Why the fuck are people filled with glee when delivering bad news?

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t know if this just happens in the bizzaro land of academia but I’ve been in graduation Hell for the past two months.

I graduated in December, but there was some reporting problem with my grades so their idiotic mother-fucking snail-butt breath system was showing that I only had 114 of the 120 credits needed for graduation. I basically spent the month of December trying to figure the nose-drooling, goat-felching mess out. Mind you, I knew with 100% certainty that it was a problem on their [ass-smelling] end, not mine.

Throughout this, I’ve been lucky enough to talk to many, oh, ADMINISTRATIVE FUCKHEADS, who seem to positively delight in announcing “you didn’t graduate.” I have calmy explained that there is a reporting error and I’m trying to get to the mother fucking bottom of it.

“Hmmm…well, you didn’t graduate and on the off-chance that some information we have is incorrect, you’ll have to talk to someone about trying to get the decision overturned,” is the paraphrased, collective, smarmy oozing puss-filled “words of wisdom” that the ADMINISTRATIVE FUCKHEADS just have to toss in before sighing and directing my call somewhere else.

First of all, you hairy butt-wipes, there’s no “decision” to be “overturned.” YOUR pissant University screwed up royally. Why is that concept so unbelievably foreign to your brain matter?

So, after about a month and a half of dealing with this SHIT, all the while being assured by my advisor that yes, the problem is on their end, I was finally told that it was all figured out, and that the Dean had certified my graduation. The Registrar’s office had (as in PAST TENSE) been notified.

Today, I reached the end of the sanity line. Last stop. Everyone exit the sanity car.

I decided to call and check on when diplomas are being mailed. The woman puts me on hold and comes back to the mother fucking phone and says chirpily,

“oooo…I regret to inform you that you didn’t graduate!”

I’m going through a slow boil that’s been percolating since she put me on hold and say no, I DID graduate and there’s some kind of reporting error. No use, pube breath insists that I DIDN’T graduate. Because I am no longer sane, I argue with her instead of just sighing, taking a brick and bashing it into my skull. As she’s transferring me, I hear myself practically scream into the phone,

“But I DID graduate!!!”

But she, Pube Breath, had alreaddy transferred me so I ended up yelling it to Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire - ironic hold music for my situation.

So, I start the dance over again - albeit crazier and more gutter-mouthed than I once was. But I am not beaten.

There. I feel much better.

2

You poor, silly person. Don’t you realize that as a student you are lower than the parasitic worms that inhabit the bowels of creatures that suck the scum off the bottoms of rocks?

As far as most of the bureaucrats are concerned:
You have not completed the correct forms.
You obviously do not know where the correct forms are.
If, by some miracle, the correct forms somehow fall into your hands, you will inevitably fail to fill them out correctly.
You will not submit the forms on time.
Assuming that you have not lost them, you will not have submited them to the correct office or agency.
You will lie about anything and everything, even when confronted with the fact that the computer shows clearly that you are lying.
The fact that you pay through the nose for tuition and are busting your ass to get an education in no way entitles you to be treated with politeness, honesty or professionalism by university employees.

If you have not already, get your advisor back on the case. Professors can cut through red tape like a hot knife through butter, because professors are not automatically assumed to be lying, though the bureaucrats know that professors are slightly stupid and should not, under any circumstances be allowed to come near the computer or the paperwork, lest they screw it up. So as long as the professor can communicate what needs to be done, the bureaucrats will do it for them.

Best of luck, and don’t worry, it’ll all get sorted out!

3

So did you graduate?

:smiley:

4

The Germans have a word for it, which has found its way into our lexicon:

schadenfreude

5

God bless the Germans. Are they not also the inventors of triplicate forms to be typed or printed in black ink?

6

Well, it’s looking – dare I say – up?

The academic assistant dean emailed me AND called me. Apparently, the fact that I took a graduate course last semester threw their computers into a tizzy. He has assured me that everything has been rectified, and even copied me on the email he sent to “Marion” the evil, ADMINISTRATIVE FUCKHEAD.

Whaddya say NOW, Marion?

Heh. Cackle. Cough.

See, I’m still insane. My sanity doesn’t just come back like on like a properly installed light switch.

I’ll let ya’ll know when I don’t receive my diploma in a few weeks.

7

University bureaucracies are the most disgusting examples of inbred fiefdoms around. The people they hire aren’t stupid - they simply have no concern for helping anyone other than themselves.They’re quite often lazy and nearly unfirable. I recall a very good tech worker that our department absolutely needed. When they were trying desperately to move him from student worker to salaried, they had to make a new job position for him, it had to be done within X time or the new regulations baning ANY hires would block him out, and…

some petty bureaucrat lady for no apparent reason, without ever actually investigating the case, and despite “requests” from the Pres himself, refused to process the paperwork. She was never punished.

Of course, I shjould expect this from a U that has fired its last two presidents (one of which barely got away without criminal charges). :rolleyes:

8

Hm. I thought Arschloch would have been more appropriate for the situation.

9

Have they started sending you those “Hi Alumni! Won’t you send us a donation?” letters yet?

10

Why?

Because there’s no Freude like Schadenfreude, like no Freude I know.

11

Sometimes even they won’t listen to even a professor. I had a similar problem when the school administrators decided that one of my graduate courses did not count towards my graduation. My professor insisted it did. They insisted it did not. My professor said fine and created a custom summer course for me. It was a pretty easy course considering he didn’t require me to show up.

12

Oh goodie something to look forward to!! I graduate in August, but I wouldnt’ be suprised if something like this happened to me… because, you see, I had the audacity to get married and gasp CHANGED MY NAME!! I’m sure you can imagine the fun times I had trying to get my financial aid processed for this year. I submitted my application for graduation and got a letter stating that they have no record of any one registered by my name. I finally got that straightened out, but I’m sure I haven’t heard the last of it.

13

I can say that my husband has felt your pain - the entire two years he was in graduate school, there were continual problems of this type - lost payments, bills sent charging incorrect amounts, transcripts with courses missing, dropped courses being listed as Incomplete, and then a failing grade automatically assigned to that course with the next semester’s grades (that little issue took him a year and a half to work out). I could write a book - or at least a good-sized pamphlet - describing the problems he had. He probably spent as much time straightening out problems with the pack of assmunchers in the cashier’s and registrar’s offices as he did in class. I am convinced that a chimp could have been trained to do a better job than those people.

Now every time we get one of those ‘Hi Alumni! Send us money!’ letters I am so sorely tempted to write FUCK OFF on it in big black magic marker and send it back.

Last year they had problems with some alumni sending notices to the alumni magazine falsely reporting their own deaths … just to get off the mailing list. Heh.

There is good news though - he did finally get everything straightened out and he has his piece of paper saying he did in fact graduate. It will happen for you too - just hang in there.