The Saga of The Stanford Employee System

This is an ongoing saga throughout which I feel as if Strongbad's The System is Down should be playing. But, you'll understand once you read on.

I signed my offer letter for Stanford on the 16th of June, I was supposed to be officially employed on the 19th when I went in for orientation. Much to my dismay, when I went to pick up my ID card, I was not in the system yet. So, I decided I would try again the next day on my way to work as the card office is not terribly convenient to the lab. The next morning I was still not in the system. The woman did, however, give me a phone number to call before I came in the next time. I called. No one answered. So I stopped by anyway. Not in the system.

I let an entire day go by and tried again. No luck. I then e-mail my HR department to see what they know about this. I get an e-mail back saying that they all thought someone else was going to input my data, and therefore it never got done, but they would do it first thing the next morning.

I checked the next day, you can guess the answer at this point. I e-mailed again. This time I got a response saying that they had an error message that they needed IT to look at. They would get back to me when they had figured out what was wrong and I was in the system.

Monday comes around. I finally get an e-mail that says I have an employee ID number. I call the card office to make sure they have my information. First surprise is that someone answers. Second surprise is that I'm in the system! Third surprise is that at 3:30 in the afternoon they tell me the card office has closed for the day. (The hours, by the way, are 8-5). The funny thing about this is that the guy told me that the office had closed because they were too busy. I got off the phone and started laughing. I mean really, who closes down when you have too much business?! That's one of the funnier things I've heard. The only way I can make sense of it is that they had so many people they closed the office to more so that they could clear out those who were already in there. But that's not what he said. So who knows what those silly card office people do?!

In addition to all of this, I have gone down to the hospital ID center to get my card so that I can access the building with the fMRI scanner. But they were closed three days out of that week. For no appartent reason. No holidays, just, closed. (I finally did get that ID, although it is still not functional in getting me into the building because I'm not in the system. We're working on this too.)

I finally get my Stanford University ID card on Tuesday morning. I am entitled to a free CalTrain pass with my ID, so later that afternoon I go over to Parking and Transportation to receive my sticker. I guess I should have called first. I wasn't in the system. Not only that, they only download on Mondays. So I have to wait until next week to get my pass.

Can you say ridiculous?! It's so absolutely insane how incredibly slow this all is. It really can't be that hard to put a person in the system and have all pieces of the system automatically update. I mean, the registrars do it all the time. Really now. It's Stanford. I expected better. Just watch, next Monday, I'll hear the system is down, the system is down....