The Pissed Off Professor

Several weeks ago, I began to wonder where my W2 was: it had not arrived, and I was beginning to get worried.

If you do a bit of simple math, you’ll realize “several weeks ago” would be sometime in early February. You might also wonder why it took me until early February to miss a document that was supposed to show up in January.

I could blame this on being an English teacher: late things are so common they are, well, common.

Instead, I’ll place the blame where it belongs: The Los Rios Community College District.

Last year, a wonderful glitch in the PeopleSoft software the district uses caused all of Sacramento City College’s W2s to print with faulty figures. The bad W2s were distributed, and shortly thereafter, letters were mailed explaining the problem and notifying us that new W2s would arrive shortly. A few weeks later (in early February), I received my correct W2.

My mental where’s-my-W2? clock now operates on LRCC Distribution Time, so I didn’t begin to wonder about this year’s W2 until early February.

I placed a call to Human Resources and was told that a glitch in the PeopleSoft software had sent “a number” of W2s to old addresses. Now, my NEW address is going to be three this summer. This means it is completely independent of my old address. It gets nothing from it. Not a card on its birthday. Not a present at Christmas. In other words, NO FORWARDED MAIL.

Some stranger now has a copy of my W2. As special as I am, my W2 is much like yours: it has my full name, my social security number, my salary, details regarding my place of employment—you know, the very information identity thieves need to victimize people.

No one has apologized to me about this, and to the best of my knowledge, a general notification about this year’s “glitch” hasn’t been distributed. It is like a dirty little secret that the Los Rios Community College District has swept under the carpet.

And to think, I can’t be trusted with a library book.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 10:13 am and is filed under Books, College, Education, English, Illustration, Narration, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.