Ever have any experience with state employees? You know, government hired people? For instance, police, doctors, town clerks and such (who are actually generally quite nice and productive), but then there are people out there who are just the lazy stereotypical secretaries who are underpaid and since they have a "State Job" don't care.

Well here at UMass we have some of the finest state employees Massachusetts has to offer. My professor, who happens to be the head of my department signed off on my new Research Assistant contract sometime in July and the department secretary sent it over to the administration offices to process. Guess what... when I was literally down to 8.16$ to my name, expecting my first new paycheck on this new payroll system (I used to get money from a grant, a huge lump sum), I got nothing in my mail. I called over and asked what was wrong...

"We did not recieve your paperwork until yesterday, therefore we could not print out a check for you, you will have to wait until next payment cycle in two weeks".

BULL@#$%ING@#$%. I was furious in the extreme. I tried to get help from the administration, but my advisor (the departmen head) was in meetings the entire day with other commitments, and the secretary was out so she couldn't help. Basically, I had to borrow money from friends for the time being.

Now that I actually am told I can recieve 70% of my paycheck on an emergency check, I was overjoyed... except for the fact that when I went to go get my damn check, they said, we don't have it. They gave me the runaround and double speak all after waiting 15 minutes while 3 secretaries were literally playing solitaire. You look at a dilbert comic and that's exactly what I saw, a waste of money to have lazy people sit around all day.

Ok, I stormed out of there after telling the people to their face "This is bull@#$%". Next morning (today) I went to the place they instructed me, and some uneducated twit waited on me, and she was literally filing her nails when I came up to the counter...

I came for my check. "We don't do dat here sir, you need to go up stairs and talk to de Human Resources". I told them they sent me down to see you guys. Then her boss got up from, yep you guessed it, playing Solitaire to tell me we cant give a check out without the proper paperwork.

So I storm upstairs and they give me the paperwork after trying to give me a half @$$ excuse about trying to give it to me last night... please, you were screwing with me and you know it. So then I took that paperwork downstairs and got it filed... taking me a total of 30 extra minutes.

I was so furious at those mother @#$#$&s... UGH.

If back at Deerfield Academy or Amherst College this ever happened, the people who treated me like that would have been fired on the spot. That's what the United States tax dollars are working towards right there...