It's not personal, it's just business

When I immoderately throw around the term "Fired" in relation to the library's building manager, I hope you will forgive me. It is definitely not polite behavior to casually go around one's workplace suggesting that someone else directly connected with that workplace should be fired. And I feel no personal animosity towards this person who I am willy-nilly suggesting should be stripped of their livelihood. I am happy to greet this co-worker when I see them and even exchange in a short bit of chat, perhaps about the weather, which is hot. So when I suggest that this person be fired I hope you will chalk it up to the agitation I experience when it is a humid 82 degrees inside the library. I do not do well emotionally in warm environments. Sure I may be angry at the privatizing of our custodial staff (still the most insane, evil, and counterproductive act in my history here), and I may be outraged that when ID key cards stop working this person likes to blame the employee and try and make them pay for it. Then this person takes four months to replace it while the employee is forced to do laborious end runs around certain doors. But what do I know about the pressures on this person regarding the budget? What do I know about this person's own dictates from mangers above? Maybe the only way this person can meet their budget is to wait until the library has been open for two hours to get the air going. Maybe to provide even that paltry amount of cooling the property manager has to supplement with revenue collected from staff members. I so often think I know the whole story, but I when I take a breath of cool air (located elsewhere) and consider it all seriously, I know that I rarely have anything close to the whole story.

No one has to be fired. This is the library. We hang on to some of the most incompetent workers in the world, and we give them a place to go, a modest living, and an (occasionally self deceiving) feeling of usefulness. But there is a solution to this problem in plain sight. It is never used by my bureaucratic, managers, but it is simple, ennobling, democratic and leveling.

It's called shelving.

Assign the property manager to shelving, a good long, long stint of shelving. I'll run the thermostat for awhile.