My Experience at Kingsborough

 or How Kingsborough Screwed Me Over

I was drawn into Kingsborough by my Fiance. She was attending the college herself, so that meant that I would end up visiting the campus every now and again. One day, while waiting for her to leave her on campus job, I was offered a position working in the college. Having heard of how simple jobs on campus were, and being desperate for money, I decided that it couldn’t hurt. How wrong I would soon find myself to be.

After a brief interview by the director of the Kingsborough Center for Advanced Technology Training, or KCATT, I was hired almost on the spot for my technological experience. I must say, I was slightly intimidated by the job, but was reassured that there wasn’t much to it.

The first couple of months were pretty good. I was working full time because it was almost the end of the fiscal year. I had been promised the possibility of full time and my immediate supervisor was a relatively fun guy. Not to mention the fact that I was offered a second job on campus by the Chief Information Officer. Life was starting to look up.

Then the semester ended. I was contacted by the person who hired, my real boss, to work as a trouble shooter for teachers inputting their grades into the system. I wasn’t exactly too thrilled about the fact of having to come in during a weekend, but the money was going to be good. After being asked to do it, my boss never contacted me again with any training information, and didn’t even talk to me again until a week before the said weekend.

At that point, I was sent to take a crash course on the system, and then was thrown into things a few days later. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. If it’s not bad enough dealing with teachers who refuse to admit they did something wrong, I had to deal with an office that had no air conditioning in the middle of June. Frustration and heat do not make good bed fellows.

The rest of the summer didn’t go to bad. Things went back to normal pretty quickly, but then the fall semester started. Suddenly, one week before the semester, everybody wanted things done for them. To make matters even worse, smart boards were installed in certain class rooms, and nobody knew how to use them. Of course, KCATT was the number one place everybody was sent to for training.

Things were pretty hectic at this point, and my hours had been reduced down to part time. So every day I was leaving with tons of stuff still needing to be done. Then the boss calls and tells me I need to trouble shooting again for the beginning of the semester. I was not as willing this time because it was cutting into my work hours. So I had to take hours away from my busy days so I could come in on the weekend. It was the same problems all over again, except this time Campus Security didn’t want to let me onto campus.

Now that things were getting busy, my supervisor was starting to stress, and freak out on me. I tried handling things as best as I could, but it was hard. I was doing most of the work, while my supervisor just chatted away with people who were coming into the office. We got another employee at the time, but he just wasn’t ever coming into work.

Of course, I was the one who had to complain to the boss. So we ended up getting a temporary employee who knew how to do stuff but wouldn’t do anything. She would just come in and sit at the desk “looking pretty.” Mind you, things were still busy. They lightened up a bit but never lessened to the point where we had a real breather.

My supervisor kept on getting stressed out, complaining that he was buying materials with his own money, and saying he was the only one doing anything. We were also constantly having machine and material issues. I was the one doing everything in the office, trying to resolve issues, and trying to get another employee who knew what they were doing. My supervisor was constantly out of the office.

Finally, I had a break down in the office. I just couldn’t take any more of what was going on. After that, I tried going back to work for a few more weeks, but I couldn’t take the stressed out nature of my supervisor any longer. I couldn’t handle all the pressure on me. Especially when I was only considered a part timer and only making minimum wage.

I was neither making the right wage or getting the respect I deserved from anybody. Never was I given either the full time position or the second job in the college. Office politics prevented me from ever being anything more than a nobody who ran an entire office pretty much single handedly. In the end, I ended up writing the boss a resignation letter, and never received a reply of any form. Neither did I receive any further communication from my supervisor. Even now, six months later at the time of writing this, I have not received any form of communication from anybody within the school.

I’m not the only one who’s had bad experiences within the school. I know many students and employees who’ve had the same or worse experiences. Sometimes it’s at the hands of those in charge and other times by fellow peers. My reason for writing this is to share my experience with you so you can escape the clutches of Kingsborough Community College. Don’t get pulled under by the false promises the college offers.