I took a side gig teaching at a community college. I had to talk to a dean to get white board markers. And it wasn't like that dean approved and made a phone call and I went and picked them up. She physically walked me over to a locked drawer with the department name on it and handed them to me.
All joking aside, what do you think deans at CCs are supposed to do?
Mundane property issues are probably handled by the dean’s admin at some (most?) CCs, but property in general is often going to fall under a dean’s purview.
Also, note that a dean’s work at a CC is generally going to be fantastically boring administrative scut work.
Imho, most managers also do fantastically boring administrative scut work —- think various aspects of hiring, scheduling, budgets, progress reports, personnel reviews, handling administrative complaints (EEO, sexual harassment, etc.), recruiting, etc. Maybe some things are a bit different than a CC dean, but the genre of work is similar.
The specific differences in your perception may revolve around whether the manager/dean has a trusted admin, and whether that admin is around.
A dean. Absolutely laughable if it wasn't so sad.