"We saw your name and number on the wall..."

So my friend/office-mate and I headed down to our Micro prof's large lecture today. We needed to be there in order to get some idea of what we should be teaching in the discussion next week, and also because he told us to be there. After situating ourselves in the back of the hall to avoid notice by the undergrads (and to better here those conversation gems that only come from large lecture classes), our prof. started out introducing the staff.
"Well everyone, not all the information was correct in the syllabus and things have changed since it was printed out, so write down these changes..." That made sense. The office had told me I was teaching a discussion group on Friday afternoon that didn't exist, so they switched me to a Tuesday morning discussion. Changes were abounding this semester.
And then he put the piece of paper under the projector, and in bold, large letters are my office mate's and my cell phone numbers, right next to our names. In fact, this was the paper that was only supposed to circulate among the TA's and the prof. so that if there was an emergency we could be reached. Now, our school has a bit of a stick up their collective rear ends about giving out private information, especially of their professor's and TA's. In fact when they weren't telling us to not date the undergrads at the general TA training seminars, they were telling us to value our privacy and our time; to never give out too much information to our students or else we could expect 2 AM phone calls on Sunday from stressed out undergrads.
Yet there was my cell phone number. In letters larger than my femur. Displayed in front of over 400 undergraduates, attempting to furiously locate and write down the number of their TA. You could tell who the TA's were in the audience at that point by our frantic hand gestures and waving to get his attention to take the paper off the projector. Finally, our head TA scrambled up to the podium and whispered in our professor's ear.
"Oh. It appears I've given out secret information. Hold on." Our prof then mercifully blacked out the phone numbers, and replaced the paper on the projector to show the e-mail information (which had changed for a few TA's and was open to the undergrads).
My friend and I had a nervous laugh about it, expecting the undergrads to the do the same. But the ones around us were actually angry. I even heard one guy two seats down from us say, "Geez, why won't they let us call the TA's if we need help?"
Alright. I have three office hours each week, I'm reachable by e-mail for appointments, and I practically live in the economics department from Monday to Friday. Excuse me if I don't want anyone disturbing my weekends by calling my personal phone number.
He clammed up pretty dang fast when the prof. had the TA's stand up to be recognized and my friend and I stood up. And waived.

I'm adding a small bit to my "syllabus" discussion tomorrow. If any undergrad got the number they'd better throw it away. Because I'm not helping anyone who calls that phone.

And yes, the title of this blog is a Tommy Tutone reference.