Employment and charity

Oddly, there are people who confuse one for the other. A friend of mine, who is a doctoral student at a big American university and wishes to remain unnamed, writes in:

Our department [recently] ordered some new analytical software. The CDs have been lying in the office since last week. My advisor, for whom it was ordered, got impatient and said he will install it himself on his machine. He was told that someone from IT will come and install it. He said he knows how to install it, so he could do it. He was told that they have specific instructions to only let the IT people install it, not for any safety reasons, but because that is a job for someone. If everyone starts installing their own software it means a couple of jobs becoming redundant. So to contribute to [the university]‘s employment, we can’t install the software on the machines in our own office rooms.