Colleges try harder than a lot of other workplaces to keep the ‘we’re all family’ thing going. I think faculty try harder than a lot of other employees to believe in it. But every now and then you get a slap in the face and are reminded that it is, in the end, an employer-employee relationship.
That happened to me this week, when I tripped over a student backpack and banged up my knee. I finished work, went home to ice the knee, and got a call from school. Had I filed an incident report with HR? And when I notified HR, a flurry of other calls came in — the upshot being that I had to get up off my sofa, go out in the rain, and get a blood alcohol and drug test at a clinic halfway across town.
Sure, I know why insurance requires it. And I know why it’s better to do it to everybody than make distinctions which then would have to be justified themselves. Still, I was not pleased. As a writer, though, I have a mental recourse other employees may not enjoy, so as I sat in the waiting room I tried to figure out how this sort of thing would play out with faculty who had been injured by demons, or by being cursed by colleagues. I will get something useful out of this, beyond the occasionally necessary reminder that it’s just a job.
