Thankful to Have... Fair Pay?

Spurred on by Wal-Mart employees, which I'm sure were energized by the wave begun by the Occupy Movement, employees of fast food restaurants in New York City have begun a protest movement.

Fast Food Forward is the name of the movement in NYC that has organized protests against the big fast food chains.  They are demanding a living wage, better working conditions, and better benefits.

As should we all.

Here in Charleston, library workers get paid little more than minimum wage.  In the right-to-work-cheap state, we know what it is like to have to struggle to be able to afford Wal-Mart and McDonald's prices.

Go to the Fast Food Forward Facebook page and show your support.  We may not have heard a lot from the Occupy Movement these days, but it appears they have sown seeds that will, with all our involvement, lead to a resurgent labor movement, and that will include those of us who were left behind the first time.

I'm Being Marketed

I had a problem with my Nook yesterday, so I googled and tried a couple of things which of course didn't work.  So first order of business this Sunday morning was to call the help desk.  Since help desks tend to have a minimum of people answering a maximum of calls, and horrible music interrupted by recorded voices telling you how important your business is and to please hang on, so that it's impossible to do anything constructive while waiting, I have learned that Sunday morning is the fastest way to get a human.

Despite the fact that Barnes & Noble probably don't have enough people on hand to tend to telephone help, they still manage to have someone answer the phone and take down your totally non-relevant information, email address, snail mail address, etc., before they put you on hold so someone from their "technical support" desk can help you.  I assume the middle-man was there in order to get you back on mailing lists, B & N data lists, etc.

So by the time I got the poor guy who had to help me, and he asked me the same personal questions the first person did, I was waving my middle finger around the room, but being polite to my assigned helper, which I learned to do in order not to be verbally rude and nasty to the poor guy on the other end, who is, after all, not at all to blame.

My help desk guy didn't seem to know much about my Nook (one of the older, cheaper, simpler "Simple Touches").  He had to keep looking things up, would forget to tell me to take a important step, or tell me to do something I had already done.  And of course, he had to eventually, more than once, "consult" with someone.

At one point, I realized that the questions that were being asked had to do with the validity of the book I had transferred that would give me an "account not activated" message.  Basically, the help guy was trying to find out if the problem was maybe I had "stolen" a book.  Without saying as much.  When I realized what was going on, and informed him that I only had library books on the Nook, the line of questioning changed immediately.

Eventually we got it worked out.  It was indeed a simple solution to a simple problem, and hopefully I learned something as a result of the 45 minutes we explored that little slice of technology together.

But it continues to infuriate me the extent to which my Nook tries to have a relationship with me.  It gives me recommendations; it needs to know how to contact me; I need to be attached to Barnes & Noble in order to own and use my Nook.

In all the centuries we have been reading, brief attempts at marketing in books (inserts, product placement) have been limited, and scorned.  Yet online we have the Brave New World of marketing.  Everywhere.  In every single aspect of our lives, including the books we read, much like in a J. G. Ballard story.  And it seems to be okay with us.

I would just like to ask anyone who may be reading this to step outside of the internet world and look objectively at all the electronic conveniences that stem from that world.  The mail that has advertising personally directed to you based on analysis of your emails.  The ads that are all over Facebook and Words With Friends.  Paid advertising on blogs, in newspaper articles, in search engines.  The ever more ubiquitous YouTube ads.

If you really paid attention, you might find that it was at the very least annoying, but at worst these messages control us.  We may not run out and buy what is being sold (although the assumption is that we just might), but the advertising is affecting the way we use our time, forcing us to sit through ads, or interfering with our reading of an article.  And for god's sake, they almost entirely represent electronic snooping into our computers.

We're all being marketed online, and we might just want to do something about it.  While we still have enough consciousness left to do it.

Targeting Target

Wal-Mart is not the only big, bad bully trying to kill Thanksgiving.  Target is one of several retailers who just cannot bear the thought of a dollar bill slipping past their grubby little fingers.

Meanwhile, employees will be forced to leave their families on one of the truly family holidays remaining.

So what can you do?  You can boycott.  Stay away on Thursday, and prove your compassion by staying away on Friday too.  When you do your holiday shopping, shop small.  There's been a lot of hot air about our reverence for small businesses, but until we actually walk into our local stores and pay a little more to support local merchants (and their employees), it is just talk.

Here's something you can do right now.  Sign the petition started by Target employees at:

http://www.change.org/petitions/target-take-the-high-road-and-save-thanksgiving#

Thankful for Wal-Mart?

I think not.

Whenever you think Wal-Mart has squeezed every possible drop of blood out of its employees, it twists the screw just a bit tighter.

The news this year is that Wal-Mart (and other jackasses) will be opening on Thanksgiving night so that you folks can take advantage of their great deals, while stomping on other bargain-hunters in the process.

Now, having been on the "customer service" side of the counter up to very recently, I have made it a policy not to ever shop on Sundays and holidays (like Memorial Day and Labor Day), and never, ever shop at Wal-Mart.  You may say, "But gee, they are providing jobs for people."  When you don't shop, you are depriving people like yourself the opportunity to earn a living.  Thanks, Wal-Mart PR Department, but I beg to disagree.

That bag of chips and bottle of soda?  You could have bought it on a day that would not have required someone who is not even making a living wage to leave their families on a Sunday or holiday.

And those great bargains you are going to pick up on Thanksgiving mean that Wal-Mart "associates" will have to leave the meal, the football game, or even just the post-turkey nap, to make sure you get your Christmas bargains just that much earlier.

You know what?  If they were giving away five big-screen TV's for $5 apiece, it's really not worth what you have given up, and forced others to give up, to be one of those five.

I'm talking morals, not dollars and sense.  I understand that that is a foreign concept here in the US of Assets.  But think about it.  Will you really be glad on Christmas day that you grabbed that Blu-Ray player out of that guy's hands so you could save $25 bucks?

You will?

Then I have one more question.  Why on earth are you reading this blog?  Shouldn't you be checking out Fox News?

And for the rest of my readers, consider boycotting and ending this nonsense.

Social Insecurity

You might be wondering how I am doing now that I have retired from the library.

After periods of guilt because I am not out there earning a paycheck, I have to admit that what I am doing now is far more important than what I was doing then, in the days when my primary responsibility was checking dvd's in and out and throwing books away.

It doesn't pay a whole lot less either ($0).

I am writing, and I am, for the most part enjoying it immensely.  I have my political blog and my personal blog.  After the Post and Courier awarded me the Golden Pen Award for my first letter to the editor about the thousands of books being tossed by the library, I felt reassured that I had done the right thing, by exposing this nastiness, and by quitting.

I am continuing to write letters to the Post and Courier, and occasional political pieces for the SC New Democrats, some of which they lose, and some of which they print.  I started a new blog specifically to feature the admirable women that are running for election in 2012.  And I am actually writing for one of them.

It's great to have an opinion, and not have people tell you you have overstepped your bounds by verbalizing it.  It is an amazing pleasure to be out of the workplace, after ten years of being a cog who was supposed to show up and shut up.

The problem is my insecurity as a writer.  When I get a compliment, I am tickled and proud, until I don't get praise for something, when I become -- let's not say "wracked" -- uneasy about my skills and others' opinions of me.

But it is and will continue to be a problem worth learning to overcome.

The Cover-Up

Time to finally take a look at the last posted Library Board minutes, those of April, 2012.


I missed the May meeting totally inadvertently getting the date wrong.  So I had planned on going to the June 26 meeting, wrote it on my calendar, double checked the date online.


Now I learn that the woman opposing Tim Scott for HR District 1 is having a planning meeting on, of course, June 26.  So I decided to take a look at the April minutes, prime time after my editorial appeared, to get an idea if I would really be missing anything.


Lies and deceits.  The Director telling the Board just what he thinks they want to hear, in public, so the public can hear that all is as it should be.  And they had my once upon a time friend, the head of collections, give a command performance.  That breaks my heart, hearing him echo management's positions.


Once again, they played that old song about only getting rid of books that don't circulate, or are too worn to repair.  Lies, lies and more lies.  I am still too fresh from the nightmare of getting rid of nearly new children's books that have just circulated, because there is no room for new books coming in.


Here's a new one, from our Orwellian Director.  He bragged that floating the collection saves it, because items end up where they are needed most.  Let me step out of character for a moment and just say, "What an idiot."


This is so much a misrepresentation of how the floating collection is working that a bolt of lightning should have just flown out of the sky and burnt the man to a crisp.


I will never forget having to weed adult biographies every three months to make space.  When you've exhausted the one-year criteria, and all the books are in more than readable condition, you then eliminate multiple copies.  Presuming that a library system that serves the numbers that are served by Charleston County needs fewer copies of a book.  Even though it is shown that the multiple copies have all circulated in less than a year.


Deep breath.  After esteemed board member Jonathan Greene, who has never weeded a library book in his life, tells the director (and the public) how much he loves the guidelines for weeding, someone asks if a last copy is discarded, can a patron still get a copy.  Rehearsed those questions well.


The answer is, yes, of course, because we have interlibrary loan.  And of course the Director neglected to mention that interlibrary loan costs $2, not that much unless you are on a limited budget, read a lot of books that are not recent and popular, or thought that libraries were free.  And entails staff time and an undetermined wait for the patron.  And, although Henderson claimed that "all weeded books can definitely still be gotten through ILL", that is not, in fact the case.  In fact, if other libraries are following these same terrific weeding guidelines, ILL's will no doubt become harder to fulfill.  And I just have to say again that the Director  failed to mention the cost of an ILL.


Another board member, an esteemed Mr. Clem, who should be working for Tim Scott's reelection campaign, summed up his happy thoughts by saying that "he doubts that anyone would object to the library rightsizing the collection".  (Honest, he said "rightsizing".)  He then adds that he thinks this whole project is "amazing".


I think it is amazing also.  I think it is an amazing example of how a system buys into a deception and then continues to defend it, refusing to even look at the reality of the situation.


Had I been at that meeting, of course I would have remained silent.  Would I have been infuriated?  Would I have felt helpless about the lies being told, about the fact that not a one of these board members have seen the books being thrown away, have talked to staff members at the branches where so many books have so little space.


Maybe it's a copout; it probably is.  But the fact is, reading those minutes has got to be a reality check for me.  I walked away from a job I once loved because I could not continue to bear witness to the destruction that was happening, much less lie about it.  I believe that going to the board meetings and listening to the lies is something I do not need to do.

Fini

Today is my last official day at the library.  It is actually a paid leave day; Friday was my last day at work.  On Friday, as I had for the two weeks since I gave notice, I walked around doing my job with a tremendous sense of relief.  I was relieved that I would no longer have to "live" in a pigsty with people who never cleaned up after themselves...

No more tripping over tiles in the staff room that have been up for years, or having to sit at a station that actually blocks my view of patrons as they walk up because the branch manager wants lots of "space" at the front desk.

Especially, no more throwing books away.  And now, I am free to speak out without fear of retaliation, or the new coolness of some of my fellow employees.

But now that I am home, I am also remembering all that my years at the library gave me, because I am not one to stay at a job that gives nothing back.

My first day at the reference desk, as a substitute in training, Michael, the reference manager, had made up a reference quiz, which was the starting point for real learning about the depth of a public library.  And this Charleston County Library was indeed a library with depth.

Sometime that same week, the assistant reference manager showed me how to do a search to find out what new videos had come into the system, which to me was a bit like Dorothy's first glimpse of the Emerald City.

I felt strongly, even when passed up for promotions at other branches because managers hire and promote those they know, that this library was where I belonged.  And it was, until two years ago, when the new director let everyone know he was there to "shake things up".

And he did shake things up, smashing much along the way.

So I will be always glad for the years I spent, overworked, underemployed, and underpaid, but able to work at a place that felt like my home.