A real-life situation

My apologies to Scott: please do read below for his amusing and terrifying accounts of the American secondary education system.

I'm recounting this here because it was too long for a Tweet and too complicated for a series of Tweets.

We moved into this office back in early March. One of the changes to the new office was getting new, more advanced phones for every employee. The problem is that many of these phones do not work, and have not since we moved in. This would include my own. I'll admit I did not enthusiastically complain about this, since having a phone that doesn't work means having a phone that I don't have to answer. Regardless, a number of factors have prevented these refurbished phones from being returned to the manufacturer. Until yesterday.

Fast forward to today. Staff member in cube across from mine answers the phone: it's a transfer student wanting to talk to transfer coordinator. She goes to transfer the call, only to find that said colleague has no phone. There is much crying and gnashing of teeth over this, until they agree to transfer the call into one of the empty offices in which the phone actually works.

This in turn leads to our three hourly staff members going on a (justifiable) bitch fest about how ridiculous it is that 1) we don't have working phones, 2) we have a university telephone service office, just not one that can actually replace bad phones, 3) this university is not operated rationally (SHOCKING!).

So anyway, back to the story: while phone bitching is still going on transfer coordinator (TC) gets off phone with student and goes back to talk to hourly staff (HS) member who originally answered the call. The following conversation takes place:
TC: It was that Joel guy who just applied.
HS: Oh. The way he talked, it doesn't sound like he was born here.
TC: Yeah, he's a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo
HS: Well, I can see why he'd want to get out of there.
Me: I bet they have working phones.
Everyone in cubicle row: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Boss-lady walking by (unbeknownst to me): Hey! I heard that! We're doing what they can to fix the problem.

Sometimes I do enjoy being in the office.