Well, it sounds like somebody needs to find out if the fire system is hooked to anything besides the inside alarms. Like whatever notifies the fire department (and you're absolutely right, cute firemen are in the rules, and somebody failed if you didn't get cute firemen).

So, who gets to "fix" the thing you don't have control over? *g*

The apartment we lived in back in Cambridge had a very old fire detection system that was apparently dust-clogged: we had a couple of false alarms in the time we lived there. But the fire department showed up pretty promptly -- which irritated them, when they realized that it was dust, not flames....

My next entertaining meeting is going to be a student who "wants to talk about last semester's grade". Speaking of things I can't fix....

One assumes that now the firemen and the building management know there's a communication problem, it will get fixed.

SEP If the firemen aren't going to be cute, I don't feel any need to be involved.

Jonathan? If the student annoys you, remember you're free to tell them that a grade can always be adjusted downwards to compensate for aggravation and wear-and-tear!

The R.C. feels that if they're paying you actual money, the least you can do is show up on time.

That's a pretty common gambit -- "if you want me to reevaluate the grade, I will, but that means that I might well decide that I was too generous the first time" -- but I don't usually use it. Since I don't have any grade reconsideration policy in my syllabus, most of them just don't even try, especially since I will often announce the distribution, so that they can see where they fell in relation to the rest of the class. If they just don't get my grading, I will try and walk them through it a bit, mostly by focusing on what my comments say they did wrong and could do better next time. It's a bit judo-like: I try to shift their focus from the past paper to the next one. On occassion I'll look at something I graded and just be unclear on why I did something; I have regraded papers where I thought I missed something.

In this case, the kid ignored major components of the final paper ("pasting together paragraphs is not the same thing as writing an essay") and final exam essay assignments (borderline plagiarism, grossly inadequate answers), and got what he deserved. If he really has a problem with the C he got after reading those over, then it's going to get ugly.

I understand the R.C.'s position but my boss feels that they are paying me for what I know and what I do, not for pointless punctuality.

Don't say things like that, Jonathan! :-0 I don't want to respect you less because you would give someone a C for not actually covering the material and borderline plagarism. That's at best a D.

Although, I have a teeny bit of sympathy for the "just paragraphs pasted together, not an essay" thing. You've been reading my writing for long enough to know what a coherent, single-topic essay is completely beyond me. ;-)

No! The C was for the whole semester, including better-than-average tests. Also a C for the pasted-paragraphs; the final essays got considerably less than that, though.

Actually, your rants are, on average, at least as evidence-based and thematically unified as what I get on a good day. Seriously, if my students wrote like you (after I'd had them), I'd be getting teaching awards.

Well, that sounds better. :) I didn't think that sounded like you--giving an "average" grade for that kind of work. But the whole semester, that's different.

I loved writing papers in college. I always scanned the syllabus for classes I was interested in. If the class required half a dozen papers, I signed up for it! (The profs and grad students hated me, though. I was rarely able to confine myself to the mandated two or three pages.)

What you do is irrelevant if they can't count on you to show up on time to DO it, is my opinion.

Although I have suffered my whole life from Anybody-itis (which is where a co-worker walks in, looks around, and says, why isn't anybody here yet? and I have to point out that I am INDEED here, therefore there IS an anybody present, in which case they always say, "anybody ELSE, I mean," which isn't really very good for one's ego, first thing in the morning).

But my POINT is that no one cares if I do it from 8-5 or from 8:10-5:10 or even from 9-6. "On time" is not a virtue any of my employers have particularly valued in the last ten or fifteen years. Possibly because many of them were also fond of strolling in whenever it suited them.

I hate Anybody-itis. I've gotten that several times myself. It's very rude.