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Bureaucracy
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My new job would like to know more about my employment history. Specifically, they would like the usual verifications (begin and end dates, percent time worked, job title, etc.) for much of the past work I've done here at UCLA. That includes some old TAships done as a grad student (1997-1998), and my postdoctoral work (two different jobs, one July 2004-December 2004, the other January 2005 to the present). You'd think that this sort of thing would be easy--UCLA is a big place which sends thousands of people on to academic jobs every year, and must certainly have ways of verifying previous employment, right? This should be easy.
Nope.
The TAships are more than five years ago, so those records were purged from the appropriate department. They recommend I go to Payroll, which has all the official records of such things and provides verifications.
The department for which I did my first postdoc seemed uneasy about actually putting signatures on paper--I don't know why--and also recommended I check with the graduate division. They sent me to Payroll as well.
So, no problem. I'm on my way to payroll.
Oh, no. Payroll sees that one part of the verification form sent to me by Palomar includes a "Description of job duties", and everything comes to a screeching halt. I am informed that Payroll only verifies dates and percnt time, and can't say anything about job duties. Actually, that makes sense, I think, and I arrange that my postdoctoral supervisors will provide a separate description of my job duties. Back to Payroll we go.
Oh, no, they can't do that. They can't sign the form if it has that "description" box on it, even if they don't have to fill it out.
I ask them what I should do, and they say they can provide a separate printout with my start and end dates, percent time, etc. on it, which they can sign. I check with Palomar, and they (grudgingly) accept that. Back to Payroll for the magic forms.
Oh, no. They can only provide that form for my current postdoctoral appointment.
"But I just want the same thing for the postdoc appointment I had right before this one!"
"Our computer can't do that."
They do provide me an unofficial employment history--unsigned--which does not include percent time and codes job title in what seems to me to be Urdu or Pashto. I suspect that this will be unacceptable.
Apparently, nobody at UCLA can sign a form which says "Yes, Talarohk worked here from July 2004 to December 2004 as a postdoc at 100% time", or any sort of verification of the TAships I did a while back. I have no idea how other people who have been through this have solved the problem, because nobody will tell me that either.
I think I have a few new gray hairs. I will name them, collectively, "Payroll".
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