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This week in Faces on Campus, we are featuring two people whom we need
as much as we do our instructors. These are the men who make photocopies
at Meteksan Bookstore. We can't do without them, because they provide us
with copies of notes or readings that our instructors give them. Please
don't misunderstand--they are not given exam papers to copy, so don't
ask them for copies of the questions before an exam. You'd be asking in
vain, because exam papers are copied somewhere else--our two friends at
the bookstore copy center don’t have them :)
Who is the Instructor of the Times?
Davut Saka, who has worked at Meteksan Bookstore for four years, is used
to facing these kinds of situations. He gets so involved in his job that
when he's at work, he thinks about nothing but the items that the
instructors and students give him to copy.
For example, at the beginning of each semester (the busiest times of the
year), he and his coworker are really concentrating on the names of the
instructors and the readings for their classes. One semester, a student
came in to request an issue of the Times newspaper. Saka asked, as he
usually does when a student comes in to pick up a reading for a class,
"Who is the instructor?" He was so focused on the usual routine of
making and handing out copies that he didn't stop to realize this wasn't
the right question to ask about the Times--which of course has no
"instructor." :)
Perhaps the thing that makes him love his job as much as he does is
working with all those young people, which gives him energy and makes
the time pass quickly. The work might be tough--there's always something
that has to be done in a hurry-- but the friendship among the workers at
Meteksan is really great, as I saw while I was there. This kind of
atmosphere makes Saka want to work here for many years to come.
Scanner? or İskender?
His co-worker Hüseyin Yalçın, who has been at Meteksan for five years,
agrees with him.
He says that when you consider that you spend more than half of your
waking hours at work, it's important that you really like what you do
and enjoy your time on the job. His coworkers say he has become such
good friends with the photocopy machine that he totally loses himself in
his work and forgets about the rest of world when he is making copies.
One of Yalçın's favorite stories is about something that happened a few
years back. On a very busy day, when students were coming into Meteksan
one after another asking for this and that, one student asked if they
had a scanner. He misunderstood what she said and thought she was
inquiring where she could eat “İskender.” He kindly pointed out the
restaurant above Meteksan. After a little while, the girl came back
again. She said she had looked everywhere upstairs but had been told
that there was no place there where she could scan her project. It was
only then that he realized it was a scanner, and not İskender kebap,
that she wanted.
This became a favorite joke between Yalçın and Saka, and they still
laugh when they remember it.
Both of them say that the many friendships and good memories have made
their years at Meteksan especially worthwhile. We hope to see them here
at Bilkent for a long time to come!
Gülay
Acar (COMD/II)
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