Winter Woes

It IS Winter Isn’t It?

Okay… call me crazy, but this IS winter isn’t it? There’s snow in the air and ice on the ground. The temperature is cold and the wind chill is freezing. Old people are dying in their underheated homes. The stupid groundhog hasn’t made its appearance to announce the coming of spring yet. So I must not be crazy in assuming it is winter. Unfortunately, the insanity doesn’t lie with me, but with the rest of the world… specifically Old Navy. They’re no longer selling winter-wear items like scarves and they’re stocking spring clothes. When asked where the scarves are, the sales associate merely said, “It’s not in season right now. We’re selling spring clothes.”

When I finally lifted my jaw from off the floor, I decided that arguing with this poor kid who obviously had no idea how stupid she sounded wasn’t worth the time. How the hell ISN’T it “in season” to sell SCARVES?!? What the hell am I supposed to do with the endless tube tops and shorts that are on their racks now? I AM COLD NOW!!! If any of you reading this work for stores that are beginning to stock spring items in the dead of winter, please question this policy from your superiors and let me know exactly what they say at epoon1@uic.edu I just might publish the idiotic company policies in a later article.

Speaking of Stupid Winter Policies…

UIC still is inept at salting the walkways and the parking lots. It’s been three years since I last wrote an article about it after I got into a fender bender in a UIC parking lot because of the snow and ice. I’m sure many of you have noticed cars skidding, people sliding, and huge piles of salt in places that no one walks. This is ridiculous. The parking lots are especially dangerous. While much of the lot is relatively ice-free, the individual parking spots are pristine slabs of ice that UIC can host the World Championships of Figure Skating on.

Cars can’t pull into these spots without losing control! Hell, people can’t get out of their cars without nearly killing themselves. The lots are generally pretty empty near the end of the day and at night, so why can’t UIC salt the parking spots then? Wait, I do stand corrected, the handicapped parking spots are salted… for the zero cars that park there on a daily basis. Maybe that’s why there’s a growing number of handicapped parking stalls… it’s to accommodate all the currently able-bodied students that will subsequently break their necks this semester.

And Speaking of Unsafe Practices at UIC…

Many of my classes are in tiny little classrooms that have bolted down chairs for a set number of people with little room for adding more. But yet, why the hell are people sitting in the aisles or on the floor along the walls during classes because there are no seats? If I’m just a few minutes late getting to class, there’s no room for me to sit! And by late I mean, if I’m not there immediately after the previous class files out of there like clowns out of a Volkswagen Beetle. This is ridiculous… I’m paying ever increasing tuition to sit on the wet, muddy floor from the snow that students track in. I’m definitely not getting my money’s worth.

In case of fire, all of us are doomed because it’s not easy to maneuver around in those woefully too small aisles between the bolted down chairs and the little desks that don’t flip up. Not to mention the multitude of students sitting on the floor that would inevitably be trampled to death. Is this what college education means? I would hope not. UIC better pull its head from out of its anus and figure something out. Here are a few suggestions, get rid of the archaic bolted seats and let there be free-moving chairs. Or how about stop cutting classes so that students don’t all have to cram in the ONE section that is offered for a class that everyone needs? Or maybe stop letting students get some override and enroll in a class that’s too full already? Not everyone can be satisfied, if you don’t get the class you need, too bad… take another. This is ridiculous.