Unfiltered Story #249733

Yes, this is from the same Ohio library system as two-three other stories posted on this site. Our library is going through a lot of changes, and our director is using this as an opportunity to force her personal vision on the entire system.

One such example is talk about extending the hours we’re open to the public. However, the director doesn’t want to hire more staff, which would be needed if we were open for more hours. She decides she can get away with more hours but the same number of staff if she has our clerks (the people who check items in and out) come in only during the hours of operation.

However, our clerks are the ones who process ALL of the deliveries our city’s libraries receive. Our city is part of a massive system where 50+ libraries across the state exchange materials based on patrons’ requests. On any given day, we receive an entire delivery van full of boxes of books and DVDs that our clerks sort, process, and distribute. Usually, we have 1-2 clerks in the back room sorting while 1-2 stay on the floor to check out people’s items. It’s about six hours worth of work split between three people every day. And that’s just at one of our libraries. While the smaller libraries have much less workload, the entire item transit could easily take four people eight hours each day to complete.

So our director’s proposed solution is to make two of the clerks strictly transits and delivery. These two would have to process all of the items we receive by themselves, load them, AND deliver them to all the libraries in the city. All within eight hours. That way, the other clerks wouldn’t have to do any processing and could focus on checking people in and out during our future extended hours.

This would include processing all the items at a central location by marking them as “arrived.” When a book or DVD is marked as “arrived,” the patron who ordered it gets a call or email stating that the items is at their library. Most of our patrons are always checking their alerts and come within two hours to get their items. However, with the system our director is proposing, our patrons would be getting alerts that their items had “arrived” long before our two poor clerks had even finished processing OR delivering the items.

All the staff members who heard this tried to explain to the director how impractical her solution was. We told her about the massive amount of work that go into processing out transits, how marking items as “arrived” before they arrive does our patrons a disservice, and how there simply isn’t enough hours in the day to expect to expect these two people to do all inner city deliveries by themselves on top of their other responsibilities.

Her response?

Director: The more you try to convince me it’s a bad idea, the more I want to go through with it.

She sees granting any request as diminishing her own authority. This isn’t the only instance by far. Every request staff has made has been denied because it’s all a power play. Even reasonable requests like our reference librarian wanting to work from her desk while her leg was broke was denied (she had to use all her sick time AND all her vacation time because she wasn’t allowed back to work until her leg was fully healed. She sits at a desk all day anyway). I have one week left; I can’t wait to be gone.