Campus card administrators can certainly relate to one another when it comes to on-the-job experiences. There are times, however, when campus card administrators are called on to handle some unique challenges.

The challenges that a campus card office – in particular its administrator – can face can be daunting, details Fred Emery, vice president of sales at Heartland Campus Solutions in a blog post. Following a jaw-dropping report from a campus card administrator, Emery decided to ask Heartland clients to provide their most outrageous and unique experiences.

In one report, Emery explains that a cardholder was unable to tell the difference between a receipt printer slot and a card reader, and decided to shove their card into the slot from where the paper receipt is printed. One can imagine the damage this can do to a card, but jamming a card into a receipt printer may well damage the printer and keep it from functioning properly as well.

A second report saw an administrator receive a call that a building with various terminals was offline. Upon investigating the report further, the building controller had been disconnected and placed in a toilet, which was fortunately not functional and contained no water. As Emery explains, this head-scratcher was easily fixed.

Filed under the category of creepy crawly, Emery received a note regarding an external access card reader that had been acting “buggy.” Unfortunately, the client literally meant buggy, as a spider had worked its way inside the reader along with its hundreds of babies.

While most challenges fall under the “typical” column, such as non-functioning or broken student cards – common occurrences that every administrator is well prepared to tackle – some events simply cannot be planned for. For the sake of campus card administrators everywhere, let’s hope the kinds of occurrences outlined above remain exceptions, not the rule.

See Fred Emery’s full top five list here.