This Is Not a Fire Drill

 

Today was starting off to be a busy day; I had just met with my boss, and I was supposed to meet with some grad students when someone else came in for me to check her documentation to work. Just then, the fire alarm went off, and someone came around to tell us it wasn't a fire drill, and that we had to get out now. The woman who had just arrived ran down the stairs with me; fortunately we were on the eighth floor and only had to get to the fourth floor to get outside. She had almost gone to meet someone else first, on the fourteenth floor - that would have been a lot of running down the stairs! We stood outside, and the grad students gathered around us, so I said why don't we just meet now? They were hoping I had some ideas for funding for the conference they are organizing, so I threw out a few ideas, and they said one was genius and they would go with that. I wish all meetings could be outside while standing around, instead of sitting around inside. Except maybe not in the winter...

Eventually they let us back inside, and I was able to check the woman's documentation. The rest of the day wasn't nearly so exciting. I walked with my colleague at lunch, and we had a staff congress meeting this afternoon, where I sat with my union peeps. The union has no power since Act Ten, so we are trying to change things via shared governance. We hung around afterwards talking, and sometimes it seems funny to me, like we're all middle-aged peons, but I feel like we're kids in a treehouse, plotting to take over the world. Or, in our case, make sure all the peons get paid a fair wage. It does feel like we've made some difference over the years. Tomorrow a bunch of us are meeting, including the chair of the committee I'm on, who really gets sh!+ done. He got on the case of the administration until they raised the minimum wage for the lowest paid workers and gave people who had to work the day after Thanksgiving free parking. We'll see what we can accomplish tomorrow regarding wage compression and inversion. 

Famous Hat