Manchester University Student Services Centre

Yeah! «Student Services». Services for students. The main point to make here is that this is not a service provided for students at all because the only time you ever have to go there is if the university, or another patriarchal authority, wants something from you. Thus it is a service for dominant ideology, against the student.
They want your council tax, you have to go there for a form. They want your £10, you have to go there for a library card. They want your ridiculously high tuition fees, you go there and pay them. Its a bureaucracy where you cannot speak to anyone about anything. You may only obey.
Here’s my advised methodology: Go there. Read Kafka. Feel depressed.

Thankfully I only ever had to use the services provided by Student Services on a couple of occasions during my time at University, as each time involved a long wait in a queue full of irritated students who had not received their loans or bursaries.
Student Services is located next to the University Library and is a bit like a post office, complete with electronic queuing system and grumpy staff.
It’s the place to come to pay your tuition fees, sort out any issues with funding, pick up cheques for any money owed to you by the University, get print outs and copies of certificates and collect new student cards. This was a service I had to use on a couple of occasions due to my purse being stolen. Each time the grumpy staff happily took my £10 off me and gave me a piece of plastic which took them 5 seconds to create. I then went with a friend who had lost her card during exam time, and because student cards are necessary for exams, they gave her a free replacement. Not fair!

The SSC is a strange place. Generally, you go there when you have a problem that needs a-​sorting. Usually you’ve tried to ignore said problem and now it’s pretty much the eleventh hour, so you’ve dragged yourself away from Hypemachine and into the SSC to queue up for twenty five thousand years with hundreds of other students who alllll have problems. Reined in like cattle, you move forward at a snail’s pace, with the electronic voice announcing «cashier number three please… cashier number six please…» ad infinitum, allowing you to advance to the front in infintessimally small increments.
Once you reach the front of the queue, if you are lucky, they will sort out your problem. And if you’re not lucky… you might be told to go get something signed elsewhere, or to use the phone that connects to the Student Loan people. But back to the lucky ones. The lucky ones are lucky because whatever it is they need, the SSC people can sort out there and then. So that’s short-​term loans, new student ID cards, stuff to do with payment and fees and all that bollocks.
The staff here are incredibly grumpy, but since I became Uni staff, I have realised that that is because… drumroll please… students en masse are very, very irritating. And I deal with proper grown up students, and they’re still irritating. I know, I know, manners are all, and a smile goes a mile, but since I started having to deal with ridiculous sutdent enquiries, I have a bit more sympathy for the frontliners at the SSC, who deal with about a trillion annoying enquiries every day.
Mind, I’m with Kirsten, £10 is a ridiculous amount for a new ID card. Like, crazydiculous.