Tales of a Monitor
The administration of my college is famous for it's well-known history of bad ideas, but very few of them come close to the level of the "Privacy Partition", a fixture we behind the scenes call the Porn Wall. The Porn Wall is a monotone partition of cubicle wall about nine feet high and arranged in the shape of a giant "I", so that it's two c-shaped crooks hold a bank of printers and a half-dozen computers, respectively. Being in the corner, it provides a cocoon of privacy for a maximum of a dozen users. The Wall is partially soundproof, so it's intended purpose is to give students a quiet place to do research and homework while keeping them insulated from the noise and distractions of the lab. Of course, my job as a lab monitor is to make sure there isn't any loud noise or distractions in the lab, so the Porn Wall is basically a constant reminder that no one thinks we can do our jobs. To be fair, we really can't. They keep saying they're getting rid of the Porn Wall, but they never do: in a way it's a microcosm of the ineptitude and inefficiency of the entire college system. If you submitted a complaint about the Wall tomorrow, you'd be told that it was the Student Government that decided to raise it, and IT merely complied with their decision. If you were to complain to Student Government - assuming you could find them - you'd be told it was the IT department's brainchild and that they couldn't do anything about dismantling it. I know, i've tried. The magic of college administration is that the buck never stops anywhere: it keeps rotating like a perpetual motion machine until it gets lost somewhere or you stop following it.
I can hear a guy chuckling behind the safety of the Porn Wall even as I type this. I busted him a few minutes ago - he was trying to find nude photographs of some starlet i've never heard of named Christina Milian. He also tried to install AOL Instant Messenger, so he's obviously not one of the cool kids - they all hopped on the Meebo bandwagon long ago. Since then he's morphed into a nervous perversion of the Flash - shuffling windows whenever he hears me get up to do a sweep of the room and making furtive glances over his shoulder at my Fortress of Monitoring. I should mention that whoever decided to have the Porn Wall erected made the very feng shui choice of placing it at 2:00 from the Monitor's Desk at an angle that hinders us from seeing who's behind it. Some days I feel like been told to sail across a lake and given a boat with a hole already made in the bottom.
I should probably mention the Fortress of Monitoring. First of all, no one calls it that but me - we're not all total geeks here. I call it that because it has walls and is elevated about two feet off the ground. It doesn't loom over the lab, exactly, it sort of squats in the corner sulking like a child picked last for dodgeball. It's a filthy mess and I love it very much. There's a PC in the Fortress of Monitoring, which I am typing all of this on, and while it's the best perk of this job, it's also a giant hindrance to it. Like the One Ring, few monitors can resist it's temptation forever, and many of us end up ignoring the lab to obsess Gollum-like over it for hours. While I consider myself somewhat immune - the lab's own Tom Bombadil, perhaps - I have to admit if pressed to make a list of adjectives describing this computer, 'precious' would be right up there.
In the time it took me to write that last paragraph, Mister Porn got up and left. He shut down the machine in an effort to reset everything and hide his trail. I ducked behind the porn wall and was relieved to find that the keyboard wasn't sticky. Score one for the good guys.
But are we good guys? I find myself asking that question a lot. It seems like my entire perception of whether or not I like my job hinges on how I answer that question. I am, by the mandate of the Student Government, a colossal jerk: getting on people's cases over food, drink, and cell phone activity as well as noise disruptions. The first three are black and white, the third I have a kind of carte blanche to decide to deal with. According to my mandate, a guy bringing in a bag of Skittles needs to be told to leave it at the door or get out. According to my mandate, I should have thrown Mister Porn out instead of giving him a warning - to be fair, his ludicrous story about doing 'research' for a paper next fucking semester was hilarious to the point I just told him to stop or i'd throw him out. We all do 'research', but to do it in public - even behind the relative safety of the Porn Wall - is a pretty low thing and probably doesn't help your self-esteem or general well-being.
Maybe I don't think i'm such a bad guy, but according to the makers of the rules (and the constructors of the Porn Wall), i'm bad at my job and I should feel bad. And as far as punishments go, having to deal with the Porn Wall on a Friday night is pretty harsh.
I can hear a guy chuckling behind the safety of the Porn Wall even as I type this. I busted him a few minutes ago - he was trying to find nude photographs of some starlet i've never heard of named Christina Milian. He also tried to install AOL Instant Messenger, so he's obviously not one of the cool kids - they all hopped on the Meebo bandwagon long ago. Since then he's morphed into a nervous perversion of the Flash - shuffling windows whenever he hears me get up to do a sweep of the room and making furtive glances over his shoulder at my Fortress of Monitoring. I should mention that whoever decided to have the Porn Wall erected made the very feng shui choice of placing it at 2:00 from the Monitor's Desk at an angle that hinders us from seeing who's behind it. Some days I feel like been told to sail across a lake and given a boat with a hole already made in the bottom.
I should probably mention the Fortress of Monitoring. First of all, no one calls it that but me - we're not all total geeks here. I call it that because it has walls and is elevated about two feet off the ground. It doesn't loom over the lab, exactly, it sort of squats in the corner sulking like a child picked last for dodgeball. It's a filthy mess and I love it very much. There's a PC in the Fortress of Monitoring, which I am typing all of this on, and while it's the best perk of this job, it's also a giant hindrance to it. Like the One Ring, few monitors can resist it's temptation forever, and many of us end up ignoring the lab to obsess Gollum-like over it for hours. While I consider myself somewhat immune - the lab's own Tom Bombadil, perhaps - I have to admit if pressed to make a list of adjectives describing this computer, 'precious' would be right up there.
In the time it took me to write that last paragraph, Mister Porn got up and left. He shut down the machine in an effort to reset everything and hide his trail. I ducked behind the porn wall and was relieved to find that the keyboard wasn't sticky. Score one for the good guys.
But are we good guys? I find myself asking that question a lot. It seems like my entire perception of whether or not I like my job hinges on how I answer that question. I am, by the mandate of the Student Government, a colossal jerk: getting on people's cases over food, drink, and cell phone activity as well as noise disruptions. The first three are black and white, the third I have a kind of carte blanche to decide to deal with. According to my mandate, a guy bringing in a bag of Skittles needs to be told to leave it at the door or get out. According to my mandate, I should have thrown Mister Porn out instead of giving him a warning - to be fair, his ludicrous story about doing 'research' for a paper next fucking semester was hilarious to the point I just told him to stop or i'd throw him out. We all do 'research', but to do it in public - even behind the relative safety of the Porn Wall - is a pretty low thing and probably doesn't help your self-esteem or general well-being.
Maybe I don't think i'm such a bad guy, but according to the makers of the rules (and the constructors of the Porn Wall), i'm bad at my job and I should feel bad. And as far as punishments go, having to deal with the Porn Wall on a Friday night is pretty harsh.