Something more substantial, part 1

Monday morning I dragged my grumpy, groggy self to my desk out of duty rather than delighte - my boss moved my hours from 8:30am - 4:30pm Monday through Friday to 7:30am - 5:00pm Monday through Thursday with whatever is left of my necessary hours (one or two at best) to be fulfilled sometime midday on Friday. My roommates find it puzzling that I do not prefer a long, four day work week. I prefer five days a week - I know myself well enough to know I waste more time than I should on a 3 day weekend. A two day weekend is more than adequate unless I have something more extravagant than normal planned - and if I do my schedule was flexible enough to accomodate a four day work week should I choose.

It's not that I mind being at work 9 1/2 hours a day necessarily, but the principle of the thing. In my opinion, there is no need for me to be here that early. My boss is under the assumption that somehow my phone is ringing off the hook and my inbox is jammed with emails on a daily basis and that if I am not sitting at my desk the moment the 8 o'clock class professors walk in the door that there will somehow be a meltdown. I get maybe one voicemail a week, maybe two calls a day. My emails are steady, but not demanding. The problems professors might face at this time of day - technology malfunctions in the classroom, calling in sick - do not get routed to or through me anyway. Not to mention that my commute is now 30% longer each direction because of the higher traffic flow I now travel through. Or that getting ready for work now takes longer because a roommate and I are now heading for the shower at approximately the same time. It's not a simple one hour morning schedule change.

This all sounds very petty, I realize. But my grumbling is deeper-seated than a change in routine. My job, which I so much used to adore, is now boring and tedious - my role as an administrative assistant truncated and trifling, reduced to a mere receptionist. The new chair treats me with less respect and less confidence than I have earned up to this point. And so I seek something more substantial. This unnecessary schedule change is just one more straw on an otherwise already buried camel. My hope now rests on the chair of another college - not a different university, mind you, but a separate department here on the same campus. Additionally, the chair who seeks a new administrative assistant is the self-same best friend of my favorite professor and former chair for whom I so enjoyed coming to work. The new chair has already admitted to me he needs a receptionist not an admin, that there will not be enough to keep me as occupied as last year - which is when I sought so many projects from the Dean and his assistant - both of whom have left the University.

By the end of this week I shall know my fate - trapped in a 35-hour a week job whose work load I could accomplish in about a third of that or the same position where I'd be truly earning my paycheck once more.