Why You Shouldn’t Complain if You Haven’t Submitted a Goddamn Work Order

Savannah Brooks ’26

Executive Good Samaritan

Anybody who knows me knows I do a ridiculous amount of things at Trinity. I’m editor-in-chief of the only newspaper, I work four jobs (first year seminar mentor, student recruitment ambassador, game operations worker, Watkinson Library student assistant. Also, I’m a retired resident advisor and orientation leader), and I generally find myself to be a (sometimes unwitting) encyclopedia about the College, both past and present. I answer plenty of people’s questions, I investigate campus rumors, I tell parents and high school kids why they should apply here and I pride myself on knowing just about every resource available here. 

In my various lines of work, I deal with plenty of questions that don’t take a layered understanding of rocket science to answer, and generally I’m happy to answer them (although sometimes I wonder why the ability to Google something seems to be so rare these days). But absolutely nothing sets me off like the questions and complaints I often got when I was an RA and still hear plenty about today. I’ve listed some examples for your reading pleasure:

“Oh my god, one of the stall doors in my dorm bathroom has been broken for two years now. It’s so annoying.”

“I don’t have a window screen, so I can’t open my window or else bugs will come in.”

“Wait, you got your hallway water filter changed? How? Ours has been red the whole year, it’s gross.”

And, perhaps my favorite, which came from fellow Tripoders (you know who you are):

“Oh yeah, the construction workers over the summer left the fridge unplugged in the office, and it has some food that rotted in there. It’s not ours so we just closed the door, what else are we supposed to do?”

My dear reader, if you complain about an issue in your dorm (or anywhere else on campus) and you have not submitted a work order asking for facilities to fix it, you are the worst kind of person. The work order form takes about two minutes to complete, and then you don’t have to do anything else. You just wait for it to be fixed for you. Some of you pay hard-earned tuition money and won’t let our facilities team do their jobs to help you??? I pity your future home when you have to do all the work yourself or pay people to do it for you. Know that if you complain to me, I will ask you: “Well, did you submit a work order?” If you say no, I will post your photo in the Tripod to publicly shame you for an entire week. 

Now, I’m not going to tell you to never complain about Trinity’s buildings. I complain plenty. I had a mouse infestation (a literal nest in my wall. Darkest time of my life, which is ironic because I slept with the lights on for several nights) while living in Vernon sophomore year, and, as of last summer, the infestation is very much still alive. But, you know what? I’m allowed to complain, because I did my duty as a good samaritan and put that mouse infestation in writing! 

To conclude this piece, I want to encourage you all to practice some basic goddamn decency. I also want to thank the lovely BP editor, Angelica Gajewski ‘26, for letting me get this rant out in her section.