I work for a college. We recently were assigned two work/study students

[LuckyTheDog]

How should I torture them?

[LiberalEsto]

1. Make them graph sentences. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha haaa

[Chan790]

2. What department?

We used to send people running all over campus looking for imaginary items but you have to set that one up well in advance because everybody they get sent to needs to be in on it. It helps if the item is something ridiculous like a "brass magnet", "left-handed smoke shifter" or "reverse buffer stack compiler" that they should realize right away is a not-existent MacGuffin but they never do.

Make them grade papers on subjects they don't know.

Coffee-fetching?

The worst thing ever done to me for a work-study job was I had a supervisor who expected us to come to her unpaid "training sessions" for "CEUs" (useful only for being rehired to the same position the following year) for a work-study job in the modern language lab/library. As an example, one of these was on how to make a website in GeoCities, another on the Dewey Decimal System where the resources of the lab were not organized by Dewey or even LCC or a stack model...it was alphabetical.

[Aristus]

3. A good techie name for a McGuffin is one I used to use:

A "syncho-retroverter."

[LuckyTheDog]

7. It's the PR office

Maybe I could ask a reporter friend to call when nobody else is here and ask for something complicated.

[OriginalGeek]

10. way back when I was in the warehouse business

we would send people looking for the red-handled box stretcher. "Come on son, that shit ain't gonna fit if we don't stretch the box - go get the red-handled box stretcher!"


one time a kid asked "Why the red handled one?" and my asst manager and I just looked at each other (trying not to bust out laughing) and nearly at the same time said "You IDJIT! the YELLOW handled one is too SMALL!"

about half the time they'd come back with any tool they could find as long as it had a red handle. "IS this it?" "No dipshit - that's a bolt cutter. Keep looking." The best part of that is I had been looking for those bolt cutters. Completely forgot where I'd left them.

[Myrina]

4. Noooooooo ... I was work study!!

I loved it (except for the one professor who was too cheap to buy books so he'd order 'review copies' and make me photo-copy every damn page) and learned so much more chatting with my profs in the office than I did in class ...

And when I got hired on, I had 2 work study's of my own, eventually. They are still nice to me - giving me free hockey tickets, buying me a beer when we cross paths out in the real world, etc.

Don't be an ass.

[graywarrior]

8. Yeah, be nice to them!

They actually have a choice with whom they'd like to work, so be good to them.

[Sanity Claws]

5. Be nice.

Being nice will keep them up nights wondering when the axe will fall.

[lastlib]

6. Sex, beer, and pizza! (Use your imagination for the rest!)

[Brigid]

9. Aw, come on. Don't be mean.