Could've been worse

In general I don't talk about my work too much here. Mostly because I ultimately have fears of being fired. I don't know why. Currently we're so short staffed the rest of us could show up drunk and insult the president and we wouldn't be fired. (Ok maybe if we did THAT.) But you get my point...

Anyway, since I've been here (4 and a half years) we've been trying to figure out how to get an online benefits solution going. Currently everything is done paper to pencil. Ew. So finally we were on the dockett for the committee that decides the IT stuff and the subcommittee I worked on had two different proposals for that committee. (Remind me sometime to expound upon how much I hate that colleges all use committees to decide everything. The profit world was so much easier on crap like that. We just did what we wanted - with input of course - but we weren't stuck examining our navel for meeting upon meeting upon meeting..) Our proposals were 1 - expensive 3rd party option (oh please yes!) or 2 - less expensive but time consuming and soul crushing letting our IT department build it and take 3 years to do it option. THREE YEARS. (Oh god no!) Well I met with the chairman of the subcommittee who is on the real committee and she had well not the best news but really not the worst. My biggest fear was that we were going to get approved for the 3rd party option but when the budgets were decided we were going to be denied the $50k annually needed for the project. That would've defeated me. I was also braced for the build it ourselves possibility. Not horrible but really not good either. I wasn't prepared for the answer I received... The committee thinks we (the college) needs to fully look at the system we are using for financials and payroll and HR and determine if it needs to be replaced or whatever. On the one hand it means I continue to limp along with paper and an instable Access/Sequel (I know that's not the right spelling) database. On the other... we could be out from under the oppressing thumb of the most crappy HR/Finance system known to man. I can live with our current situation for a bit longer with that as a possibility. However please feel free to remind me of this post 5 years from now when we're still with crappy system and still doing benefits by paper and I've become a depressed drone... Because well... that's how long committees take.