While I don't like the fake leftist politics of In Service Day, where Inclusivity and Equity are grave issues worthy of millions of county dollars for well-heeled consultants and endless efforts on training and restructuring, just so long as nothing fundamental changes, I realized that the hardest part for me about it all is the marketing.
There is a kind of marketing that people at work always do, but I feel it has gotten worse in my library system. It is a marketing that suggests all day long that everyone is a conscientious, hard-working, and committed employee, endeavoring tirelessly to improve and provide.
I am not good at marketing. I am the black hole of marketing. But that doesn't mean that I am immune to marketing!
So occasionally I find myself, under this onslaught of mildly self aggrandizing rhetoric, slipping into a feeling of alienation: "Wow, all these people are doing so much for the library system all the time and are working so hard, and I'm just a cranky person looking for a few moments at work to make a cat into a cake!"
And then I remember.
All I have to do is look around.
The library is a pretty good place, but it generally totters on the brink of disaster. It is five percent creativity, five percent hard work, five percent evil, and 85 percent just showing up. If merely half of what people said at In Service Day was true I would have half as many problems with my library system than I do.
It's like a day of people talking convincingly about what excellent shelvers they are, followed by a trip up to the stacks to shelve a cart of books and finding there are so many mistakes to correct I don't make much headway.
So I try to make a cat into cake.
But I would have done that anyway.
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