How about taking some responsibility for your mistakes? (pretty lame, prob'ly)

Wow, my first Pit thread. I actually never thought I’d make one, but here we go.

So, in my English 102 class, we’ve been discussing arguments, and today we were discussing campus issues that could be used for an argument paper we have coming up. It was a serious discussion of things that could be used (things like the state of our buildings, where tuition money is going, and so forth). So, it wasn’t a bitching session… but I guess two of the girls in the class wanted to make it one.

The first girl complained about her dorm. Now, when we check into a dorm, we get one key, which we can’t duplicate. There’s a spare key they keep in the front desk. And apparently, this girl has to use the spare key a lot. She was angry that the front desk never “comes to find [her]” and instead bills her the fee ($50, she said) for changing the locks. Now, why should the front desk be responsible for tracking down every student that checks out a key? It’s your own responsibility to bring the thing back in the allotted time. According to the handbook every person received when they checked into their dorm:

So c’mon, if you have to glue the thing to yourself to remember to take it with you everywhere, do it. I have a spot in my dorm room that my keys are always at, unless I’m out of the dorm, in which case they’re in my pocket or purse. I’ve forgotten it a few times, but I made sure to read the rules and I went and got a spare key and brought it back within 5 minutes after I retrieved my key. I’d really rather not pay $50 for new locks, especially on a college kid’s budget, and if I’ve got 30 minutes to avoid it, that key is going back to the front desk in thirty minutes.

The second girl had complaints about parking. Fair enough, we all have complaints about parking. But hers really took the cake. Last year, she bought a decal for her car so she could park in the designated lot on-campus. These decals are all marked with the school year, so hers was pretty clearly marked “03-04” like all the others. However… this year, she decided not to pay for another year, but rather to keep parking in the same lot, without paying the fee. She somehow managed to get away with this until just last week, when she received a $25 fine for it. And she’s really pissed about it.

I had no sympathy for this girl, and thankfully, the rest of the class didn’t, either. I think she may have seen the light when everyone in the room stared at her after hearing the story. I hope she did. :mad:

Wow, some college kids think the world revolves around them? Shocking. I’d be more inclined to blame the parents for unleashing such coddled and spoiled shits onto the rest of us.

Has Idiot #1 ever lost her car keys? If so, what does she do? If not, why not those but the room key?

I can see losing or misplacing keys on rare occasions. But when someone loses the key to their home more than 6 times in a 9 month stretch, it seems like a waste of resources to offer a classroom seat to said person.

Now now, sometimes the rest of us can take advantage of these idiot parents and their coddled children.

For example: I’s poor. One day, another driver hydroplanes into my car and kills it (no people injuries).

With the help of family and insurance I scrape together $6000 and go searching for a replacement car. Nothing fancy. I find a family who had purchased a Toyota Corolla new from the dealer for their daughter when she was 16. Now she’s enrolled in the college 2 towns over and, of course, has a new car.

The parents aren’t out to spoil the child, though. The Toyota is an automatic but has manual locks and windows. Brat child wasn’t happy. She made them upgrade the sound system, put on fly wheels, and install a retractable sun roof. All this they admitted to me like every child behaves this way.

Whatever. I got a nice, barely used car for $6000.

One of my roommates did this all through college. I think he paid for the first year, and never paid again. He realized that they never actually gave anyone tickets. The administration also eventually realized that people weren’t registering their cars, and started giving out tickets, but in a classic example of institutional friction, it took a while to get that going. He finally got a ticket during senior year, but they waived the ticket when he paid the registration.