Here at the mailroom, we depend on a lot more external forces to keep ourselves running than we probably should:

1) Instead of just keeping the cashbox back here and not having to worry about it, we have to give it to the cafeteria across the hall for them to put it in their safe. Usually, they don’t give it to us in the morning until we’re able to say, “Hey, there’s a kid here who needs stamps. Seriously give us the cashbox.” This hasn’t been a huge problem in the past because the college used to run the cafeteria. However, this year the cafe was bought out by an external company called Sodexo. You might know of them. If you’ve been to high school or jail, you probably have eaten their food. Anyway, they’re all about the bottom line and unless a select 2 cashiers that have been here for a long time, C and T, are working when we need the cashbox, I’m not comfortable asking any of the Sodexo managers to do it.

2) The package slips that M talked about in an older update, we get those printed from a special department on campus called Print & Copy. Their office is behind the student union in this weird, creepy loading dock. I called in an order for 1,000 more sheets when we had about 75 left. That was on 10/21. The order wasn’t even started until 10/26! So M and I had to create some hand-made package slips and use the copier to make carbon copies, which was a huge waste of time and paper, until yesterday. If the order had gone to print when I asked for it - or even the next day - we would have gotten 1,000 new slips the day before we ran out of old ones! On top of that, they printed out a really old version of our sheets that hold 4 slips per page instead of 5.

3) M is currently visiting family in Idaho (Happy Halloween!), so it’s just me and another guy who are here to work. On Mondays, M usually is working when the mail comes. But since she’s gone and nobody else can do that shift, we have to tell Housing to do it for us! Which sucks, because a) Housing isn’t very reliable, b) neither is the post office, and c) that means that the mail won’t go out until late in the evening when I’m at work. Which means I have to deal with more brats!

In conclusion, we should stop being so dependent!

- N