A Task to Write a Blog

A task to write a blog, makes for many, many topics to contemplate. One of the most daunting pieces of the tasks was where to start. I thought about parking, shuttle, bikes, appeals, maintenance and very recently snow, snow, snow. So tired of the snow if you were not able to tell. All topics I am well versed to write about. However, with all these thoughts my mind kept coming back to staff. Our staff are what makes all the magic happen. With no staff everything remains as is. Signage that has fallen over stays fallen. A gate that has been ran into stays broken. Without staff an appeal would not get processed. Signage would not get created and placed for an event. I suppose the upside for some would be no staff means no citations. Conversely no citations may mean free for all parking and limited availability to those who chose to follow the rules.

I have heard it said many times over again that most often people do not chose parking they fall into it. I was hired for a woman who was retiring after 26 years in Parking. I can vividly remember my much younger self telling her she was crazy for staying in one place for that long, 5 years was my longest and then I was moving on. That was 23 years ago. So why stay 18 years past my timeline you ask? It is because this is an amazing and dynamic opportunity of work. While many things are the same during the course of the day, one day is very much not like the other. Even though you have diversity in the daily activities what makes those activities worth doing is not only the service we provide to our customer base, but the staff. We train and grow as a unit. We lean on each other, we laugh and just genuinely like coming to work every day. I think this may be true for most transportation (of all walks)  professionals, the people we surround ourselves with bring benefit to our world in more ways than just a work life. Being a part of a university has an additional level of staffing as our primary staff are students so we are able to be a part of the journey to the next phase of someone’s life. College is such a pivotal  (well really it is 18 – 22ish) in mental maturity, understanding of life and all that societal expectations entail. One of the hardest parts of that is to let go as the graduations occur. One of the items that creates pride and accomplishment of a job well done is to see our staff take on the next chapter of their lives and be successful. The point is further driven home when our past students come back to visit and share their life experiences.

At the end of the day I suppose give life your all and have fun be it for 5 years or 23. Chose to make a difference.