Thursday (yawn!) Three

From Terry, the boring job version of the Thursday Three:

1) What sorts of activities that you have to do in your normal everyday life that are so mind-numbingly boring that you could just scream, if you cared enough?

I’m an accountant – most people would consider my entire job mind-numbingly boring. If I had to pick one thing – updating our student accounting system tuition code records for the split between fiscal years for the summer terms. There are about 100-120 tuition codes, with six summer sessions each. The first and fourth sessions are in one year, the second and fifth in the next, and the third and sixth split between years. It involves copying each record over for the new summer term, and, why yes! It should be a process that our IT department has automated. There are, however, good reasons why it is not. So I spend precious time each February doing enough data entry to put my wrists in splints for a month.

2) Although you might think YOUR boring thing is the most boringestest thing of all, what do you see OTHER people doing around your workplace that causes you to think maybe you don’t have it quite so bad after all?

The clerks in accounts payable – mindlessly entering the stacks of invoices that never stop coming in. You do a ginormous check run and think, “Whew! Mission accomplished!” only to turn around to fresh piles of paper needing processing.

3) Conversely, what sorts of things do you see other people getting to do in their daily tasks that you think would be SO COOL if you could do them?

I’d like to be one of our Facilities Services guys – specifically a general handyman type. You get to do varied tasks, see mostly immediate results, ride around campus in a big ole van and answer peoples’ questions in technical-sounding gobbledy-gook. As much as I would love to be one of the professors, I have a very limited tolerance for the academic game-playing that goes on to some extent at all Universities.