Union Counting Day

If you came into the Union today, you probably saw the random flunkies posted near the door. Why are they there? To count you!

Every year, on the third Tuesday of November, the Union staff hires a bunch of minimum wage flunkies to assist the rest of their flunkies in counting how many people enter the Union through each of its access doors. This is fine in general, but the process is horribly flawed and cumbersome. Why are we continuing to pay for this?

There is one person assigned to each door at any given time. This means that someone who needs to take a bathroom or lunch break must get someone to cover the door, leave the door unattended (and thus uncounted), or worse. I know for a fact that the 3rd Floor entrance door that enters the Student Organization wing near Union 381 was unattended at 1:30 p.m. (I left from that door), only to find two of the Rent-a-Temps on an extended lunch break at City Subs. (I was counted coming back into the Union near Burger King -- I think.)

I know someone who was hired for this two years ago, and he told me that when a large mass of people comes through the assigned door at one time, the temps are supposed to do an "amazingly accurate survey of the number of that group" known as guessing. The real number doesn't matter, he was told, as long as it's close. At the time, he was apparently considered so skilled at this task that he was assigned two doors at once (the one near Burger King and the other one near City Subs). With one clicker in each hand, he had the amazing task of directing his eyes toward two different targets, each of which required precise guesswork to count. He doesn't remember how many times he hit the wrong counter, but they may have balanced out.

The brief survey I did this year indicates that, as far as I saw, each person had only one door this time. But just think about how dull this work is! Sitting at a table (if you're lucky), watching one door and counting off the people as they enter is not my idea of work that inspires mental acuity. Don't we see movies and commercials about people who count sheep to fall asleep??? After about an hour of this, I'd be ready to confess to crimes I never committed, if it meant not having to fill the remaining seven hours of drudgery awaiting me.

Oh, just because these people are being paid minimum wage doesn't mean that UWM is getting them cheap. These workers are being hired through an agency that charges far more than the minimum wage and keeps the difference. If this work is really that necessary, isn't it cheaper to find a few students who have nothing better to do and pay them a decent wage for a few hours to get it done? This would waste less, and if the shifts were small enough, might actually yield better results.

We need to count at UWM, not be counted.