It's a 24/7 position, meaning there's one person in the office at any given time to deal with students that have locked themselves out of their room/emergencies/etc, so that also means everyone gets at least two "crap" shifts throughout the week (i.e. shifts that run through the weekend and asinine early shifts, like from 9pm-12am, 12am-3am, and so on), so you have to carefully schedule these shifts around your classes; you have to deal with a bit of freshman sass and drama (but that's typical of any people-oriented service); there is a student housing staff banquet at the end of every year, but all the CAs must go, so they look to the SAs to cover all of their shifts and I covered so many shifts that weekend and that was probably the most boring weekend ever in the office for me (but major green was acquired!); you NEED to learn how to speak up if a 3am-6am won't work for you on a particular day, especially if you have a bunch of hard classes later on in the day because soon enough exams will come and you know you will be sleep deprived for it if you're working a late shift and you will be stuck with that shift because NO ONE will want to take it for you and you just have to realistically look at your schedule and think, "hmmm, will this work/school schedule make me want to pull my hair out???" (and DON'T feel bad if a shift isn't working for you because after all everyone else is thinking about themselves and the staff will have no problem taking advantage of your eagerness to take an early shift. putting your academics first is KEY); if you're not a night owl, don't take this job and just go for hospitality services; you move in to campus earlier than everyone else for scheduling and training so you're lonely for a few days; checking people in and out at the dorms at the beginning and end of each school year is fast-paced and a wee bit stressful, but basically the RAs deal with all that; you can't leave until the next person comes in for their shift and if they're late you have to stay and it might affect your schedule; it also sucks having a shift from 6-9am because when the hall secretary who is supposed to work after you calls in sick at the very last minute you have to figure out who is going to fill that position and most of the staff are going to class around that time, so that can be pretty inconvenient especially if you need to go to class after work, too; you usually get paid on a monday or a tuesday, so no pay day just before the weekend begins; you don't work more than 19 hours on this job, so don't expect a lot of dough to cover all of your expenses; don't even think about sleeping on the job because on-call hall coordinators wander in and out of the residence hall during the late hours and they need you to be alert so they can sign a check-in sheet (sometimes they will even want to have long conversations with you especially when you're sleep deprived); in my experience, my supervisor was very passive-aggressive and was very disorganized but this doesn't affect you as much as it affects the RAs; sometimes the environment can be negative when the RAs are venting and stressing out, but most RAs have the resilience to turn themselves around and come up with a solution to a problem; you have to come in 10 mins early to do the money count when you clock in and again before you clock out, so if you don't know how to count money you're screwed; you don't always have quiet time to yourself to do homework since RAs and other staff come in and out of the office as needed (some even chill out at the hall secretary's desk to watch netflix with other RAs and basically interrupt your intended study time).
This is all I can think about, but I would definitely recommend this job if you don't mind the little quirks and are looking for flexibility.
