Maintaining maintenance
October 6, 2005
Whether it’s a broken refrigerator or a shower without hot water, Simpson’s campus services is there on the double to fix it. The problem is that since maintenance is understaffed and overworked, things like minor work orders tend to get put on the back burner.
At a small college like Simpson, every student feels his or her problem or complaint is the most important: It should be taken care of first. Sometimes they just can’t understand why this doesn’t always work out. Patience is a virtue that Simpson students must learn until more maintenance staff is hired.
Ask any student on campus and they will praise the campus services staff for its hard work, good personalities and overall friendliness. But it’s also easy to lay blame on maintenance when things don’t get done. It’s not their fault if your drain plugs and a worker can’t get there right away.
Why not fix the system? It’s obviously the problem when there are more than 700 work orders waiting to be filled and not enough people to ever get them done.
Simpson needs to hire more maintenance staff – they’re overworked. If there are more people to fill orders, the workload can be distributed more evenly. If that’s not an option, the college could at least make sure all apartments and dorm rooms have the right furniture before students arrive, so fewer work orders will be needed for things like desk chairs and bookcases, and more time can be focused on emergencies.
Simpson has some great campus-services workers and they deserve better than this. The new Director of Campus Services, Jesus Mendez, now has the opportunity to make things better around here – he should start with a larger staff and a more efficient reaction to work orders and emergencies.