Dear Dissertation Coach,
Someone told me that I needed to be nice to the staff of the department where I’m going to graduate school. What’s up with that? I get being pleasant to the faculty, but why the staff?
Curious grad student
Dear Curious grad student,
I won’t go into that everyone deserves to be treated kindly. The staff members in your department fit into a special category because they have the power to harm or help you.
When I started graduate school one of the more senior graduate students told me that I should be nice to the office staff. When asked why, she said, “The office staff is the fount of all services. They can make your life easier or they can make it harder. Which would you rather they do?”
Consider what the office staff controls. In the office where I worked, they controlled teaching assistant and assistant instructor assignments. Sure faculty members could request a specific teaching assistant, but many did not and took what was given to them.
For example, what if Steve Social-Star came into the office frequently and asked the staff about how their lives were going? On this particular day, he remembered that the office manager’s son had a birthday that day and wished him a great day. In the next hour, Randy Rude came in and brusquely asked for some paper for the copy machine and questioned why the copy machine’s paper hopper had been allowed to go empty. Now you’ve met two graduate students and it is time to assign next year’s TA slots, neither student is funded, but you have an extra slot to fill, which of these students is more likely to be chosen for that slot? You got it. The one who chatted with the staff and was nice to them. We can perhaps understand that the students in Randy’s class had been unruly and he took out his unhappiness about the students on the staff. Regardless of the reason, they will remember how they were treated.
The staff also controlled which classrooms an instructor was assigned to teach in. I don’t mean to say that the staff would be punitive and assign Randy the classroom clear across campus to punish him, but they are certainly less likely to go out of their way to give him a classroom in the building.
The staff controlled office supplies. Some office supplies were freely available and some were not. If a graduate student had a special request for say blue push pins, would an office staff member be more likely to order those for Steve or for Randy?
Remember this also when you become a junior faculty member. Be pleasant to the staff in your new departmental office. Drop by to chat. Learn their names and their stories. You don’t have to go so far as to bring gifts, but on Administrative Professionals’ Day be sure and acknowledge in some way how this staff helps you to do your job.
So, yes, dear curious grad student, be kind to the office staff if for no other reason than that they can make your life better or worse on a day-to-day basis.
Warmly,
Your Dissertation Coach
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