Last week, we found ourselves nearly out of coffee. “We’ll just order some online,” we thought. This would normally have been handled by Marion Janssens, assistant to the editors at Observant, but she is retiring on 4 February. With no replacement lined up – we didn’t receive a single application for the 0.4 FTE position – the Finance department has taken on her financial duties, which formed the bulk of her work. Other, smaller tasks have been divided up among the team, at least for the time being. It’s made us realise just how smoothly everything ran under MJ’s watch. Ordering office supplies, approving travel reimbursements, communicating with the printer, preparing the annual schedule, arranging advertisements, overseeing the making of the university elections newspaper, taking minutes, managing subscriptions – for years, we never had to think about any of it.
I’ll be in charge of ordering office supplies from now on. Thankfully, MJ stocked up before leaving, so we’re set for the foreseeable future. The university elections newspaper has also become my responsibility. Starting this year, we’ll only handle the layout and printing; the organisational side – making sure candidates submit their texts and get their photos taken by a strict deadline – now falls to UM’s Central Electoral Office.
Whoops
The coffee situation, however, turned out to be trickier than expected. It wasn’t as simple as just placing an order online, our colleague WD discovered. Only the authorised account holder – the assistant to the editors – has access to Observant’s bank account and can make payments via iDEAL. Whoops – that was something we’d overlooked. MJ helped us out one last time, and a fresh supply of coffee has since arrived. We’re still sorting out access to the account.
Yesterday, I conducted an interview on unnecessary bureaucracy at UM – a topic we’ve been meaning to write an article about, but it keeps getting pushed back as other things come up. As a small, self-contained team within UM, we’ve been relatively insulated from the red tape that plagues many of our colleagues across the university. We enjoy a great deal of autonomy, and when we do need to align with the rest of UM, MJ was always there to take care of it.
Wonderful
We’re going to miss her in the office – not just because of all the work she took off our hands, but most importantly because she’s been such a wonderful colleague.