University culture is problematic for staff
Pros
Nice location. Pays more than other universities in the area for comparable positions. Tuition benefits. My Kaiser Permanente health insurance was amazing.
Cons
Very little consistency between departments. My supervisor had very little regard for my actual job description, and along with needing to chip in with a number of tasks over my pay grade on short notice, I found myself running personal errands for my supervisor, helping with their Doctoral dissertation research and even had to type up their Dissertation cover page and work on citations. I was an Executive assistant for Student Affairs--- not this person's personal assistant. I felt that I could not refuse to work on these tasks without damaging my annual review and position in the office. The University charged much too much for parking (even though they have a garage) and a year of taking Metro was actually cheaper than paying for a year of parking. Problems within the department (when an employee was stealing, for instance) were not dealt with in a consistent way that clearly involved HR because the department wanted to keep the incident quiet from the students.
