That Time TCU Sent A Cop To My House, And/Or The Overstaffing Of Higher Education

A story in three parts, and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There’s a tremendous amount of hand-wringing about the cost of college, whether college should be free, student loan debt, all that. These are political flash points (flashpoints?) for a lot of people. I can tell you that I very briefly worked for TCU, a job I ultimately resigned from (right before they went 12–0 in college football, LOL), and I worked within the “Chancellor’s Office” — P.S. Chancellor Boschini there makes over $2M for an university currently ranked 83rd in America — and I sat on the second floor of the Harrison Building for about three months. I was considered a full-time “marketing copywriter.” I had literally next to nothing to do every day. On that floor, in my section, were about 14 other people. From 11am to 2pm every day (around lunchtime), you almost never saw anyone. I mean, like, not a soul. That’s roughly 15 hours of work time per week. Let’s say five of those are guaranteed one-hour lunch breaks. The other 10? Unclear.

It was at a point over there where my direct boss, who spoke to me maybe once every eight days, went on vacation for a bit. Her boss was supposed to assign me work and monitor me, etc. On the first day of that dynamic, he told me he “didn’t really know what I was working on” and told me to complete a couple of LinkedIn Learning courses. I did those on that day. I think we maybe spoke four more times, all briefly, in the time that my direct boss was gone. Of course, one of those days I left at 1:30pm — there was nothing to do, even remotely, for the role I had — and I heard about that quite a bit. Seat time and employee surveillance often mean more than the role itself.

I kinda had it with TCU within a few weeks, although I did get to work on a few cool things, including this article about their most impactful football victories. Near the end of my time there, my boss went to NYC for this fundraiser event. She was flying back on a Friday. So what had happened was …