He works hard for the money

Shrek was the worst resident advisor my college had ever known. This didn't stop him from thinking he was really something special. He harbored these delusions that he was bringing order to the chaotic system. Like most RAs, he had the typical power-trip problem. But he took that to extremes. He even went on a 45 minute rant one day about how RAs should get special parking spaces next to the dorms (instead of having to park int he garage like everyone else). This drove me nuts because I could see no reason why an RA would need to park closer to a dorm than anyone else. But I digress.

Shrek really thought being an RA was the pinnacle of prestige at college. He assumed that everyone else coveted his lame-ass job. It's funny that he thought anyone else on campus actually wanted a job. I feel sorry for people who had to work through college.

He only really had three responsibilities: 1) go on patrols of the building; 2) respond to residents' concerns; and 3) make bulletin boards. He sucked at all three. But, his failure at the first two tasks were not nearly as ridiculous as his inability to make bulletin boards.

Every month, he would scramble to put-up some piece of crap. He was often asked to redo his board because it was so bad. One month, he did a bulletin for Hispanic Awareness Month which had a 3-D sombrero made from stuffing crumbled paper under another sheet of paper and drawing a circle around it with a marker. It looked like a lumpy purple tit. He must have realized it looked more like a purple boob than a Mexican hat because he took a marker and wrote "sombrarro [sic] " with an arrow pointing to it.

There was never any real information on his bulletin boards. Just a boatload of speculations which he had made regarding the topic. For example, the Purple Boob board had little blurbs which he had scribbled on with a green marker that said things like "there are a lot of Hispanics in the US today." I am not exaggerating this one. His comments were either obvious or incorrect since he couldn't be bothered to spend 5 minutes looking up anything. Also, despite the fact he had atrocious handwriting, he couldn't be bothered to type a single part of his bulletin boards.

As a result of the crappy bulletin boards and his crappy attitude, the residents decided to draw over his work or rip it down. It was quite an improvement. The first one that got destroyed was about treating women with respect (I find it rather funny that Shrek, of all people, had anything to say about this). Shrek went apeshit. He demanded to his higher-ups that the whole floor be punished for their sexist behavior. His boss, of course, realized that it wasn't a matter of sexism, it was a matter of crappy bulletin boards and told Shrek to fix his board and get over it.

The next several months, Shrek would leave his door cracked open and sit by it, waiting for someone to start tearing down the bulletin board. When he heard them, he'd swing open the door and start screaming at whoever was near the board at the time. This was really quite a sight to see.

I was only there for him catching someone once. He totally chewed the poor guy out. Then, rather than write him up on the spot, he wrote a note on his door board that said "Memo to self: write-up Manny." What a dick. Then, for the next two weeks, every time he saw him in the hall he would make some snarky comment like "I need to write you up still." Really, what a dick.

Of course, this just made it all the more fun for the residents to mess with him. They would wait until he went to class, then destroy the board, fill his door lock with glue and put a condom on his doorknob. This continued for the rest of the year.

Every month, the board was torn down within a matter of hours. Every month, he would go ballistic. I started looking forward to his board getting torn down so I could laugh about how much it pissed him off. Even years after the fact, I still find myself laughing uncontrollably when I think about the temper tantrum he threw over his destroyed purple boob.

The only time the board was not destroyed was when I put it up. This was also the only time the board looked even remotely decent. The guys must have known that someone else did it and decided not to mess with it.

I found it amusing that Shrek put so little effort into a job that he seemed to value so much. Too bad he got fired from it and then failed out of school (for the record, that was all my doing).

I hope Shrek invests more in his beer sales career than he did in the RA gig. Otherwise, I fear he may never get to be the skanky twins' escort at bar promotions.