alemandrina (idwoman) wrote in library_mofo,
2013-01-23 00:51:00

mofo coworkers

As background- I'm a children's librarian in a public library. So for the mofo- my coworkers. They've always had their own little "clique" of which myself and the other 2 youth services librarians are not included. This has caused stress for us because the co-irkers are just useless at helping out in our areas. When one of them is assigned to cover desk duty they do nothing but web surf, talk on the phone or otherwise tune out. If one of us is vaguely in the area they don't even bother answering patron questions- they just send the patron over to us. We've just gotten used to this and we gripe but we deal.

The true mofo-ness seems to come from the overall situation. We're getting an extra special customer service training just for us because management has gotten too many customer service complaints from patrons. The reason- the clique. Management has praised the level of "teamwork" at our branch but what they don't see is that the clique is a dysfunctional team. They are so busy socializing and covering each others' butts that ignore patrons, get "lemon" face when they have to actually do their jobs, hide in the back office talking to each other when they're supposed to be on desk and, now they've been consistently showing up so late for their shifts that its affecting our ability to open in the morning. One particular member is on my last nerve- she has permanent attitude towards everyone who's not in the "clique", she's never on time and if I have to ask her a question she lies to get me off the phone and hangs up on me before I can ask any follow up question. What truly sucks is that our manager is a clique member so its not like I can point out this behavior to him. I guess I just need to vent. I can deal with them being clubby because whatever, I have my own thing- but I'm truly pissed that their shit means I need to take hours out of my day to attend a generic training when the complaints could be dealt with by upper management reviewing the complaints, identifying certain individuals, calling them on their bullshit and then asking my boss why he hasn't been calling them out himself.

And now that I'm done venting- I haz a new IPAD. Recommendations for what to do with it? I feel like one of the cool librarians but I'm really just faking it. I haven't even downloaded a book from our ebooks yet 'cause I'm waiting in the holds list.
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  • 8 comments

autumnfire1414

January 23 2013, 06:34:06 UTC 3 months ago

Some training sessions offer either to have questions answered which you can tailor to "how can we work around our co-workers who are avoiding work and racking up patron complaints" to questionnaires offered AFTER the course in which you can also mention that the course did little to answer the question regarding co-workers who are refusing to answer patron questions. You never have to name names, of course.

unstricken

January 23 2013, 15:16:23 UTC 3 months ago

I have no useful advice, just a lot of sympathy for employees who are forced to endure unpleasant consequences (useless training, in this case) because managers prefer blunt instruments to scalpels when dealing with workplace problems. I've worked in various sectors, and I think library managers are the worst at this--so many of them seem absolutely incapable of dealing with problem employees. Several years ago at my library we had to endure the notorious "Fish" training because of attitude/service problems on the part of a few employees--what a huge waste of time.

hemenwaykid

January 25 2013, 01:55:06 UTC 3 months ago

Is this where you watch the movie about the fishmongers in Seattle and then think of things that you could do in the library that would make it seem more like a fishmarket? We had to do that. For me, it was more, "You're going to pay me for this? Well, it's your payroll."

unstricken

January 26 2013, 16:51:15 UTC 3 months ago

yes, exactly that. Like an Office sketch come to life.

lizzybabe17

January 24 2013, 00:03:02 UTC 3 months ago

I don't even know what to say, just that the "clique" is so extremely unprofessional that I have nothing but sympathy for you for having to deal with their buffoonery.

I wonder if there was a way you could anonymously go above the manager and report what is going on. You would think that patron complaints would automatically make your manger (even though he is a "clique") get his/their act together.

blue_ant

January 24 2013, 04:54:08 UTC 3 months ago

I have no useful advice either, just that I feel your pain. I have coworkers who are like that and one of them is my supervisor. It sucks.

temperlj

January 24 2013, 14:54:25 UTC 3 months ago

I hate cliques. I'm a bit of an outsider with my big library too, I know part of that is geography

For the iPad-they don't come with calculators or dictionaries (the 4s might)
I use ZITE, Yelp, Gdrive, Goodreader, the kindle app, Facebook, Wundermap, Shazam, Dragon,Dropbox and Docscan and for grins I have LRNthelingo to figure out the stranger "l33t" usages by students.
feel free to mail me...
A good starting place:
http://www.screentekinc.com/ipad-resources.html

hemenwaykid

January 25 2013, 02:00:23 UTC 3 months ago

I do think that sometimes management will try blunt, team-wide things (like staff-wide training) to see if they can effect changes in a group before they start dealing with problem staff members one-on-one. If nothing else, it leaves no question that everyone's on the same page, and when annual reviews come up, an evaluator can say "Remember we went over this at the training last year?"

If you want to remain completely anonymous, I'm not sure what you can do about the clique. If you (and possibly the other youth services librarians and any other staffers who aren't in the clique) don't care about possibly pissing people off (not without justification), I'd spend a week or so documenting problem interactions or problem times. Who was late to work (is the boss doctoring people's timesheets, and masking the lateness to payroll?) when? Who was unnecessarily nasty on the phone to you or hung up? Did the library open five minutes late? Was everyone stuck there 20 minutes after closing? Did people leave you with an extraordinary mess to clean up that they could have helped with? How long was the front desk unmanned while people chatted in the back? Then go over your manager's head to someone in admin or HR and report what's going on. The problem is, if nothing comes of it (and probably nothing will, people don't seem to get fired for incompetency nearly as often as they should), the workplace dynamics are going to become even more unmanageable and passive aggressive. So I think what I'm suggesting is the nuclear option.