So quiet...so...poor.

I will be alone in my office today
And as of today—am working for 5 cents more than minimum wage.
Bleeding brilliant.
Why am I paid so little? I work for a public school, doing public good, serving the community and whatnot in what is arguably—a cush job. And compared to all my other jobs, it is—truly.
Still, I’m held to a professional standard that can’t be bought on minimum wage, working a limited number of hours with an endless amount of tasks.
It is not my supervisors that I take issue with here—it is the company itself. The college district.
Systems office would see us paid by the minuet. Wonderful, except that we’re capped at 19.5 hours and if you go over that 19.5 by even .01—it ticks off one less time you can do that, one time closer to termination.
You see, if an employee works more than 20 hours a week, they qualify for benefits from the district like dental, health care, sick leave, and so on.
Their choice is, however, to raise the number of employees at reduced rates rather than have a smaller number of more qualified, harder working, more available people.
Rather than a team of 50% of people working at 100% capacity they will take 100% of people at whatever capacity they can manage to muster up.
That is not to say the people I work with are inept—hardly. They are quite able, however they are /not allowed/ to work at their full capacity because of time constraints, because of that cap.
We volunteer to work more hours, to do more jobs, to be here more and we get punished.
So what does this lead to?
No, I won’t stay this extra hour to get the work done because, to be frank—it’ll put me over my hours.
Yes—I’ll stay but only if I can make it worth my while and stay x amount of hours later tomorrow also.
No, we can’t really give you that project because it takes y amount of hours and you are only here for z.
The result is delays in projects, in tasks, in paperwork being done. The result is frustration.
I wouldn’t mind working for 6.60 an hour if I could work more than 19.5 hours without fear of losing my job for—of all things—working too much.
But, to be frank—I do. Honestly, I’d mind that if I was working for 8.40 as I will be in September—oh no the rest of the staff assistants will still be at 6.60, I’m my title will change, giving me 8.40 an hour but still capped at 19.5
Frustration.
Minimum wage is perhaps, one of the worst things that can be done in an economy, second probably only to turning the mint presses on 24/7 or installing a price ceiling.
If we ever combine all three, well…You know in Indiana Jones Temple of Doom when he and Short Round are in the room where the floor and the ceiling are closing in? Yeah.
/end econ rant


So why am I alone in the office today?
Well technically, I'm not. See, I'm in the C building--the full time Art and Preforming Arts professor's offices.
The F building has 3 staff assistants over there at any given time, our Dom, whatever faculty are in today (including the Dean), whatever adjuncts are in and today one supervisor (usually two)

My building though has no one today. All professors are on vacation, my supervisor is on vacation, and most of the rest of the floor is empty.

You know what that means?
Wall charts!! yeah you have no idea what those are, but i am very very good friends with them. Oh yes.

So to work I go.