Black Sunday

Last Sunday was a sad day across the County as all of the Sunday staff only got the boot. I think the number of library employees that have gotten the shaft is in excesss of 500+. The Circ side was cool, they are all in my generation. The library system needs some young blood. To all the library staff that have lost their positions, you will be sorely missed (pours out some liquor).

Don't believe the hype...

So everybody had to suffer through a whole pay period without any pages. If you asked me what I thought about it a month or two before, I would have probably used the words, "utter", "and", "complete", "hell," maybe even in that exact order.

During the few circulation and staff meetings I attended before the dreaded page layoff, some of my coworkers were also airing out their lament of having to drag carts out to the stacks and place them on the shelves---correctly at that. Page managers were scrambling to educate and prepare the 30+ staff members for this new arduous journey. They even printed <wasted paper> up guides on how to sort books on to the carts and how to shelve properly. One of my coworkers, bless her heart, even warned the others that paging is physically demanding, and pre-shelving stretches are a must---don't want to pull a hammy shelving Large Prints.

The time has come and gone, half of our pages have returned, and I'm wondering why I even stressed one ounce over it. I actually feel like we got the books out faster and more efficiently than when we had about 20 pages or so. Ok, a lot of the pages were bums anyways. Lazy high school kids, who spent more time talking to their friends who visited or bothering me at the circ desk or at my cubicle.

I am still being scheduled to "Page" an hour here and there, and I'm wondering if my job is the same as before, because shelving was not in the job description. I can't really complain all too much, it is a welcome break to the monotony of the circ desk. It also does give me more time to people watch from the stacks too.

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Pages make the books go round

My desk is situated right in the middle of the backroom. As far as privacy goes when it comes to conversations, these cubicle walls suck. Over the past week I have heard several arguments between various pages and the 2 page managers. It all stems from the recent county wide page layoff and rehire event. The county wanted the library to cut its costs so they decided to fire all the pages at once, hold mass interviews, and only rehire half of them back at the starting wages. I'll be the first to admit that the starting page wage is very decent compared to the amount of work required, but some of these pages have worked for years and have accumulated yearly raises that rival my hourly wage. There is one page here who has been here for 17 years, 17 freaking years of sorting and shelving.

Anyways, so the rehired pages had to go through a whole interview process that tested their sorting prowess and tested their commitment to the straight shelves and spines out. They had to sign a clause saying that they will be entirely flexible to the scheduling needs of each branch that hires them. In short, they had to join the Dark Side and pledge their utter and complete allegience to the library system.

I have heard at least 2 different pages argue with the page managers over how they do not like the new scheduling procedures and another one cried because this branch was not her first choice to work at. I have overheard the page managers use the argument that, "this isn't the same job as before." The pages are still shelving and sorting the same old books like before so there's a discrepency there. Oh wait, this isn't the same job, it pays less and sucks even more now.

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