any honours student you supervise (which is rare, since we offer virttually no majors) counts for 0.025 of a section. But again, you can't overload. So even a single student means a pay cut of between one and half a section, depending on your July/August assignments.

This is. . .insane. They should at least let you bank them until they add up to a full course release.

[lightning]

My own vent for today:  There's evidently a certain amount of year-end housecleaning going on around town.  Today we've received two quite substantial used book donations.  We accept all comers, since we want to encourage people to keep donating.  Some of it is sold in our ongoing Friends of the Library book sale.  Some goes out on the free table outside.  Now and then we have something that we can pass on to schoolteachers or others who might be able to use them. 

Most of it goes (discreetly) into the trash.  It's just too old, worn, outdated, or otherwise of no real use to anybody.  And there's nowhere locally that we can take it to be recycled, although we do recycle not-ancient library discards through our main book wholesaler where possible.  There's just not much we can do with ancient sets of encyclopedias--many of them in any case missing volumes; it's amazing how many have exactly one missing--heaps of old fad diet and money-making books, piles of jacket-less or mutilated popular fiction by authors that few people now living would recognize, outdated news magazines and Sunday school lesson quarterlies, ancient text and reference books, and Readers' Digest Condensed Books. 

So we're used to sorting through lots of chaff to find the occasional grains of wheat.  Now and then, though, we get something that's just incredibly awful.  Today's two big donations included two sets of fifty-year-old encyclopedias, complete with decades' worth of yearbooks, and four boxes filled mostly with forty-year-old magazines.  The boxes were musty and damp and smelly, and the encyclopedias were mostly covered with what I hope was only decades' worth of dust.  Donations that junky feel almost like insults.  I've spent a substantial part of the morning sorting through the junk to see if there was anything in there worth salvaging--there was a tiny bit--and conveying the rest out to the dumpster in between bouts of rainfall.

I appreciate the librarians' effort, expertise, and time that is involved with sorting through donations. My campus library routinely receives donations of books and the ones that make it through the sort-and-purge end up at the book sale, and some of these books are just golden to me (in addition to being really really low-cost). I order books from eBay, too, and I noticed that a lot of the sellers are libraries (and I'm assuming that the books on sale on eBay that are sold by libraries, were donations?).

So, although it is a PITA, Thank YOU!!!!!

[Parasaurolophus]

How would a .5 section release even work?  You teach the class only an hour and a half a week?  You give (or grade) only half as many assignments?  You teach the class for only half the semester?  Maybe it's usually a lab course, but this time you don't do the labs?

It means you don't teach a class--so unless you find another admin task worth .5 (or two at .25, which is more common), you've accepted a salary reduction to 7.5 (we're all paid by thte course...). You're also not allowed to overload except in emergencies...

In practice, it means you teach 7 from September-June, then teach one in July-Aust (since, inexplicably, those count as half a section). So, in tthe end, you just end up not having actually been released from anything.


Incidentally, any honours student you supervise (which is rare, since we offer virttually no majors) counts for 0.025 of a section. But again, you can't overload. So even a single student means a pay cut of between one and half a section, depending on your July/August assignments.

This is. . .insane. They should at least let you bank them until they add up to a full course release.

Yeah... I don't understand what's going on, unless it's a series of efforts to cheat us. Which is possible, given how they treated me over my parental leave.

Banked credit would be nice, save that it would almost certainly amount to no remuneration, ever--we offer so few majors that I doubt you could get fifty supervisions over the entirety of your career.

[apl68]

My own vent for today:  There's evidently a certain amount of year-end housecleaning going on around town.  Today we've received two quite substantial used book donations.  We accept all comers, since we want to encourage people to keep donating.  Some of it is sold in our ongoing Friends of the Library book sale.  Some goes out on the free table outside.  Now and then we have something that we can pass on to schoolteachers or others who might be able to use them. 

Most of it goes (discreetly) into the trash.  It's just too old, worn, outdated, or otherwise of no real use to anybody.  And there's nowhere locally that we can take it to be recycled, although we do recycle not-ancient library discards through our main book wholesaler where possible.  There's just not much we can do with ancient sets of encyclopedias--many of them in any case missing volumes; it's amazing how many have exactly one missing--heaps of old fad diet and money-making books, piles of jacket-less or mutilated popular fiction by authors that few people now living would recognize, outdated news magazines and Sunday school lesson quarterlies, ancient text and reference books, and Readers' Digest Condensed Books. 

So we're used to sorting through lots of chaff to find the occasional grains of wheat.  Now and then, though, we get something that's just incredibly awful.  Today's two big donations included two sets of fifty-year-old encyclopedias, complete with decades' worth of yearbooks, and four boxes filled mostly with forty-year-old magazines.  The boxes were musty and damp and smelly, and the encyclopedias were mostly covered with what I hope was only decades' worth of dust.  Donations that junky feel almost like insults.  I've spent a substantial part of the morning sorting through the junk to see if there was anything in there worth salvaging--there was a tiny bit--and conveying the rest out to the dumpster in between bouts of rainfall.

I appreciate the librarians' effort, expertise, and time that is involved with sorting through donations. My campus library routinely receives donations of books and the ones that make it through the sort-and-purge end up at the book sale, and some of these books are just golden to me (in addition to being really really low-cost). I order books from eBay, too, and I noticed that a lot of the sellers are libraries (and I'm assuming that the books on sale on eBay that are sold by libraries, were donations?).

So, although it is a PITA, Thank YOU!!!!!

Thanks for the appreciation!  We think of it as a public service.  Our Friends sale room is the only book store within an hour's radius of here.  Those donations keep it supplied.  We want to keep them coming.  Last year a former book vendor rep who used to work with us gave us a massive donation of like-new material for younger readers.  We couldn't add all that much to our collection, so we've been encouraging local schoolteachers and librarians to come take what they want.  We still have a good bit left that I'd like to find good homes for.

Just got back a valuation list for a batch of ISBN numbers for weeded materials that we uploaded to our book jobber earlier this week.  Some we can send in for credit in exchange for letting the vendor re-sell them.  Others they'll simply recycle.  Looking forward to having them sorted out and boxed up, so we can get them out of here.

[Puget]

How would a .5 section release even work?  You teach the class only an hour and a half a week?  You give (or grade) only half as many assignments?  You teach the class for only half the semester?  Maybe it's usually a lab course, but this time you don't do the labs?

It means you don't teach a class--so unless you find another admin task worth .5 (or two at .25, which is more common), you've accepted a salary reduction to 7.5 (we're all paid by thte course...). You're also not allowed to overload except in emergencies...

In practice, it means you teach 7 from September-June, then teach one in July-Aust (since, inexplicably, those count as half a section). So, in tthe end, you just end up not having actually been released from anything.


Incidentally, any honours student you supervise (which is rare, since we offer virttually no majors) counts for 0.025 of a section. But again, you can't overload. So even a single student means a pay cut of between one and half a section, depending on your July/August assignments.

This is. . .insane. They should at least let you bank them until they add up to a full course release.

Yeah... I don't understand what's going on, unless it's a series of efforts to cheat us. Which is possible, given how they treated me over my parental leave.

Banked credit would be nice, save that it would almost certainly amount to no remuneration, ever--we offer so few majors that I doubt you could get fifty supervisions over the entirety of your career.

I mean, when someone [university] shows you who they are, believe them. I won't say "look for another job" because I'm sure you either have or have good reasons for not doing so, but your university sure seems to screw you around a lot.

(We get no releases or extra compensation for mentoring (grads or undergrads), but at an R1 that is just considered a major component our jobs, and in the sciences those students are also doing important work for us in the lab,  so that's OK.)

[Langue_doc]

Aaarrrgh!

I've been trying to talk to someone at Verizon Wireless since around 2:45 (it's now 3:23). After several minutes of runaround I got to chat with someone at Verizon Fios, who then transferred me to a wireless representative. It took quite some time to explain that my verizon wireless account automatically brought me to the Fios account and that trying to get someone live was a fruitless endeavor. After several attempts the representative suggested that I go to a wireless store. Well, I went to a store a week ago, and was told that I had to call customer support. Around 3 PM she managed to get things sorted out, with a new password, but then got cut off. I tried the new password, changed the password and the answer to the secret question, and lo and behold,it turned out that I had changed the password and secret question to my Verizon Fios account.

I am now waiting for a representative to call me back. I hope I can stay calm.

[AvidReader]

Aaarrrgh!

I've been trying to talk to someone at Verizon Wireless since around 2:45 (it's now 3:23). After several minutes of runaround I got to chat with someone at Verizon Fios, who then transferred me to a wireless representative. It took quite some time to explain that my verizon wireless account automatically brought me to the Fios account and that trying to get someone live was a fruitless endeavor. After several attempts the representative suggested that I go to a wireless store. Well, I went to a store a week ago, and was told that I had to call customer support. Around 3 PM she managed to get things sorted out, with a new password, but then got cut off. I tried the new password, changed the password and the answer to the secret question, and lo and behold,it turned out that I had changed the password and secret question to my Verizon Fios account.

I am now waiting for a representative to call me back. I hope I can stay calm.

I was an executor for an estate in early 2020. I returned the (Verizon) phone of the deceased to a physical Verizon store, with a copy of the death certificate, and cancelled the account right before all the stores closed for COVID for 10 months. They refused to give me a receipt for the phone as per "company policy." After the return, they lost the phone, re-instated the account, sent a series of ever-crazier bills to the surviving spouse, and eventually sent the whole outstanding amount to a predatory sort-of collection service that hits up the families and friends of deceased people and tries to collect money from them "so as not to dishonor your loved one in death." Amid this deluge of paperwork, I spent over 40 hours on the phone with Verizon representatives, one of whom was eventually able to find the package tracking number for the "lost" phone only AFTER we had been sent to the death collection service. I did track time spent with representatives and am happily confident that I cost Verizon more than twice the value of the phone they lost, even if they pay their representatives only minimum wage (as I assume they do), but neither I nor anyone in my immediate family will ever use Verizon again. I feel your pain and am so sorry.

AR.

[Langue_doc]

Update on Verizon--the representative who called was, once again, from Verizon Fios, who before connecting me to a wireless representative told me that the reason for my wireless account getting transferred to the Fios one was that my username was an acceptable one for the latter, but not for the former which needed me to use my cell number as the username. Not so, as I discovered when talking with the wireless representative, who was exceptionally helpful. In the middle of the phone call (on my landline) in addition to the texts from Verizon during the call I got another text asking me to complete a survey which I thought was surprising. It turned out the survey was for the previous representative--we had a good laugh at the idea of providing feedback on someone who was in the middle of helping me.

AR, that's quite a story. I hope you reported them to whoever is in charge of communications.

[apl68]

Things that have gone wrong in our building's systems at work in the past five days:

HVAC system malfunctions

Unreliable local telephone lines

Burglar alarms going off in the middle of the day for no apparent reason

Fire alarm going off in the middle of the day for no apparent reason (The fire trucks came and everything)

Security camera system screen acting like it's about to go out

Toilet stopped up in the public men's restroom


I fixed that last problem myself with a plumber's helper plunger and some elbow grease.  Now trying to get relevant technicians to fix the other problems.  Most of these problems manifested themselves in a single day!  Today has been pretty quiet so far.

[downer]

I had 22 students in my class due to start on Monday. Then the registrar removed the students who were not eligible to be taking the class, which left 9 students.

I'm quite pleased, though I will be annoyed if they now cancel the class. I am struck that this culling indicates a failure of advisement or enrollment planning of epic proportions. I'm always a bit surprised that this school hasn't closed down.

[apl68]

How in the world did 13 ineligible students end up signing on for one class?

[downer]

How in the world did 13 ineligible students end up signing on for one class?

Good question. And this seems to happen every year. One might begin to suspect that someone in charge is not very competent.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I had 22 students in my class due to start on Monday. Then the registrar removed the students who were not eligible to be taking the class, which left 9 students.

I'm quite pleased, though I will be annoyed if they now cancel the class. I am struck that this culling indicates a failure of advisement or enrollment planning of epic proportions. I'm always a bit surprised that this school hasn't closed down.

Do we work in the same place?

[marshwiggle]

How in the world did 13 ineligible students end up signing on for one class?

Good question. And this seems to happen every year. One might begin to suspect that someone in charge is not very competent.

Many years ago I had the same question. It turned out that, (at that time anyway), Marsh U only checked when students applied to graduate  to see that all for of their courses they had the required prerequisites.

Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds.

[Puget]

How in the world did 13 ineligible students end up signing on for one class?

Good question. And this seems to happen every year. One might begin to suspect that someone in charge is not very competent.

Many years ago I had the same question. It turned out that, (at that time anyway), Marsh U only checked when students applied to graduate  to see that all for of their courses they had the required prerequisites.

Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds.

Wow, as much as I hate Workday Student, at least it won't let them enroll if they don't have the prerequisites.