Widgets and Doohickies

A beautiful shot of the Oregon coast to help calm the nerves

Today I overheard a coworker discussing a student interaction that he had.  The student had failed to do something in time and so was in a situation that they didn't want to be in. After several emails with my coworker, where my coworker told him the policies and what steps the student would need to do to appeal the policy, the student said that my coworker only thought of the student as a widget and was done with the college.  For some reason this really irritated me. 

I understand frustration with a situation, I have been there many times.  I understand getting upset about a policy, again I've been there.  What irritates me is when people accuse others of basically being unfeeling and terrible.  There is no organization that does not have policies.  Policies are in place to protect those within the organization as well as those that utilize the organization.  Part of an employees job is to uphold those policies.  If they don't, they don't stay an employee very long.  There may be policies that don't make sense but usually the person getting yelled at has no power to change those policies. 

There are times when I have been dealing with a customer or a student and despite me explaining the policy and what I can and cannot do to help them, they insist that I ignore the policy and do something anyway because they are "a special case."  I always fight the urge to ask where the person works and whether they have policies.  If they blatantly went against those policies how to they think their employer would react and why should I get reprimanded or fired when they would be doing the same thing if the roles were reversed.  (I have never said that, but use my customer service skills as best I can to get them to go away as quickly as possible.)  :)  I get very irritated when someone questions my or others humanity simply because they are following the rules of their job.   Especially since most likely the person is mad at themselves but wants to make someone else to blame so they don't have to take responsibility. Taking responsibility stinks.

I feel that we are becoming more entitled as a society.  That there is a pervasiveness of the thought, "I am special and better than others, therefore rules, regulations, and policies do not apply the same way to me as they do everyone else."  And as a person who follows the rules and is not one who is very often the squeaky wheel I find it especially irritating. 

I am not sure that I explained things very coherently but I just needed to get that out there.  And it didn't even happen to me.  The picture is one I took several years ago at the coast. I figure I would post a tranquil scene that I could look at after getting all worked up and relax.   (I'm not actually all worked up.)