For most students living in dorms on campus, the front lobby is usually just a place to pass through on the way up to their room. Maybe they pause to check their mailbox or flash their ID at a Residential Security Aide as they stumble by at 2 a.m. Sometimes they stop to pull money from an ATM or a drink from the soda machine. And on rare occasions, they stop at the front counter to grab a vacuum or check out a game.

But while the flow of students through the lobby may seem routine, some very odd moments trickle in through the front door. Students working behind the front lobby desks across campus share some of their most head-scratching stories from over the years.

No money, more problems

While Marissa Levy was working behind the front desk in Lawrinson Hall as a sophomore, a student walked up to the counter and asked to make a bank deposit.

“I looked at him and said, ‘Do I look like a bank teller?’” Levy said.

Levy, now a senior communication sciences and disorders major, has had plenty of interesting moments since then. Two weeks ago, while working in the Booth Hall lobby, a student entered and asked to take out a vacuum. When he handed over his SUID, there was no sticker identifying that he lived in Booth. Levy asked if he had gotten a new ID and didn’t have the Booth sticker yet. No, he said. He lived on South Campus and wanted to take a vacuum to clean his friend’s house.

Levy also overheard someone asking for change for a $20 bill. “That’s 500 quarters,” he said at the desk. The actual sum would be 80 quarters.

Late-night snack

Annually, initiation festivities for greek life often result in an eruptive spike in binge drinking and drop in clothing coverage during the early hours of the morning. For RSA Ashley Marshall, the effects of sorority initiation walked through the door of Watson Hall on her second night on the job during the 1-7 a.m. shift three years ago.

“A girl walks in, completely barefoot, in nothing but a white bikini — and she’s covered in brown stuff,” she said. “It’s just like, head-to-toe, everything but her eyes.”

The girl pulled her ID from her bikini top and disappeared to the stairs. Later, another girl entered Watson wearing the same fashion: barefoot, white bikini, covered in something brown. Marshall found out later that apparently, the newly inducted members were wrestling in chocolate pudding during their sorority initiation party that night.

Marshall also remembers working in Lawrinson last year when two guys in Morphsuits — the orange spandex leotards that wrap your body from head to toe, most often seen on ultra-fans in the student section at ’Cuse games — entered the lobby. Then, they simply posed and froze. When others walked by, the pair would suddenly jump and scare the students. They amused themselves with this game in the lobby for a while, and then took it to the elevator.

The mail never fails

In Shaw last year, a girl asked Estefany Frias if she knew when mail was delivered to off-campus housing. When Frias, now a senior public health major, didn’t know, she became insistent and continued to repeat her question until walking away offended. Because that should really fall within the realm of knowledge that front desk assistants need to know offhand.

Lost and around

At about 8 a.m. on a Saturday in Flint last year, a boy walked up to Ali Saiff as she was working behind the front desk, asking if his cellphone had been turned in. When the now-sophomore music education major replied that there wasn’t a cellphone there, his response was that of someone clearly not entirely sober.

“He pulls up a chair and just sits down with me for like, a good hour, just trying to figure out where his cellphone is,” she said.

Maybe it was in his room? His friend’s room? But he didn’t want to wake his friend. Eventually, he left Saiff behind in search of his phone. And bonus perks for working at the desk: He ended up bringing her a bagel after finding it.

Published on November 1, 2012 at 1:17 am

Contact Gabriela: ggriccar@syr.edu