Apparently, I suck

Sorry to make my blog so negative, but today just seems like a negative day. Not only is it Monday, it is daylight savings time, it is raining and gross outside, and I came into work this morning to find this letter on my desk from a student who will start the school in September: (this is a long one, feel free to skim). All of my comments toward this blasphemous letter are in red.

Dear Mr. (Boss),

I am one of your future students, looking forward to attending the school in September 2005.

I had hoped to make a better first impression than the one which I am sure to be presenting with this letter, but an awkward situtation (at least for me) has developed from which I do not know how to proceed; I was hoping that if I explained it to you that you might be able to effect some resolution from your end. Please accept my most profound apology for bothering you with this matter in the first place, and please believe me whan I say that writing this letter is absolutley the last thing in the world that I want to be doing.

There is a delicate balance when writing a letter of this nature, one must provide enough information to be understood, but do so without sounding negative. I've re-written this several times and have not acheived the proper balance; instead I have opted for simply being straight-forward in the hopes that you will understand that I am simply trying to impart some information and move beyond this impasse. Apparently this guy likes to use the thesaurus!

I don't know why people can't be nice; life is too short, there is no reason not to be nice, and why waste all that ener being unpleasant when it is so much easier, and far more satisfying to be sincere, polite, helpful, and well-mannered. This is just about the only intelligent and truthful thing he says in this letter.

With that in mind: I've had at least four converstations with the School Administrator THAT'S ME! and they have all been unpleasant. ???I've also tried emailing twice, and the emails have been ignored (not true, he never sent the emails ... he wrote the wrong address!). In each case I've tried to be as courteous and polite as is humanly possible, and in return she's been disagreeable, impatient, snippy, she has little or no patience, and getting any kind of helpful answer is difficult at best. I've settled on the word 'unpleasant' to describe her overall demeanor toward me. The point being: I have no desire, nor the capacity to deal with this person any further, it takes too much energy and frankly it is depressing. But, I still have some questions. Thus, my impasse. Thus, I am appealing for your assistance.

It is not necessary to recount all of my conversations with the School Administrator, but a few examples may help to illustrate my point.

One conversation took place around Thanksgiving, 2004; I was planning a trip to visit my brother for the Christmas holidays, and I thought it would be worthwile to investigate whether I could combine it with a side trip to the school. It never hurts to ask, so I called and said as politley as is humanly possible, "Hello, I live in Illinois, and I was planning on taking a trip over the Christmas holiday, and I was curious, if I were able to arrange a short trip to Salt Lake City, and if it were convenient for you, would it be at all possible to visit your school?" And she went off on a tirade! (Those of you who know me, tell me if you can truthfully see me saying these things to a potential student) "Well, you know, we'd have to turn on the heat, and the lights, and unlock the doors, and it is the holidays, and he has the keys, and I don't know if the janitor is available (this sentence right here diminishes all possiblitiy that he is telling the truth, we don't have a janitor, why would I say we did?), and I'd have to get the keys from him somehow if he isn't available, and it's a lot of trouble and we'd have to schedule someone, and pay overtime, and I may not be there, and it is inconvenient," and on and on and on and on. All she had to say was, "Gee, I'm sorry, we're closed for the holidays." (That's exactly what I said minus the "Gee", but he kept insisting that he come during the school's Christmas break, which is against our policy. So I admit after he pushed harder to come at the time he desired I had to be a bit more firm, but NEVER like he implied) But instead I got an angry lecture. There was more to the conversation which I have no desire to recall, but I do remember being aghast that such a nasty person would be allowed to represent your school to the public.

The next converstaino took place when I applied; I was curious how the application process worked ... I called and spoke to the same person and she said that immediatly upon applying I would recieve a reply, via email, with further instructions. Three days later, not having received a reply I called and asked, very timidly and very politely, "Maybe I misunderstood, and if I did I'm sorry, but did she say I would recieve a reply via email, or regular mail. And if email, should I have recieved a response by now?" Well, excuse my course adjectives, but she was totally pissed that I had called and bothered her, and she made me feel like it was all my fault that I had not received a reply, because she sent it. The hostility was palpable, and uncalled for. (More thesaurus usage)

In another conversation, after being accepted, I called and politely introduced myself and asked if she had a few minutes to answer some questions about the apartments. Keeping in mind that I introduced myself by saying, "Hello, I'm (name omitted for privacy reasons), I'll be attending in September and, if you have time, I would like to ask a few questions about the apartments," you would think that she would have been inspired to be helpful, but that's not the case. She did answer a few quetions, but her patience quickly evaporated. Eventually, I made the mistake of asking, "Are there any apartments available?" Now, maybe it's me, and maybe I'm stupid, but I thought that it was obvious that I was asking if there were apartments available in September, but her reply was, "Well! There are people living in the apartments now and you can't expect me to ask them to move out, they do have priority, and it is unfair for you to come along and ask them to give up their apartment for you ...!" and she continued in this stream of conciousness ranting with more words to the effect of, "there are only so many apartments and I don't know what is available, and i don't know who is returning, and maybe some of them will decide to get an apartment somewhere else ..." until she finally ran out of steam. I was stunned. I think we finally determined that maybe there was a small apartment available, and I think maybe, I 'm on a waiting list for a large apartment, but beyond that I have no idea about anything. (Whatever! He received confirmation of everything in writing as I do with all students as to his status with the school and apartments, I can't believe this guy went to this much effort to complain about stuff that never happened.)

I concede that these are just a few snippets of conversations, and they may even taken out of context, (He finally sees the light!) but if they were the exceptions then maybe I could overlook all of this, but they are not (Nevermind, he doesn't). In each of my phone calls I've encountered the same type of response: negative, unpleasant, short tempered, and even angry. If it occured once, then maybe it was a bad day; twice, who knows, maybe it was another bad day; three times, and being lectured, that's cause for concern; four times is a serious problem and it is inexcusable.

So, still having questions about the apartments and other questions as well, I decided to avoid direct contact and submitted by few remaining questions via email. I sent the first email on Feb. 8th, waiting a little over 2 weeks, did not recieve a reply, sent it again on the Feb. 24th, and stilll have not recived a reply, It's been almost two months and there has been no reply (that's because he keeps typing in the wrong email address). I have attached the emails; they are identical except that I removed the introduction from the second. Does she think the questions are dumb (of course not!) ? Is that why she didn't answer them? Or does she simply not care (The students are my favorite part of this job, why would I do this to him?) ? One thing I know for a fact: all people should be treated with respect, and all questions should be answered courtesoulsy, professionally, and hoestly. There are no dumb questions. (I agree)

Now, maybe I'm old fashioned, but if I were in her place, talking with prospective students, especially students that had never been to the beatufitul state of Utah, I would endeavor to be as helpful, pleasant, and courteous as possible; all questions would be welcomed; I would be doing everything I could to ensure the person was well informed and that they felt comfortable with their decision; I would offer any and all information that I had at my disposal; I'd treat them with respect; I'd welcome them into the family so to speak, and I would, in a word, be nice. (Hello!! I threw a back to school BBQ for the new students last year, I LOVE these guys ... they're great people and I would do anything to help them if they asked. In fact, Brandon and I are going out with Scott - a student - and his wife on Friday. Ask any of the students and they'll say that I am a good school administrator.)

This situation with the School Administrator is beyond all of my understanding. If she doesn't like answering the phone, or if she is annoyed with questions or people in general, then tell her to write it down in the form of a fact sheet and include it with the Enrollment Agreement (I did and I do, he got one with his Enrollment Agreement) , or make it available online. She could easily write a friendly pamphlet, it only has to be a page or two, with all the little bits and pieces of information that everyone asks about (phone numbers and helpful tips that people might want to know if they are moving to your city to attend you school). How much trouble would that be? And think of all the pesky phone calls that could be avoided. (Now he's just being plain sarcastic!)

So, here's my take on the whole situation: For those of you who went to ACU, I try to be as much like Sandy Byers as possible. She was the best administrator for the JMC department in the world. I know that I'm not like her all the time because I have to get pretty tough with the students when they don't pay their tuition, but the rest of the time I try my hardest to enjoy them. I take personal pride in the new students. I feel like a mother to them.

As for my boss' response. I found a blue sticky note stuck on the front of the letter saying:
"Lori, I LOVE YOU. This man, I will not let him come to our school."
I guess my boss isn't so bad after all. I refunded this student's deposits and mailed them today. I'll let you know when I get a response back from this man.