A working life: Chief warden clocks out after 35 years

It all started 35 years ago, when Per Rødgaard Hansen was flipping through job ads in the Politiken newspaper. The University of Copenhagen (UCPH) was looking for a betjent or warden. That didn’t sound too bad, the 30-year-old carpenter thought. He had grown weary of tough construction industry conditions:

»We had to clock in at seven a.m. sharp. If you were four minutes late, your pay was docked. The canteen opened precisely at 11:30, and we had to pay for our own half-hour lunch break. If it was two minutes past noon, the foreman would come and ask if we ever planned on getting back to work.«

The young carpenter had no idea, at the time, that this job advertisement would end up giving shape to the rest of his working life. What he did know was that he wanted a job with more freedom, and more variation in his tasks. He got that at the University of Copenhagen, where he was hired as warden in the central administration on Nørregade street on 1 February 1990.

After six months, he was transferred to the Student Administration section, which at that time occupied several floors of the building at the corner of Fiolstræde and Krystalgade — a building that now has a large Starbucks café on the ground floor. Back then, the building was home to both the Student Guidance, SU [student grants], and the International Office. These functions are now spread across different departments.

A buzzing beehive

In the early years, the Student Administration was open for in-person service every day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Anyone could just walk in off the street and speak to someone, says Per Rødgaard Hansen. And he  laughs as he recalls the madness of 15 March — the deadline for quota 2 student admission applications, when the Coordinated Admission Office (which had a UCPH office in the building) was almost overrun by applicants:

»When we opened the doors at 10, there was a long queue of people outside on Fiolstræde rushing to submit their applications before the noon deadline. Of course, there were also those who were still filling out their applications at the last minute,« he chuckles.

One of the chief warden’s main tasks was handling the vast amounts of incoming and outgoing mail:

»We got a mail sack every day that had to be distributed internally. I would walk around with a trolley full of baskets, personally delivering the mail to each and every office. On the day of the quota 2 deadline, a truck would turn up stacked with 18 sacks of mail.«

Per Rødgaard Hansen was the only warden in the Student Administration for the first five years until he finally got a colleague:

»It was never lonely. I had my morning coffee with the women at the switchboard. And throughout the day, I was out and about, chatting with everyone while delivering the mail. Plenty of people would also pop their heads in to ask for a hand with various things. The tasks were varied, and there was a lot of social interaction across departments in those years,« he says, adding:

»In that respect, I think things have gone downhill — times have changed completely. It was a different era.«

According to the chief warden, the combination of digitalisation, centralisation, and top-down management has not only changed work processes, but also the way people interact.

»In the early years, people didn’t have personal computers yet — just screen terminals. We had a typing pool where a group of women worked,« he says, as he shares a story that seems almost unbelievable in light of today’s heightened data security:

»When student grants were to be paid out, a magnetic tape was produced, which I would collect from the IT department and take to the SU agency every two weeks, containing all the information on SU recipients at UCPH.«

»There were about 20 people in the IT department back then. Now, there are ten times as many.«

Submit a request

Per Rødgaard Hansen was made chief warden in 2009, heading up the wardens’ office in the Central Administration on Nørregade, which now had three wardens.

Over the next 14 years, the wardens took on a variety of tasks, including room booking, key management, and coordinating maintenance work.

It was not uncommon for a window to be broken on a Monday morning, thanks to drunken youths passing by on their way from the Strøget pedestrian street to the Nørreport station over the weekend, the chief warden explains:

»I would call a glazier, and within an hour, the window was fixed. If someone had a faulty power socket, I called an electrician. And when a toilet kept running, I got in a plumber,« says Per, before switching from past to present tense:

»That’s not how it works anymore. Every single task has to be registered digitally. Everything has become so much more bureaucratic. People used to just drop by, call, or send an email if they needed help. There was personal contact. Now, we have to log in, find the case, open it, process it, and then close it. Everything has to be documented. I think it’s a waste of time.«

»But we had some good years in the warden’s office because we handled so many different requests. It was enjoyable, and we talked to a lot of people throughout the day. No one knows where we are at nowadays. People don’t just drop by. If someone needs to reach me they have to go through reception, which then contacts me. There are so many extra steps now.«

Loss of tasks and colleagues

It was decided in 2023 to merge all wardens and maintenance staff in the city centre into a joint operations unit at the CSS campus: Campus Service City. The warden’s office on Nørregade was to be closed, with many of its functions taken over by a newly established reception.

»Everything had to be centralised. The plan was for us to report to CSS every morning and then bike in to Nørregade, where most of our tasks are. We were against the move. Fortunately we were allowed to stay in the end,« says Per Rødgaard Hansen.

The nice room that was the home of the warden’s office was now repurposed for other uses however. The chief warden, his last remaining colleague, and their equipment all ended up in a low-ceilinged, windowless room in a corner of the basement of the Museum Building complex.

Hardly a soul passes here. Apart from the cleaning staff, that is, with whom they share a coffee machine, and wardens now and again from other service areas dropping off mail.

»I wish they had shown a bit more human consideration here,« says Per Rødgaard Hansen.

»In the end, we were only two wardens left, as when our third colleague retired we weren’t given a replacement. At our level, down at the very bottom, positions aren’t refilled when someone leaves. The rest of us just have to work even harder,« he says.

Per Rødgaard Hansen’s position won’t be refilled either.

The amount of physical mail has decreased due to digitalisation, and the wardens’ tasks have changed rapidly.

Per Rødgaard Hansen describes how in recent years his workday has started at 7 a.m., opening gates, raising the flag if it was a flag day, checking the university’s meeting rooms, and coordinating the week’s events in the grand Ceremonial Hall with the movers who set up and take down tables, chairs, and stages under his direction.

The workday ended at 2 p.m., leaving time for a game of padel or classic tennis and to spend time with his two grown daughters when they visited his apartment in the Nørrebro district — where he moved from the Albertslund suburb after his divorce.

When the opportunity arose to take a voluntary redundancy as part of the large-scale UCPH administration reform, he had no doubts that he should go for it:

»I’m almost 66 years old, so the timing is perfect for me. Now, I’m going to do a lot of sports. I miss the western part of Copenhagen, so maybe I’ll move back to Albertslund and get myself a little garden where I can do barbecues in the summer. Or maybe a small allotment house I can do some work on,« he says.

»But I also dream of doing more travelling,« he adds, listing the trips he has already taken to South Africa, India, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. He loves skiing. Last year, he rented a car and drove around the western United States for two weeks.

The party is over

Per Rødgaard Hansen will turn 66 soon. He has spent 35 of those years at the University of Copenhagen. When he talks about his working life, there is a clear ‘before’ and ‘after.’

Before, he had considerable freedom to carry out his tasks as he saw fit. He had responsibility and was in contact with colleagues across many different departments:

»It was much nicer back in the day. We had a huge Christmas party in the Ceremonial Hall for everyone in the Central Administration, and afterwards, we drank beer and listened to music in Munkekælderen. In the summer, a big tent was set up in Lindegården for a grand summer party. In recent years, departments have held their own separate celebrations, so we only meet each other within the operations section. I miss the big events that brought together all the different staff groups,« he says, adding:

»Everything has become centralised and top-down managed. When I started, there was a rector and a director running the place. Then the rector got one prorector, and today he has two. And the director now has eight deputy directors assisting him. It’s the same at the faculties — they used to be led by a single dean. Now, there are faculty directors, associate deans, and so on.«

»When I started here, 80 percent of the administration staff were secretarial level employees. Today, most of them have been replaced by officers, senior consultants, and chief consultants. That’s why the salary budget has exploded, and I think that’s the reason we had to go through this round of cuts.«

In the first phase of the administration reform, it wasn’t necessary to lay off administrative staff because an unexpectedly large number of employees accepted voluntary redundancy.

Per Rødgaard Hansen raised the flag at the main building on Frue Plads for the last time on 28 February. He got nine months’ salary and a farewell reception, which he shared with two colleagues.