My Career Paradigm

This blog entry is really going to be just one long whine, so I'm warning any person unfortunate enough to come along its words not to read them. Okay, you've been warned.

I work at The Ohio State University. I started my employment there in 1974. I have always worked in the University Mail Department. We collect inter-campus mail, sort it, then redistribute it across the campus. In 1974 there was no email, consequently we were the communication hub of the university. Every morning five mail carriers would invade with a vengeance the university's approximately 120 buildings; hurriedly collecting the inter-campus mail. They would then return to headquarters where we would rapidly sort the mail for redelivery that same day. It could be argued that other than the university's various hospital departments, and the university police, we were the most important non-academic department at the university. More important than the landscaping or maintenance departments.

Things have changed. There were buildings that would receive several thousand inter-campus letters, flyers, etc., every day. That was once upon a time. Those same buildings now receive a few dozen. We have been murdered by the advent of email. This is not a new thing. We've been limping along for at least a decade. For ten years it has looked as if the higher-ups could close down our department at anytime. But that is not my complaint. My whining really starts now.

The guys I work with these days know our department is unimportant. Those in charge know the same thing, consequently the department is often assigned inferior employees when job openings arise. We no longer have a supervisor in our work area. Add these factors together and you end up with a lot of ugliness.

One day one of our delivery guys had a box weighing a few pounds to be delivered that day on his route. That guy was scheduled to take a vacation day the following day. I watched him pickup the box and evaluate its weight. He placed the box back on the counter and for a few seconds he just eyed it as his mind contemplated. Finally he muttered aloud, "I'm going to let this package wait until tomorrow's delivery."

I heard myself instantly bark, "No, you're delivering it today."

My uninspired coworker mumbled back, "It can go tomorrow. It doesn't make any difference whether it is today or tomorrow."

"Take it today," I ordered.

Just to be clear, I am a semi-retired, non supervisory, part time employee. But I guess even nobodies can get fed up.

To be fair, genuinely good employees treat the department with abject disrespect too. One afternoon there was inter-campus mail to be sorted but instead of doing that work, one of the truly hard working guys was sweeping the floor in the hallway. The hallway floor had a higher priority than did the mail.

This is hard for me to take; thus, this blog entry. What I find curious is that I should care enough for it to occasionally get my blood boiling. As I have said; the department clearly does not have high status, and I have never been a career-oriented guy. My self-worth, what there is of it, I have always gotten from other aspects of life. Still, shirking assigned duties can get me riled.

The good news is that I cannot go on much longer. This pain will soon end. I have been financially able to fully retire for a long time. I'm at the point where I no longer feel like setting the alarm at 6 AM without good reason. And of course the department itself is on its last legs. Still, I fall into distress with what my eyes behold. I have been victimized by a paradigm shift via technology. I might as well be assembling 8-track tape players alongside slipshod coworkers. Actually, that might be rather amusing.