I’ve been granted permission to be a federal work-study employee this year, which is nice because I have a tendency to spend money like normal people drink water, so it’d be good to have an income.

The day after I turned in my application, I got a call from a woman asking me if I wanted a job in the Student Activities department. Since I was too lazy to actually find something else, I figured I may as well go for it, so I set up an interview for this afternoon.

I started work at 11 this morning to find my boss, Jenna, missing in action. This would not have been a problem, except nobody knew who the hell I was.

I approached the desk and explained to the desk girl, Bianca, that I was working there and was supposed to start at 11.

“Um,” she replied.

Some guy came in a little while ago. He tried to ignore me, but when he realized I was staring at him, he grinned sheepishly and rammed his hand into the wad of condoms in the “Limit: 3 per day” box. He said, “I just need to get me some, you know…” And then he giggled, though I’m not sure if it was because he realized the hilarity of his double entendre, or if it was because he had the emotional maturity of a seven-year-old.

Other than that, nothing interesting has happened.

Since I really have very few interesting things to do at my current place of employment, I spend a lot of time listening to what others are saying. It’s not malicious (necessarily) or snoopy—it’s unavoidable, actually. This is why I’d never make or take a personal phone call in this office. Of course, that point is moot since we have the cell phone reception of a nuclear bomb shelter.

First things first: I did get an iBook, and I am now taking it to work. But it can only connect to a wireless network (and when it does, only barely) when I’m working the front desk. I get no access in the back office. As I’ll explain in a bit, we now have scheduled time at the front desk, and I don’t have much of it. This is a blessing in the sense that I don’t have to deal with any actual people for the majority of my shifts, but a curse for my loyal and devoted fan, because I cannot blog from work.

So, compromise time: I’ll probably draft entries in MS Word from work and post them when I get home. The operative word, though, is “probably.” I got a lot of actual work done today, which was the purpose of investing in a laptop to begin with, and I plan to continue to get a lot of actual work done. Hopefully I won’t be too tired to blog when I get home in the evening.

We’ll see how it works out.

And now, on with the show…

A girl came into the office today. I recognized her as having come in last week, looking for her U-Pass. She recognized me, too. I could tell because she sighed with heavy frustration. I am not the most compassionate employee, and I figured she didn’t particularly want to deal with me yet again.

It was strange, though, because she acted like I should remember everything about her. I did recall her face, and I remembered her name once she told it to me, but it wasn’t all there. Should it have been? They don’t pay me enough to remember people. But she was acting sort of shocked and irritated that I had totally forgotten. Fortunately, her U-Pass was in; if it hadn’t been, I’d wager she would have thrown some form of shit-fit.

I started working the front desk at one o’clock. I was late because I was only supposed to take a half hour for lunch since I start at 10 now instead of 9, and I had shit to do.

Anyway, I got a weak-ass wireless signal and fucked around online for awhile, but then a really loud, intermittent buzzing sound came from the hall.

I had this big, pent-up rant in my head this afternoon. It was gonna be all about how, after overhearing the conversation of a group of yuppie assholes, I realized how people are so dependent on machines they barely have any concept of how to use properly, and how that makes me very, very sad and also reminds me of some bad sci-fi. But I got bored with that concept and moved on.

Ever since I started going to Columbia, I’ve been leaving VoiceMail messages in the virtual boxes of administrators. I have never, to this date, received a response to any of those messages. I have received responses to in-person complaints, but I’m still waiting for them to return my calls. I always wondered why—it’s so easy to hear the VoiceMail, jot down the pertinent information, and return the call.