Caution: Student Workers Working

Caution: Student Employment may be a Near Death Experience

If someone had wanted me dead, they missed a good chance when I was working as a Resident Assistant in the Ellender dorm for Nicholls State University. I was out of my element among these young women for whom this was their first experience of not living under their parent’s roof and watchful eyes.

You need to know that I was a woman in my late thirties, a mother of four children whose ex-husband retained custody (that’s a whole other story), and although I was now divorced, I was a non-traditional student and being a Resident Assistant was the best and only job that I could find that came with housing and a small salary. My new job presented challenges for me that none of the other student Resident Assistants even remotely thought was a problem.

All the RA’s had been in the dorms for the last two weeks doing a lot of the grunt work, which means we were cleaning, painting, rearranging furniture, and checking to make sure that everything that should work did work. Never mind that all the work we were doing was supposed to have been done at the end of the semester that ended before we arrived this semester.

Ellender Dorm was the second tallest building on campus with it being six stories tall; which really would not have been a problem if the elevator worked even half the time. The University decided to buy new mattresses for the entire dorm, and we were expected to haul all the old mattresses out of the building and stack them in the driveway. Did I mention that there were only eleven of them young, strong one's and then me? And did you know that there were at least sixty mattresses on each and every floor of the dorm. Even if the one and only elevator worked it was still not large enough for more than one mattress at a time. Students were not scheduled to arrive for another week, and I was already having serious issues with my job description.

I was amazed at how the other eleven young girls took the news about the mattresses in stride. In reality, I personally am convinced that they had no clue concerning the enormity of the assigned task. I would soon learn that although every one of our personal situations was different, we were all in dire straits, and would have crawled across a football size field, on our hands and knees, covered in any one or a combination of the substances that is seen on those TV reality shows, for this job.

Then Keisha, our Dorm Resident Leader, informed us that the University expected us to finish the Great Mattress Switch in less than twenty-four hours. Of course, we were still expected to make all scheduled training lectures, and perform other duties as they arose during the same twenty-four hour period. It had been well over twenty something years since I had pulled an all-nighter, but this was my proving ground. It was totally up to me to fit in with a population that was less than half my age. I was not going to quit; besides I had no parents to call and beg to let me come home.

Somehow, we managed to get all the old mattresses out and all the new mattresses in place just in time to be told that we had missed breakfast. Classes had not even started, regular students had not yet arrived on campus, and none of these people drank coffee. I took a long, slow, deep breath and set about convincing myself that the worse was over.

The big day arrived rather unceremoniously until the regular dorm residents starting arriving promptly as scheduled. Of course, the University failed to stagger their arrival times, so by 9:00 am the twelve of us were developing our skills in crowd control inside the building while the University Police dealt with the massive parking jam outside the dorm.

Now, imagine my surprise when most of the parents would walk over and tell me how they were no longer worried about little Suzie or Debbie living in the dorm, and how glad they were to see that an older, mature woman was there to watch over their little Suzie or Debbie. Keisha was at my side in a New York second assuring all of them their daughters would be just fine. Actually, if Keisha had not interrupted as abruptly as she did, I certainly would have informed these poor, unsuspecting deluded parents that I was merely a lowly student myself, and it was not my week to watch their little Suzie or Debbie. Okay, so Keisha saved me, I think.

Then about six o’clock that evening I was assigned front desk duty. I tried to tell anybody who would listen that they really did not want me to sit down. Nobody would listen. Nobody would let me explain. I tried to warn them all to no avail. So, I sat dutifully at the large, wooden front desk. Working the front desk requires a person to be especially attentive to who is coming in and going out of the dorm. While working the front desk, the Resident Assistant is expected to check each and every student’s identification as they enter and leave the dorm, including all guests.

Imagine every one’s surprise when they realized that within fifteen minutes of my taking a seat behind the front desk that I went dead away, sound asleep.

I woke up when Keisha, starting shaking me rather desperately, fearing that I had literally given up the ghost on my first watch. As I sluggishly woke up, the laughter from about fifty or sixty students was nothing compared to the scowl on the faces of the student’s mother and father that had been speaking to me for two minutes before they realize that something was wrong.

Keisha leaned over and whispered in my ear between clinched teeth, “Just go to your room, I will talk to you tomorrow.” I managed to sleepily whisper back, “Thank you.” I stumbled to the elevators with the roaring laughter of all the students still ringing in my ears.

I missed breakfast again the next morning, too. Trust me when I advise you that the foremost qualification for student employment on any University campus seems to be total and complete desperation.

I hope you found this story as hysterically funny as I do now, because every word of it is absolutely true, and that was only my first official day on the job.

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