Can I have a bathroom break please?
By ALLISON KELEHER — adkeleher@ucdavis.edu
I’m really popular, so I have a lot of friends roaming around campus. Specifically, I have many friends in the Campus Tours office, who have recently let me in on some shocking information. Soon, a campus job will be released on Handshake — this position will require you to remain seated in a cage for up to four hours at a time.
At first glance, this sounds really freaky and weird. Who is locking up students? So, here’s the punchline: you are required to study for every hour that you are in the cage, pretty much like every other campus job.
Basically, the consensus from the Campus Tours administrators is that UC Davis students aren’t spending enough time actually studying. They’re not wrong. Take one loop around Shields Library and you can see people doing everything but studying. This reflects poorly on UC Davis, because we don’t look serious enough about our academics.
So, here’s the idea. Several students will be employed by Campus Tours to study during their shifts for minimum wage. These employees will be kept in cages so that potential Aggies can envision themselves studying.
“The purpose of the cages is so that everyone can get a good view of the subject,” one of my many friends said.
The cage will be cylindrical in shape with a small desk in the center so that prospective Aggies can get a 360-degree view of what their life will be like.
Unfortunately, California has labor laws, which means that the subject will be released for 10 minutes during their four hour shift. This will allow the subject to visit the restroom and maybe the trough. Wait, my mistake, the subject could get something to eat.
In order to ensure that the subjects are following their job description, there will be another job posting entitled “cage-keeper” which will be the supervisors to the cage dwellers. The cage-keeper will roam around in khaki shorts and a button-up top, monitoring the subjects in their cages. If the employees aren’t studying enough, the cage-keeper will report them and they will be terminated. In other words, the cage-keeper position requires some leadership skills, making the compensation slightly higher.
This proposal made its way through the Campus Tours administration, and the result is that these cages will be placed in various locations around the campus to act as crucial stops in the Campus Tours. When tour guides are at work, you can see them regularly stopping to give some inspiring monologue about key locations on campus. At each of these stops, there will be several cages nearby with students studying within. This way, prospective Aggies will be able to get a good look at each attraction. I have a feeling that the cages by Shields Library will be most popular.
My very secret source informed me that this proposal has been tested by current Campus Tours employees. They say that in one of their back offices, there’s a room with multiple prototypes of cages that haven’t made the cut for the final product. Some Campus Tours employees were asked to test each one out, and they didn’t approve of several of them. Something to do with claustrophobia. Apparently tour guides don’t like being caged up. This problem will be fixed by hiring specific cage dwellers off of Handshake so that they know what type of job they are getting into.
In my opinion, this idea is still kind of freaky and weird, but maybe I just don’t see the vision. Campus Tours has already surveyed the alumni network and they love the idea. Apparently, they used to study in cages too. Anyways, I’m currently drafting a resume so that I can be the first to apply. I need to be locked in to lock in.
Written by: Allison Keleher — adkeleher@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
