(The) office hours

by lily brown

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be an RA (and no, this isn’t just a rerun of the seven previous blog posts I’ve already inflicted upon the world), imagine working at Dunder Mifflin—but swap paper sales phone calls for lockout notifications, corporate memos for meticulously themed bulletin boards, and awkward conference room meetings with weekly student staff ones.

According to Toby from HR—sorry, HRE—my official RA duties state that I need to “maintain eight office hours per week between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.” Translation: I spend roughly two glorious hours a day, Monday through Thursday, holding court from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., waiting for someone, anyone, to knock on my door.

Some days it feels like I’m running a high-stakes operation. Other days, it’s like watching paint dry… except the paint is plotting against me. Sometimes it’s a student with a real problem: lost keys, roommate drama, existential crisis about an 8 a.m. class. Sometimes it’s the universe testing me: a fridge delivery at 10:03 a.m., a mysterious hallway smell, or the eternal question, where did this sock come from?

But I really can’t complain. (Imagine a cut to me, confessional-style, in my dorm room.) Knock on wood, this semester has been surprisingly chill during my In Community Hours (ICH). Still, every glance down the hallway feels like a perfectly timed camera shot. Someone’s going to knock any second. Right?

And then, naturally, the fire alarm goes off. Classic.

The Look That Says “This Happens Every Week”

An accurate representation of how I view ICH

I hate to break it to you, but being physically present during office hours is not a suggestion. It’s not necessarily an open-door policy, but it is the job.

Eight hours a week in LB. On paper, it sounds like the world’s easiest gig: show up, sit down, maybe grab something from the new vending machine, vibe productively. Done.

Not exactly.

You run around the halls. You answer repeat questions. You explain the same policy in increasingly creative wording. You become deeply familiar with keys conceptually, emotionally, and spiritually.

You’re there so residents know someone exists when things get weird, which they always do.

You answer emails, update a bulletin board for the third time because someone removed a pushpin with intent, and pretend you’re not listening to loud roommate diplomacy happening in the hallway. You can run to the DH, sure, but otherwise you’re planted. Available. Observable. On standby in that specific way that feels suspiciously like being background cast in a mockumentary—or dorm-umentary.

And then: lockouts. I really don’t want to reduce the shift to just that, but most of the time, it’s the main plotline. The cold open. The reason your physical presence suddenly matters a lot.

A resident appears at your door stressed, late for class, holding a phone at 3% battery, fully convinced you personally keep their room key in your desk like some extremely niche key fairy. Instead, I do the walk… to the 3rd Floor RA Office.

There’s always the repeat offender. The “this never happens” speech delivered for the third time this week. You side-eye internally and resist the urge to look directly at the imaginary camera in the hallway. While your whole shift might seem like it’s dedicated to it, the job isn’t the lockouts. That’s just a running joke.

The fire alarms. The weird smells. The fridge deliveries that arrive exactly when you sit down. They feel like bits. Recurring episodes. But every joke exists because there’s a responsibility underneath it. Someone has to be there when it happens.

That’s What She Said… About Slack

When everyone is typing on Slack to respond to the lockout request, and you’re lowkey trying to get out of it (just kidding!)

Now let’s talk about the tool that makes office hours almost fun: Slack. If Microsoft Teams is Dwight, then Slack is definitely the cool Jim of communication platforms, and my RA life revolves around it. Announcements, duty swaps, building updates. Everything happens there in real time. And since residence life moves fast, Slack keeps the entire team on the same page without the chaos of endless emails or group texts that somehow always miss one person.

I like to think of the HRE Slack channel as its own little mockumentary universe. Questions get answered in seconds. You learn how other RAs handle tricky situations. Team energy shows up even during a long shift.

It’s also where the complaining lives. The harmless kind. The “another lockout” messages, the dramatic play-by-plays, the collective disbelief when three weird things happen in the same hour. Complaining, it turns out, is just another form of team communication, and it creates the feeling that you’re never doing the job alone.

When someone @’s me in the channel

Because communication means support is right there. Someone has context. Someone else has already dealt with the exact same thing. Being an RA is about balance: present in person, available online, ready to step in. Slack makes that balance possible.

Confessional Moments

Office hours aren’t just answering questions about laundry machines, deadlines, or policies. They live in the in-between moments—the pauses, the small talk, the “quick question” that turns into something else.

Catching up with residents sometimes feels like hosting a live episode of a dorm-version of a workplace sitcom:

There’s the “Dwight” who treats a missing sock like a continuity error that must be documented.

The “Kelly” who arrives with industry gossip and expects a full recap of campus lore.
The “Michael” with a big idea, no plan, and complete confidence it will win an EVVY.
The “Angela” who wants you to meet their ESA cat like it’s the next EmCeleb.
The “Stanley” who is locked into crosswords and a good afternoon nap.
And the “Pam” who is quietly working on artwork for a campus zine.

As an RA, I like to think I’m the Jim of this dorm-iverse: calm, slightly observant, occasionally breaking the fourth wall when something absurd happens. But unlike Jim, the work isn’t pranks—it’s creating moments where people feel like they belong. Talk about World’s Best RA (Mug Not Included). Think interactive bulletin boards rather than staplers in jello (though the thought has crossed my mind when it comes to people losing their keys.)

The Waiting Game

ICH starts slow. You open Slack. Check the phone you know won’t ring yet. A lot of the job is waiting—good old professional, structured waiting. Occasionally complaining, and then immediately defending the job when anyone else complains about it.Because of this, you plan to be productive. Sometimes you are. Sometimes you reorganize a drawer that was functioning flawlessly and absolutely did not ask for your attention. Sometimes you open a document and stare at it like you’re buffering.

Most days, nothing big happens.

And then someone appears.

Not for a major reason: a clarification, a small complaint, something they could’ve Googled but didn’t. The conversation drifts. Five minutes becomes 10. You realize this is most of the job—being the person who is there when someone decides to stop by.

Is it glamorous? No. Is it repetitive? Absolutely. Is a job still a job? Yes.

Office hours aren’t secretly profound, and you’re not saving Emerson from your desk. You’re just doing your job. But you’re also turning a very normal job into something a little funnier, a little more human—a low-stakes sitcom where the plot is mostly small interruptions and recurring characters.

So yes, I spend ICH doing lockouts, refreshing Slack, fixing pushpins, and occasionally investigating hallway smells that science cannot explain. But mostly, I spend them being available. You develop niche expertise. You develop patience. You also develop the highly refined RA skill of complaining to other RAs in a way that is mostly jokes, slightly therapy, and always followed by “it’s fine.”

So, if this really is a mockumentary, I guess I’m okay being the character who sits in their room waiting. And when someone finally knocks, I swing open the door like Jim smirking at the camera.

(The) Office Hours