… 2 maids a’ milkin’ …
I would like to bluntly describe a big problem within the ASUN bureaucracy – they try to care but end up hurting the very people they intend to help. They have sticky notes all around their offices, some even going so far as saying “Goal: visit every club’s meeting at least once”. What an absurd thing to post when they can’t even show up to work on time, let alone getting out of their chairs to go to a club meeting on time. When START was attempting to gather more information about ASUN, we scheduled a meeting with one of them to help us understand how everything worked. What did we receive at this meeting? White lies, dodging questions, scoffing remarks, and an overall attitude of ‘leave me alone to my internet games on my office computer’. How do they expect anyone to try and become more involved with them when we go to to them and get treated with snarky remarks, scowling looks, and an appearance that we are nothing more than a nuisance to them? It’s like a Las Vegas DMV on a more vindictive, personal level.
Am I trying to tell the maids of milkin’ to care more? No. It’s futile. It is futile because nobody cares in the iron cages of a bureaucratic system which is not held accountable by performance measurements. Working in a bureaucracy is an infectious disease which promotes and rewards bad attitudes, tends to spread a sense of entitlement, and is rampant with personal apathy. It ravages the mind as it strips you down into an automaton of rules, regulations, office hours, and pay grades. It strips you of identity and destroys all incentives to perform. Next time you visit one of our many bureaucracies, may it be a DMV, a post office, admissions and records, or the beloved cashier’s office, look at their faces and tell me if they are really happy with their workplace.
What is my practical suggestion to the maids of ASUN? Well obviously you won’t accept my suggestion of doing the student body a service and quitting. What I would recommend, however, is to drop this ridiculous facade of caring. Stop trying to “train” club leaders or hold leadership conferences as if you know something about leadership.
“Bro, grab some leadership.”
Stop trying to indoctrinate us with your “word campaigns”, subject us to your joint visions, and pound us with your diversity initiatives as if one size fits everyone. And, for goodness sakes, stop trying to expand and hire more of yourselves. Why? Because, as our earlier posts have indicated, you are going to fail. You fail so hard, in fact, that you cannot even measure or quantify your failure (leadership conference 2008 anyone?). Instead, embrace something bureaucracies are known to do – administrate. Don’t pretend like you are more than a DMV or a business bureau. Quit trying to expand in areas outside the realm of the roles of any dysfunctional, yet operational administrative agency. Anything more is personally disparaging, insulting, and a major disappointment to those motivated individuals who have been duped into expecting something more from your absurd programs.
