I Have Nothing to Offer the City University of New York- BULLSHIT!

For three years I pursued a Civil Service position with the City University of New York. 

Now some of these chumps out there who work at CUNY want to say that they don't discriminate against Black men. They think because they have a little $26K  a year job at CUNY as a CUNY Office Assistant that the discriminatory policies against other Black Men like myself doesn't exist.

Here's a little tidbit for CUNY's people to think about: When you are in the middle of a situation and you  you can't see what's going on.

It's only when you are an objective thinker and observe without bias that you can see the truth about someone or some organization. 

An outsider can see things much more clearly than an insider.  

And I see the institutional racism at CUNY.

But according to some of the people who work  at CUNY  I have nothing to offer their organization.

I’m a college graduate who got an 80 on their little Civil Service exam. But that and my 20 plus years of experience are  not good enough for CUNY's Office Assistant position.

Let me break down some of the skills I have acquired over the past twenty odd years:

A dedicated and committed worker. You want to see dedication, perseverance and commitment? Write a book. Then do it five more times. It takes dedication to sit there for months and sometimes years writing the first draft of a story. More commitment and perseverance to sit there and revise that story so each paragraph flows into the other.

When I worked at STRIVE, during my time as a project coordinator for Americorps* VISTA from 2000-2001 ninety percent of the employees were demoralized and headed for the door. I stayed the course and tried to help them through the storm.

Punctual and professional. In all my jobs I am always on the job early and ready to work. And when I’m on the job I always wear ironed shirts, pressed slacks, and shined shoes.

Some of the professors I’ve seen at CUNY don’t even iron a damn shirt when they come on the worksite. And some of these losers don't even comb their hair or wash their asses before teaching a class. 


Yeah, they really care about the students they teach.

A leader who can supervise a group or an event. When I attended the 2009 and 2010 Harlem Book Fairs. I coordinated and supervised events on my own. I bought the merchandise. I made up the flyers and business cards and supervised a staff of two.

In addition I organized and coordinated a successful book promotion campaign using social media like twitter and facebook. My Summer Young adult series I created independently, helped me to reach a larger audience of readers all over the world during the Summer of 2011.

And before then I was doing presentations for STRIVE a national job readiness program. Presentations I set up and arranged.

A skilled organizer who can complete a project from start to finish. A writer can’t quit in the middle of a book. No, they have to see it to completion.  And I saw books from start to finish six going on seven times. Then they have to do more work to either sell it to a publisher or self publish it. And when they self-publish, they have to coordinate the promotion and marketing to generate sales.  

In addition to writing and publishing my own books I have done paperback and eBook page layouts and setup for a national bestselling author and several other up-and-coming authors. And thanks to my support those authors are now more successful in terms of sales than I am. One of those authors I did page layouts and helped with promotion has now sold over 2000 eBooks over the holiday season on Amazon’s kindle.

A skilled researcher. Before I write I go and research my subjects. I go and make sure almost every little detail and every fact is just right so the reader can have the best reading experience possible. Even before I write a blog I research and check my facts.

Highly skilled in computers and Information technology. I know my way around Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat. Not to mention I have A+ certification in PC repair.

Highly skilled in sales, customer service and promotion. When I was selling and promoting those books at those book fairs, booksignings and online through social media, I had to field questions from readers and answer them in a professional manner.

When I was a project coordinator for STRIVE back in 2000 I had to pitch their job readiness program to homeless adults, one of the hardest to reach demographics of a program that finds work for the hardest to employ.

The ability to work independently on a project from start to finish. When I write books I work on my own. No supervisors, no deadlines. And I just don’t write the stories. I design the page layouts, design the covers and develop and supervise the marketing campaign.

The ability to think critically and objectively. When I write in most cases, I follow where the facts take me.

That’s what at CUNY would have gotten if they hired me for their CUNY office Assistant position for the low price of $26,000 a year.

But I don’t have anything to offer them. I’m not good enough to file their papers or answer their phones. I’m not good enough to interact with their students.

The City University of New York and its second-rate employees can go fuck itself.

This is why CUNY is so mediocre. A mediocre college that hires mediocre employees and has mediocre students.  Seriously, why the fuck are they still using ESIMS- a fucking DOS based program as the primary database for their students in 2012? 

A college which promotes a culture of mediocrity and settling for less. A college where employees are encouraged by supervisors to not do their best. I have heard from several CUNY employees that their supervisors told them NOT to do things like open their libraries on time, or try to give students their best efforts. That doing one’s best on the job would spoil students and give them a sense of entitlement.

Oh, so people who are paying their money into a school aren’t supposed to ask the college that is supposed to be providing services to them to do their very best in educating them? What kind of BULLSHIT is this?

Columbia University asks ALL their employees to provide the very best service for their students. Fordham University asks for ALL their employees to provide the very best service for their students. Monroe College where I graduated from asks ALL their employees to bring their very best. Even STRIVE, the three-week job readiness program where I worked at before applying to CUNY which serves ex-offenders, former drug addicts, welfare cases, dropouts and the homeless asks ALL their employees to provide the very best service to their program participants.

And I won’t even say these organizations ask for their employees to provide the best service to their clients. No, they INSIST upon it.

What CUNY employees call entitlement we call PRIDE. Pride in our work. Pride in our school. Establishing a standard of excellence that builds a reputation in the community and compels others to support that organization and tell their friends about it.

I truly feel sorry for any employer who hires any student who comes from the City University of New York. The culture of values their employees teach their students of not bringing one’s best to the table from day one is not preparing them for the competitive world of work in America.

I dare to say it prepares them to fail.

Because if you don’t bring your very best to the table every day, you are NOT going to survive in the world of work.

A college with such fucked up priorities that it would rather spend money to put carpet in a cafeteria rather than pay union employees overtime to keep their fucking libraries open till eleven at night. No, once the library budget for student workers is over in the middle of the semester, COAs have to work 17 hours and take comp time instead of being paid time and a half. A multibillion dollar organization that processes billions of dollars in tuition and fees and can’t pay some of its lowest paid employees overtime?

BULLSHIT.

You know what City University of New York, take your mediocre Civil Service jobs turn them sideways and shove them straight up their candy asses. I don’t want their COA job. The chump change $26,000 isn’t worth the grief. I’ll take what I have to offer elsewhere.