Welcome to the Records Department team! As an official Records Assistant, your duties include data processing, information classification, and correspondence management (formerly known as “typing, filing, and stuffing envelopes”), as well as assisting the section managers with reports and answering the telephone. For this work, you’ll receive an entirely tolerable hourly salary and benefits far more generous than you deserve as a part-time employee. You’ll also get to wear jeans to work. Congratulations!

You’ll probably need a few weeks to get acclimated to your work environment and figure out how things work in Records. But after the first month or so – once you memorize all the passwords, learn your way around the computer system, locate the extra Post-It notes, and stop responding to people who address you as “hey, new girl” – things will settle down, and you’ll find yourself with more time on your hands.

See, a chimp could do the job we’ve hired you for, but the union won’t let us hire a chimp, even though with a week in the behavior lab upstairs and bushel or two of bananas we could train the chimp pretty well in data entry and the chimp wouldn’t call in hungover nearly as often as you probably will, so we’ve hired higher primates such as yourself. Alas, higher primates frequently finish their shift’s worth of work within twenty minutes of arriving at their desks, and since the personnel department frowns on napping outside the designated lunch hour, we’ve prepared a handbook of activities with which you can amuse yourself while not working. (In answer to your unspoken question, you may either do all your work first and then indulge in these diverting time-wasters, or you may intersperse them among short bursts of productivity – whatever works for you.)

Discuss current events with your co-workers. Don’t let the fact that you only heard a snippet of the story on CNN stop you from holding forth on the latest front-page outrage. Rest assured that nobody else read beyond the headlines either.

Take advantage of your location by the thermostat by charging a small fee every time a co-worker asks you to adjust the temperature.

Using straws, extra flyers from the Women’s Center, and remaindered Easter candy, construct The Tomb Of The Unknown Marshmallow Peep. Light a small flame in front of it and weep bitterly when the head of the department “smells something burning” and extinguishes it, accusing her of having “no respect for Peep and country.” Take the rest of the day off.

Conduct feline behavioral roundtable with the woman in the next cubicle: chart your cat’s nap cycles; discuss the color and texture of his hairballs, replicating as closely as possible the sounds he makes while coughing one up in order to enable critical analysis (“well, ordinarily he goes like ëho-ho-HOOOAARRRFF,’ but this time he went more like ëgak-gak-GEERRAACK’”); reminisce about the operation he had three years ago and how much it cost; describe his catnip consumption methods in laborious detail. Bring in hundreds of nearly identical photographs of your cat for this purpose; when the woman in the next cubicle brings in photos of her cats, squeal over them until a polyp forms on one of your vocal cords.

Solicit medical advice from those in nearby cubicles. When those in nearby cubicles solicit medical advice from you, remark in a self-deprecating tone that, well, you don’t know, but you did read an article once on this topic, you can’t remember where.

Walk past the conference room next door, for no reason other than to determine if the people from the morning meeting have left the breakfast buffet unattended. If you don’t see anyone in the conference room, scuttle back to the Records Department office and mutter nonchalantly to the woman who sits by the door, “The eagle has landed.” Watch everyone in the department stream out of the office and into the conference room.

Check in only one place for surplus monarch-size envelopes. When you don’t find any, panic and order a dozen boxes from Office Services, then discover after they’ve arrived that you have no place to store them because the guy who works afternoons has twenty boxes stashed under his desk already.

Experiment with different ways to pester the woman who sits beside the printer. Learn how to shout “Shelley, can I print now?” and “Shelley, did my thing print yet?” in different languages. Ask her what you “should do” if the printer has no paper in it. Ask her if she has “seen this thing” you printed two days ago. Ask her if she knows “how this font got on here” when she obviously doesn’t. If she doesn’t know the answers to your questions, ask again, but louder.

Fall on the floor and flail about. Try to knock a few things over on your way down. When the student worker rushes over to see what happened, moan through gritted teeth, “Paper . . . cut . . . tell Mama I . . . love her . . .” and pretend to lose consciousness. For variety, you can also say, “Sugar shock . . . must . . . reach . . . peanut M&Ms . . .” See how many times you can do this before she asks the work-study dean for a transfer to the bursar’s office.

Stalk about in a state of high dudgeon. When you have worked yourself up into a genuine tizzy, burst unannounced into the cubicles of others and accuse them of pilfering vital pieces of office equipment from your desk. If you don’t feel like getting up, wait for a quiet moment, then bellow as loudly as you can, “Oh, FINE, steal my damn stapler AGAIN, why don’t you?” Spend a fruitful hour labeling every single thing on your desk with tiny signs that read “THESE BELONG TO SARAH – DO NOT STEAL” in threatening red pen.

Develop compulsions about which species of paper clip, Post-It note, and rubber band you prefer. Refuse to use any other kind.

Receive an assignment which, for whatever reason, you would prefer not to do. Ten minutes before your shift ends, drop the assignment in your boss’s in box with an apologetic note that says, “I can’t read your handwriting.” Skulk out of the office.

Do little push-ups with your middle finger and thumb to strengthen them for quicker Alt-Tab toggling.

Decide you need a snack, even though you practically just finished chewing the last bite of your breakfast. Take cafeteria requests from each and every person in the department, knowing full well that the more you receive, the longer it will take. Encourage people to order things like soufflÈ and chateaubriand; welcome anal-retentive orders involving specific amounts of ice, wedges of lemon on the side, and “not the cream cheese they leave out, the other kind in the little packet thingie.”

Find new and creative ways to disparage the cafeteria coffee while drinking upwards of a liter of “that tepid swill” each morning.

Come across a clerical error in the files. Denounce the offender aloud, wondering in a clearly enunciated voice exactly what kind of blooming idiot doesn’t know the alphabet. Realize that you made the error in question. Fall abruptly silent.

Add Elvis Presley to the records database. Instead of answering when the section manager wants to know what you need Graceland’s zip code for, titter and look vague. Guffaw when pieces of mail sent to Mr. Presley come back marked “Return To Sender.”

Monitor your blood pressure while attempting to explain to various callers that no, you cannot give them the home telephone numbers of famous alumnae, and no, you cannot do a tab search under the last name “Lee” to find a friend of theirs because it takes too long and crashes the system, and no, you cannot send them copies of their transcripts because only the registrar has access to that information. When the needle hits the red zone, hang up.

Avenge yourself on alumnae who tell you in a snippy tone of voice that they do not want to receive solicitations in the mail by adding them to every mailing list available in the code database. If this fails to appease you, open your own record in the system and change your solicitation address from “Miss” to “Her Royal Highness.” Six months later, when the president of the college sends you a Christmas card, raise your eyebrows at the “HRH” in front of your name on the envelope.

Decide you need another snack.

Form a WB programming support group with your cubicle-mates. Become the hero of the office when you bring in a taped copy of the latest episode of Dawson’s Creek, knowing that if you miss Felicity, you can get the blow-by-blow from someone at work.

Investigate new ways to screw up the ludicrously simple arithmetic on your timesheet.

We hope that this list will help you while away the hours until your shift ends. Feel free to improvise with your own time-filling techniques, and if you get really bored, you can always file a union grievance. After all, you have the union to thank for the fact that you never have enough work to do.

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