2 English Magazine

 

The Workplace in a Day of Two Public Libraries

It’s Monday morning and the library has half an hour till opening time. I look around the neat little carpark without a clue of where the entrance is. I am nervous as I prepare myself, until I see a man disposing of some books in the far corner. His name isDavid and instantly recognises me and gives me a warm welcome. Led directly into the staffroom, a gush of warm, pleasant air hits me as I go through the door. My first supervisor springs off her chair to shake my hand. A lot more staff are moving around the large looking inside of the building than I expect. Down the stairs on one side of the office, the manager has her own office, and below that, there are six large lockers and a door to the banquet hall. Going down the stairs on the other side, there is a glass cube elevator and a table with black trays for transporting holds. At the front of the library, there is an attractive display of the items the Australian soldiers used in war, with good lighting. An elevator and two flights of stairs take you up to the second floor, where there is a large kitchen and dining room, an office, and the entire non-fiction selection. A black coffee machine sits on the wooden shelf in one corner, for use by the public.

“I can give you free coupons for coffee”, the supervisor offers me. I promptly decline the offer politely, as I do not drink coffee at all.

We turn on the lights for the rooms. She seems satisfied with my apparent surprise at the modern look of the library. My first task to orientate myself in the library is picking items off the shelves to be sent to other libraries. A quick job to be completed every morning before 10:30 AM.In order to appear very able to do the job, I perform this task at amazing speed.

This would be the case for most of the week. My ‘workplace experience’ was more a ‘work experience’, due to the never-ending amount of tasks to be completed. Being assigned task after task did not limit me from observing the work-style of employees and the overall nature of the workplace, but did limit me from talking to the employees, something which would later become written into the comment section of the ‘Supervisor’s Report’ and which I thoroughly deny.

Due to the plans created by the manager, I was to observe the children’s program and help out a bit with their crafts, singing, and demonstrations. It was definitely a new experience for me. Quite a few children and parents turned up, and apart from helping them occasionally, I could feel that the other volunteer felt I was unnecessary. I did the workload of two people. The presenter commented that a student being there with the children brought a huge difference to the overall atmosphere of the event. To me, it was fun and took up a large part of my first half of the week. When the librarians didn’t have anything for me to do, I would be distributing materials to plastic sleeves. These easy, repetitive, and often boring jobs taught me to value the small jobs people complete everyday which are the foundations of the many benefits of society.

My Thursday was the best. As soon as I arrived, the plans for the day were told to me by my third supervisor. Working alongside this set of staff in the first library proved to be far easier and enjoyable than the other library. Simple tasks were followed by a visit from my maths teacher. He asked a few questions, and, seeing as I was happy and busy with work, left within three minutes. The air, although it had that same dry feel as is the case in most libraries, felt closer to a natural state. The dry feel of my breathing was less obvious. From all around you it sucks away the moisture that you have rationed. In the children’s area; a sneeze, the urge to blow your nose, throats dry, pleas for a drink of water. I realise that I haven’t drunk any water since beginning work in the morning. And no key to tap on the handle of the door, hear a buzz, and enter a relaxing mood. But that doesn’t matter at all.At least on that day.

The complete difference of both lighting and height must have given me a boost of some sort. I did not take a break for a consecutive five hours. David taught me a range of skills that morning, all to do with cataloguing. He was the first to get me to sit next to him and observe. In his demonstrations, the keyboard was typed on quickly and the barcode reader finished its read in a split second. I repeated his procedure at roughly the same speed, but paused for longer when checking. I wanted more of these one-to-one sessions that obviously most of the other students would have been treated with way earlier in the week.

To sum up the other library I worked in, I would perhaps start with the footprints and large murals, backed with green grass and the blue of the swimming pool. Or not.The automatic doors slide open aggressively, noiselessly, mysteriously in order to let me in.Less attention was given to me and staff members rarely had time on their sleeves during my first day of work there. That day I managed to get by but did not enjoy that day much. That day could be remembered with my folding and stacking of cardboard boxes. Those American cardboard boxes.Each one needed its tape cut open in order to fold them. I folded 10 within a minute before realising that my hands were dirty and that there was no supervision in this oppressive room behind the office. Taking care to concentrate on my task and not injure myself, I folded and stacked the remaining 40 boxes, wishing I had remembered to bring work gloves, astounded at how broad the work is at the library.

‘Nice work,’ says that presenter of the children’s activities afterwards… it had better be.

It was a rather challenging first day at the other library. I went home in the enveloping darkness.

I want to be a librarian. Work. That is what libraries mean to me. You get off the vehicle and walk into the office and you are hit with a huge tide. The work including shelving, holds and scanning.The work including photocopying and letters.The work including program preparation. The work that others find unpleasant and you find annoying. There is always twenty times more work in the libraries. Work finds you from the morning and loses you from the pouring rain. The staff enjoy work. Work is given from the crowds of visitors and fitreaders. The entire library system is based on work, creates more work, takes work away from you.

Once, I went with two employees to the children’s fiction section, where the hard-to-see orange alphabetical labels were. It was the last day for me and I was excited to get back to school in the following week. It turned out that the following weeks were not as dynamic and interesting as I had imagined. First of all, I would start to have a sore throat right in Lesson 1 & 2 of English on Monday. Having partially recovered, I would then go on to understand the value of having a box of tissues in all classrooms. What a privilege that would be.And now, as I sit here writing, my whole body feels dry.Between my muddled thinking and my attention being paid on the speaking employee, I noticed. One of the employees seemed to become distracted by something else, but the other continued to talk to me, and so I listened, obediently.

‘These labels are hard to see and could be replaced with two different labels,’ she said.

I ask, ‘Will the heavier labels fit into this space on the shelf?’

Seconds later it was discovered that one child had somehow gotten her head stuck between a table and a box. Less than five metres from us.Having seen that the child was alright, the two staff members went back to the office. I began my long and uneventful task of making labels, and from what I heard in the office, I could make out what was happening.

One staff member interviewed the supposed mother of the child, and took note of the condition of the child. The other staff member began filling in an incident report form, which the Team Leader completed as well. After the quick interview, the employee stayed a long time, over her usual work finish. Although inspectors came to check things out, they could not understand how the child had gotten into this problem.

‘It may have been the other children,’ some blamed.

Others said, ‘The mother was just a carer who hadn’t been paying attention at the time.’

Some even pointed out the other parents who had been close by but had not helped out with the incident at all. Everyone, apart from the Team Leader, put in the comment, ‘poor thing’ every now and then.

And finally, ‘I’ll stop talking about it now.’

This event was one way for me to gain an insight into how the librarians dealt with trouble. Although this sort of incident was highly uncommon, it happened in a mere few seconds and lead to one employee reflecting that she had gotten so used to the loud noises of babies and children, that she had turned a deaf ear to this child’s cries. Overall, it is very much the case that none of the employees wanted to become involved in this issue, but completed their work either out of duty or by thinking of how the child had injured herself using library furniture. They had to assist in having the procedures of improving the facilities take place.

Some jobs, such as the position of acquisitions officer back at the first library, seem outrightly simple but important. They choose which books to order, catalogue them, and also have the right to be the first readers of those books. All in all, a very relaxed and enjoyable job. Job openings in the local councils however, are extremely rare. And no one will provide such jobs. And no one will answer your questions about how the job landed on their heads for you straightforwardly.

How was I supposed to ask questions? What was there to ask? ‘Ask more questions… talk more with staff.’ There was no way that the second supervisor, the Team Leaderwhom I met on the Tuesday for the first time, could have left a more positive comment on that report. She didn’t see me or what I did for most of the time. On Wednesday she even left extremely early.

There never was any opportunity for me to encounter any truly difficult tasks or tasks that genuinely held my attention. My overall experience of the workplace is what I truly needed to feel for myself.

When I first had work experience when I was aged fourteen, I went to two workplaces, a local home electrical repair business, and a shop that sold baked maple-leaf shaped buns. At the time, it was encouraged to ask questions as long as they did not cover information that was not released to the public. I’m sure I was bright, interested and talkative; in short, very distracting.