In 1995 in Ukraine an angry, disheveled university administrator stormed into our classroom, interrupting the professor who was teaching the course, and yelled in a triumphant voice of a harpy who gets off on humiliating people who are vastly superior to her, “Everybody out! Stop staring at me and get out! You are being sent to sweep the fallen leaves in the park.”
Our professor was young and still had the courage to try to defend his dignity from being publicly degraded by this sweaty, stupid creature whose only purpose in life was to shit on everybody with a functioning intellect.
“I’m teaching a class right now,” he said in a shaky voice. ” Please let us finish.”
“There will be no class for you until you sweep away the very last leaf!” the administrator vociferated. “Out with you all! Now!”
Everybody got up and started moving towards the door. The professor followed. The only person who remained sitting and chewing her gum very loudly was me.
“And you?” the lumpen – administrator asked, mockingly. “Aren’t you coming?”
“No,” I said. “I’m here to learn, not to clean.”
“I promise you, there will be consequences, ” hissed the harpy.
“Yeah? Like what?”
The creature got beet-red and started huffing.
“I don’t know!” it hissed. “But there will be consequences. The Dean will find out.”
“Come back, guys,” I called out to my colleagues. “Let’s just continue with our class. This person can’t do anything to us.”
But, of course, everybody still went to sweep the leaves like a scared bunny. And I went shopping, bought a huge fedora hat, donned it (I was 19, OK?), and strolled through the park where my classmates and the professor were sweeping. They looked miserable and humiliated. The wind was scattering each little pile of leaves they managed to make.
I sat on a bench with an ice-cream, slurping and conducting subversive activities at the same time.
“Come on, guys, just walk away from this. You can do it! Let’s go get ice-cream instead. What are you afraid of?”
Nobody left, of course, until the administrator came. She stared at the group and said, “Don’t you see the wind is blowing the leaves away? You should have just stopped when you saw sweeping was useless.”
The professor was later placed under administrative investigation for disrupting classes and allowing students to leave premises when they were supposed to be in class.
Please remember that the people I’m describing had only been liberated from one of the most repressive totalitarian regimes in the history of humanity 4 years earlier. And now please tell me, when you let your administrators extort free labor out of you, what’s your excuse?
P.S. By the way, I took both of the photos on this page with my new phone. You have to agree that they are extraordinarily beautiful. And given that I’m a lousy photographer, these are absolutely phenomenal. Samsung has vindicated itself.
Clarissa's Blog 
I call bullshit on this story. Nobody eats ice cream in a park in Autumn! 😀
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This administrator was the typical communist. She seemingly had the absolute hatred towards culture, knowledge and every other intellectual activity. Once during the university I also had a fight with a shit like this. Finally I slammed the door on the entitled, disgusting harpy, who worked 2 HOURS per day and 3 DAYS per week, but still threw a tantrum how I dared bother her during her fucking working hours. I had to ask for leave from my employer, and I had to return 3 times on 3 different days because the useless idiot refused to go in her office even during her working hours (which was 6 hours per week). After this I still talked to this loser nicely, who just yelled at me, and told me she couldn’t sign a fucking document now, because she had so much to do. It would have taken about 10 seconds to do what I wanted. The fight took about 3 minutes. Yes, finally I yelled back at the shit, and slammed the door on her stupid face. So what? She bullied me and all the other students on a regular basis in a disgusting way. This wasn’t the first case, everybody was scared of this power-abusing monster, some students dared approach her only after drinking a significant amount of alcohol. And I’m sure she only got that job becasue she was the somebody of somebody, like almost all the other state employees throughout the whole postcommunist region. After the incident I received an angry letter from the professor that how I dared do this, and I needed to learn some morals (that obviously still haven’t happened). No other consequences. And the document I needed was signed by the professor. Hahaha, the postcommunist power-abuser thought he would have taught me a lesson this way. This was the last thing I had to do with this department, I didn’t have to go back there after the incident, otherwise I wouldn’t have dared do this. And it’s also important to mention that if I had done the same during the 1950s and not in the early 2000s, I would have ended up in prison. Eastern Europe won’t change until this horrible generation socialized during communism retires. The universities, local councils, tax offices etc. are still full of this kind of people (now usually above the age of 45-50). They only do their JOB that they are PAID FOR if you yell at them or they feel threatened by something else. This kind of behaviour, the level of power abuse and sense of entitlement is unimaginable in countries that didn’t experience communism.
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Bribe also works to motivate these people. Back in comunism, a pack of cigarettes or some coffee might’ve done the trick. Today, I don’t know, 20 euros maybe?
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Yeah, maybe I should have bought a bottle of Eva vermouth or a pack of Omnia coffee to the harpy 😀
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And now imagine how I feel when I encounter the same kinds of things in the US. And here nobody has the excuse of living under communism!
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I’m afraid this personality type exists everywhere in the world. And they usually tend to choose administrative jobs. They try to minimize creativity and inventiveness and maximize power in their professional lives. They have the ultimate servant mentality.
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“The professor was later placed under administrative investigation for disrupting classes and allowing students to leave premises”
Aha! The soviet touch! I’m sure nothing bad happened to the administrator.
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“I’m sure nothing bad happened to the administrator.”
– Of course, not. But why would it? It isn’t like anybody complained.
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I loved this story. I feel like so many of my colleagues have this attitude that they have to rake the leaves, and they don’t even know why they’re doing it, since the winds make it futile. I have been sitting on the sidelines eating ice cream, too, and some people really resent that. Thing is, I have been getting things done, meaningful things done, by approaching the administration in partnership, rather than an us-versus-them mentality. As a result, I’m getting what I want. Students are going to have a better experience as a result. And the people who resent change are just plodding through their tasks, counting the days until retirement. In twenty years, I might be just like them. Until then, I have to keep fighting.
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I have a deep suspicion that the colleagues who accept all of this non-remunerated teaching and extra service are simply avoiding research. There is no otehr explanation I can find.
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