Don't Make Me Steal My Own F$%^ing Office Signs

Just give them to me, fair and square.

Since last November, when the board voted to close my college down, we’ve been getting these weekly emails from the college’s higher-ups. 

I’m not sure if the Dunning-Krueger effect, where people who are less competent view themselves as super-great at their jobs, is the correct concept to invoke here. I would definitely put it into the mix. 

The administration’s subject lines vary—“Update”; “Please join us for an informational webinar”; and, my favorite, “Gratitude”—but the underlying message remains the same: we have no fucking idea what we are doing, and are making this up as we go along. 

I want to offer some level of grace to those administrators who genuinely care/cared about the college, as many faculty do, or did. And staff, too, who took care of students outside of the classrooms in heroic and thankless ways. 

With that said, wouldn’t you know that some administrators got double-digit raises as the end draws near and are kept on the payroll with benefits months after the college closed.

You may ask if I find that surprising? No. No I do not.

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These emails would love-bomb us. They would say the college needed us, and the college is so, so grateful for the way we are rallying and teaching our classes into the spring and even into the summer.

They were so, so grateful how we went to extraordinary lengths to make sure students would finish out their degrees before the college shut its doors.

They thanked us, profusely, for doing all the things. 

Just about every email we received, larded with those non-update updates, would also include a clarification that faculty, come May 18, our “Separation Date,” we’d be gone. No more benefits, no severance, nothing.  

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My absolute favorite email bullet list email came on March 25, 2024.

It was the Monday after my mom’s funeral, and I was meeting my friend, Matt, at my local coffee place. I wasn’t even going to read it, so overwhelmed I was with everything, and I wanted to talk to Matt about important things like Record Store Day exclusive releases. But a few faculty had been making still more pleas for severance, and still others were talking about getting lawyers to represent us in some kind of lawsuit. Some colleagues wrote some fairly heartfelt specific letters about how our college’s mission and overall ethos of helping out the “Dear Neighbor” translated to helping out its own in these sad, last days. I felt, naively, that the board would offer us that professional kindness. 

I was wrong, of course. I’ve been so wrong a lot these days.

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So I opened the work email. It started off with the usual bullshit—blah blah blah we’re working on agreements with other colleges, blah blah blah we appreciate all that you’re doing in these challenging times, yadda yadda yadda no you won’t get severance or any extensions on health coverage. 

Then came the section called “College assets.” The first bullet talked about how they were willing to sell our work computers to us! At a low price!

And then this: 

• Any request for memorabilia, plaques, signage, etc., should be directed to [Name Redacted], VP for Institutional Advancement or the Administration and Finance Office.  

I knew I had to write back right away.

My email used bullets, of course.

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Hello [Name Redacted] -- 

According to [Name Redacted]'s email from March 25 addressed to faculty, you are the contact for any requests for “memorabilia, plaques, and signage.” I am sending along my requests in this email, along with photos of the signs and notes when applicable. 

• The Dolan Hall sign in front of 442 Western Avenue [photo attached]. This is the sign outside the office building where I have worked for the better part of the 19 years I taught at the College.
  

• any "breathe easy Our Campus is Tobacco & Smoke Free" sign [photo attached]. This sign is special to me because I had tried to convince the administration to fix the punctuation of the sign’s language, since it should actually read “Our Campus is Tobacco- & Smoke-Free,” but no one ever responded to my emails, and so it never happened.

  Having one of these signs would make me smile, since it would stand as a metaphor for how even the smallest suggestion to change or adjust anything on campus—including the inclusion of two hyphens—went ignored. Plus I don’t smoke.
  

• Albertus Hall "Classroom 112" sign outside of the Albertus classroom . This is where I taught the majority of my writing workshops. So many drafts were reviewed there, so many presentations and run-on sentences and works cited pages and assignment questions.
  
  My low-ball estimate is I spent about 3,000 classroom hours in total in Room 112 alone, and so it's very special to me. I would like this sign—or any other sign from Albertus, really—to remind me of the students.
  

• Any bathroom sign from Albertus Hall or any other Saint Rose building, or any sign that mentions bathrooms. toilets, or rest rooms.
  
  I have used bathrooms on our campus many times over the years, with mostly pleasant relief-filled memories, and so a bathroom sign from our campus would remind me of those few moments of respite I’ve spent away from full faculty meetings, committee meetings, department meetings, school meetings, ad-hoc committees and other on-campus events where I needed a moment to myself.
  

• Any “Mandelbaum Hall” sign. It's now a decommissioned building that was on Western Avenue. This building was nicknamed “Moldelbaum” by its inhabitants circa 2005-2006—I would love to have that, too, since it was my first office.

That is my list so far. Since I have a cabin where I hang lots of signs, I would love to consider a couple other signs as well, but I understand others will want signs as keepsakes as well. 

I have to admit that this is one of the strangest emails I've ever written, but we are living in strange times at our college. Thank you in advance for considering these requests, and if you have any questions, feel free to email me or call my cell at 518-555-5555.

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I didn’t hear back at first. About a month later, the person who wrote the email left the college.

I’ve followed up with some of the remaining administrators and so far, I’ve gotten updates that basically say “check in with us later.” Now that I am no longer an employee, I am assuming I’ll have to get any memorabilia at an auction or eBay. 

A few of my friends have suggested I should just roll up to campus with a wireless drill and take a sign or two. I have to admit I have dreams about doing things like that.

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I stole this.

I did take my own office sign with me. It’s now neatly mounted outside my home office door. Is it strange to see my old professor sign as I walk around our dining room? Sure.

But you know what is really strange? Not being a professor anymore.

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Back in 15 minutes…

I had another sign, an index card that I would tape to my office door every time I stepped out, either for a meeting or to use the bathroom in the student center (see above letter).

The sign says "Back in 15 minutes" and it’s handwritten in black Sharpie. It’s the analog equivalent of those mouse-jigglers remote workers use to give the image that they are at work whenever they step away.

I made it a tradition to leave it outside my door at the end of every semester for the breaks.

As I took out the last of my things, I slapped the card on the outside of my old office door. For old time’s sake.

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Thank you for reading, as always. I apologize in advance for any typos. They drive me crazy when I spot them after I send this out.

Or maybe just buy me a coffee.