Thursday, August 24, 2017

How I like it here









I have two managers. I currently am getting along okay with one. That shifts all the time, but 50% is about average for me. In some ways they are very different from each other. One is sort of wounded and gentle, and one is all upbeat and bright. I think both would rather be doing the job alone, not sharing an office, authority, and a position. So they quietly tolerate each other and try not to mix; two side by side realities trying not to notice the other unless they have to.

They also have much in common, in good ways and bad. Both, for instance, can be genuinely kind and caring, and yet too both can be insecure of their positions and jealous of their authority.

But the main thing they have in common is perhaps the most defining.

I don't know how best to put it. So let me put it three different ways:

1. The library job gives them meaning in life.

2. They have few other interests.

3. They have no place else to go.


Their sick time has towered up into massive stockpiles. I can only imagine that their vacation time, capped by the county at a limit, more or less burns off unused. One of them uses vacation time every year to spend a week and a half doing a strongly library related job that might as well be paid for by our library anyway. The other maybe takes an official day or two off every once in awhile, but still comes in to work during those days, just more unofficially. I think both like to run errands during the day, or come in an hour or two late, not to get away from the library, but rather to justify to themselves their staying late most days and dropping in for an hour (or four) on their days off.

I hope you are getting my studied neutrality on this subject. I'm trying.

But they are here, like, all the time! All the time.

And even during the times I like them, even when I like them and all their best qualities, and even when I like them both at the same time, and when work is all harmony and they are good people and everything is beautiful, they are here all the time.

I like it here at the library. But I like it here better when they are not here.

And I like it here at the library best when I am not here.











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