Blue shirts; white shirts (8/19/80)

You'd think College administrators would get it right. But tomorrow I have to register for classes, exchanging those I have to those I need, and the whole process will be a mess, lines of anxious coed stung our the doors of Raubinger Hall, clutching pieces of paper that authorize them to make the change.

 I never realized just how stupid humanity is until I got to college, where among the best and the brightest are the most bureaucratic, systems within systems that operate with one dismally slow pace, double and triple signing forms, making sure that every student complies to these rigid standards.

 All this comes at a bad time.

 I work full time and still can't pay the bills. And for this, I get treated like a slave by my blue-shirted bosses, who want to humiliate me before I go back to school, taking their shot at the college kid while they still can. Although they won't see me again after I leave in September, some college graduate will eventually make hell for them, coming out of college as a junior executive, a piece of paper issued by some institution saying this soul with 120 credits can now humiliate a supervisor working here 20 years.

 It makes no sense.

 I see their white shirts floundering in the front office like overpaid grocery clerks with pencils behind their ears, needing to justify their high salaries as the sweating people in the warehouse struggle to make rent -- like me.

 At college, the uneducated control the place, bristling with efficiency, while laughing behind the backs of graduates who won't find jobs as good as theirs, forcing each future white shirted fool to leap through hoops like trained dogs.

 "After all, you'll be a college grad some day," their eyes say, "And then you'll make me do as much."

 I don't know which side I hate more, the arrogant white shirts or the ignorant blue ones, each kicking me around with the presumption I'll get even some day.