Am I lacking...

...in compassion?

Seriously. Do I not have the appropriate amount of empathy for people? Because I thought I did.

Scenario: Student A comes to our front counter and wants to register. Student has no id, photo or otherwise (wallet was stolen), does not know her student id, and her registration form has no courses listed. When asked which courses she would like, she mentions her advisor knows and has emailed the Assistant Registrar. Right. Can I call her Advisor, she asks me. Uh, no. I advise the student she needs to either drop a course, or get additional course approval from the Asst Registrar (which I assume is why the advisor was contacting the AR to begin with). If you aren't dropping a course, I tell her, you'll have to wait to hear back from the AR. Simple.

Student A: "Can you call my advisor?" (again).

Me: "Uh, no. You need to either drop the extra course, or get the approval. Do you want to drop the extra course and add the new course?"

Student A: "Sure."

Me: "What course do you want to add?"

SA: "I don't know, can you call my advisor?"

M: "Uh, no."

SA: "What day is it?"

M: "Wednesday."

SA: "What's the date?"

M: "The 23rd."

SA: "If it's Wednesday, how can it be the 24th?"

M: (internally) If you don't get the hell out of here, I'm going to snap.
M: "It's the 23rd."

Then she intently stares at my nametag while writing down my name and position, which takes her an inordinate amount of time.

Fantastic.

If I'm in need of more compassion, it should have been posted in the job description. Perhaps it was. I should have mentioned my compassion depletes in direct relation to the amount of money I make less than $70,000 (seems like a fair number, as far as measuring compassion goes). : )

Mah.