Not Your Friend

Yes, the more things change, etc.  Take me, for example.  An integral part of my personality is that, whatever job I have had, I have taken a look around, and felt the need to point out whatever is wrong with it.  Asset or flaw?  I don't know.  Sometimes I wish I was as oblivious and acquiescent as my coworkers.  But it's me.


Another thing about me is that I tend to keep a distance from people.  It takes me a long time to develop a comfortable relationship with a coworker, although I think I am polite and friendly enough.  I am reserved.  And I don't befriend customers.  In fact, I get my back up when people assume that because I am behind a service desk, you can get personal with me.  I've always been that way.


Take, for example, my very first full time, career type job, working at the long defunct Almacs Supermarket in Rhode Island.  I worked in the meat department with a bunch of really delightful crackpots.  While you maybe really don't want to know what happened while your meat was getting cut and packaged, I was having a blast.


But I had some skirmishes along the way.  And one that most particularly comes to mind today is that over the big new advertising campaign that Almacs had instituted:  the "Friends" campaign.


You know this routine.  The employees of any given establishment are given a pep talk, telling them that they have to personalize their relationship with the customer.  There are TV ads with smiling people who are most likely not employed by that company, telling you how crazy they are about you, and how they would do just about anything to make you happy.


Our "Friends" campaign came with a slurry of advertising.  It also came with buttons, red ones that said, of course "Friend", and, believe it or not, t-shirts, also very simply declaring, "Friend".  I still have that t-shirt somewhere; it is kind of a souvenir of war.


I, of course, refused to wear the damned things.  I remember telling my boss, "But I'm not their friend."  He was an unusual individual, and he did not fire me instantly, but tried to woo me into his point of view.  Those were the days that bosses had more investment in their employees, and yes, were even their "friends".  Fortunately for me, he too had had his skirmishes with his bosses, and he liked my spirit.


I don't recall if I ever did wear the damned t-shirt at work; I probably wore it as a gag from time to time.  But I am proud that I took that stand.


Now I work at a library, and, although I like most of the patrons just fine, I am not their friend either.  I have had a very small handful of people, one, I believe, become my friend, but trust me, it took a long time, and a lot of polite space for that to happen.


There are actually library groupies, people that feel the need to befriend, in a very personal way, every single person behind the circulation desk.  They are quite persistent, and the more personal they get, the more distant I get, and after awhile, their anger at me actually becomes visible.  There are also people who don't really care to be my friend, but are comfortable asking really inappropriate questions, like where did I get my tan.  Since I am not allowed to say none of your business, I have learned to vaguely smile and say nothing.  When a patron asks, "Where did you get your tan..." followed by, "on the beach?" or "on vacation?" or "in the yard?" I always say yes.


So, no offense, I would like everyone to know that I have always given the best service I can, and I will continue to do that.  If you want to talk about the weather, I can do that, or even what part of Yankee-land we-all came from.  But please don't ask me where I got my dress, or why I am wearing a wrist support.  My job is to be behind this counter checking out your books and answering your library related questions. And I might even like you just fine.


But chances are pretty good that I am not your friend.

Sunday Depression

Back in the 70's when people had value I was learning to be a psychologist.  I was one of those people (not "folks") who got into psychology in part because of my own emotional turmoil.


Back then we learned about "Sunday depression".  Sadly, we were way off the mark with the presumed roots of this "syndrome".  We white upwardly mobile young adults were all into self-actualizing and other such nonsense.  So we subscribed to the idea that this Sunday afternoon depression was caused by angst over all that we had not actualized, i.e. done.


But why not get depressed over not feeling actualized on a Saturday afternoon?  Or even Sunday morning?


I've noticed that if I have a three day weekend, or two days off in the middle of the week, that depression is going to hit the afternoon before I go back to work.


Much like the agoraphobia that has as its root the need to escape, that depression that happens when you're at home has to do with heading back to the workplace to start all the things you hate all over again.


And there is no solution.  At least not now, and especially not here in South Carolina.  We're going to continue to get squeezed and stressed for quite some time.  So eat, drink and be merry, because in five (or six) days you'll have another day off, in which to get depressed about having to go back to work again.

Dirty Books

If your washing machine was on the fritz, and you were looking for a great d-i-y repair manual, used to be you could find this one...



...right on the shelf at our little branch library.  I know, because I have checked it out myself a few times over the years.  It's a wonderful book.


So when a coworker was telling me about her washing machine problem, and was trying to get information about parts and repair, I ran to the shelf and proudly handed it to her.  She was really appreciative.  She found the problem and the repair instructions in no time.


I warned her, though, not to let the circ manager see it when she returned it, because the minor stain on the edges of the book would be immediate cause for discard.  "I use it a lot," I told her.


A week later it was still on her desk.  An hour after that, it was a discard, tossed in a box in the backroom on its way to the recycle bins.


Sigh.


I still don't really know what to say about this insanity that has taken hold of our library.  Whipped into a frenzy by the director, our manager, whose self-reported motto is, "When in doubt, throw it out," has been pressuring us non-stop to weed the collection, discarding anything that hasn't circulated in one year.


For my part, I am proceeding at a steady pace, and have noted that the more time that has gone by since the "dusty bookshelf" list had been generated, the more books on the list are checked out when I look for them.


I am only responsible for adult non-fiction at this point.  The branch manager had been hauling his way through adult fiction, but apparently felt he wasn't going fast enough.  He appointed the circ manager, whose only experience with the collection was shelving them when she was a page.  She does love to throw away her books though.  And where she's not particularly concerned with our staff room resembling a gas station men's room, she has no patience with a book with a stain or a torn plastic cover -- out it goes.


But the circ manager decided she could get this process done much faster by passing it on to a page, who pulls the books off the shelf, tears the barcoded pockets out of them, and tosses them -- excuse me, recycles them.  So that the circ manager can delete the books from the catalog, sight unseen.


Which of course means that absolutely no judgment is necessary, or used, for this job.


Further, and to get back to my no longer extant repair manual, as circ manager she has also appointed herself, with branch manager's blessing, as the queen of getting rid of anything nasty that gets checked-in.  And she does have a low tolerance for nasty.  So books that are being checked out, that are currently in demand, are being tossed with great abandon.


And my coworkers are all gleefully complicit.  At any given time, there are dozens of books back there, pockets torn, waiting for their walk to the recycle bins.


And I just don't get it.  I know it's trite to get all Hitler about things, but there is something mindlessly Third Reichian about this book cleansing that we have undertaken.


Our mad director reports to staff that the weeding project is going just fine; there were some staff who were initially disgruntled about it, but as they have come to realize what it is all about, they have changed their minds.


Thank you, Mr. Orwell.