See, I said my employees because, despite my penchant for wearing Afro Ken t-shirts and Hello Kitty accessories, I am, in fact, the assistant director of this here library.
So, I am the one who will be interviewing that girl later on, along with the director. Already, I do not have a favorable impression of her. She's complaining about my employee to me, a virtual stranger. What sorts of things will she talk about if she's hired?
The director has a sort of lassiez-faire attitude about hiring. Our application used to be a sheet of paper that said: "Want to work here? What's your name?"
Since I've been here, I've upgraded the application to the standard three page document with all the appropriate language. I also have a dim view of hiring people who have probably never cracked open a book in their lives.
Yes, I'm a snob. I fully admit it. But dammit, this is a library. Working, even as a clerk, which is the position we're trying to fill, would require a person to have at least a passing knowledge of books and authors. You really can't say "I don't know."
If you don't know, you have to know how to look up the information. This requires a person to be quick on their feet. We're too small a library to just hire some warm bodies for the front desk. We don't have a reference librarian. Whoever is working (usually there's only one person) has to be everything. A reference librarian, a tech person in case the computers go down, etc.
This girl does not strike me as the type of person I want to hire. Pickings are slim here in this tiny village, but I will hold out until we get a suitable candidate, dammit.
We're 8th in the nation for towns our size, that's 8 out of a thousand or so candidates. We have a very good reputation for service and selection and I will be damned before I employ someone who's not up to my standards. So there.
This other girl, my current employee, is an excellent worker. She's smart, a quick thinker, and works hard. The only problem is she's some kind of Wiccan-hippie-bisexual-feminist.
In a very small, fairly conservative town, that doesn't fly very well. Not because of her beliefs, exactly, but because of how she chooses to advertise them.
She has, for example, multi-colored hair. Green, pink, etc. That on its own would raise a few eyebrows, but wouldn't get her in trouble or anything.
But, she doesn't shave. Which is gross. Especially in the summer when she wears tank tops and shorts. Eww. She looks like a yeti. The combination of body hair and her staunch advocacy of all things natural means body odor. Not so bad in the winter, but nearly intolerable in the summer.
She also doesn't wear a bra. Now, if she were young and had smaller breasts, I doubt many people would notice. But she's in her thirties and wears at least a C-cup. To quote David Sedaris, her breasts resemble oranges in tube socks. She's like Miss Chokesondick on South Park.
So, people complain and she gets a kindly little warning from the director. The last warning had her so offended she didn't come into work the next day, which forced my boss to work her shift, which stretched the poor woman's day from five hours to ten. She's older and in poor health, AND she had dinner plans for that evening. So now she's pissed.
Argh. The real problem here is that this girl is our only other employee. That's right. There's 3 of us. Three people to work 40 hours. Oh, it can be done, but there's little room for error. No one can get sick or have an appointment, nothing.
Argh. That's my rant about my professional life. I rarely rant about the wee library. As my readers all know, I really only complain about Evil Bastard Son of Satan University Library, where I daily have my liver torn out and fed to hungry, angry, buzzing WASPS. WASPS being white Anglo-Saxon protestants, because that's who goes to Colgate.
But school's still out on winter break, so I'm not working there, hallelujah.
Still, I have to complain about something, thus, this entry.
