Decisions, decisions…
At work yesterday I found out one of our clerks has resigned her position effective in September. I told my boss I’d like to be considered for the position. She knows how happy I am with my current position and suggested that since we have plenty of time, that I should think it over carefully.
I do love my current job. I like that I can take a minute or five to flip through an interesting book whenever one appears on my cart. I like that with very few execptons (like when running through the closing checklist) there’s no time presseure on anything I do. I like keeping the place picked-up and the books arranged neatly and in order on the shelves. I like that I get a lot of bending and stretching exercise while shelving. And I like that my job doesn’t just let me, it requires me to roam around the whole place.
Clerks stand behind the circulation desk and check-out and check-in books all day, while dealing with patron issues. They’re also paid over half-again what I’m paid. More senior clerks also prepare new books for circulation—putting on labels, barcodes, that plastic stuff on the covers, adding records to the computer and marking invoices for payment. It will be years before I’d get to do that, so I’m looking only at check-in and check-out.
The one part of my current job that I don’t get enough of is patron interaction. Clerks interact with every patron. I like talking with our patrons and helping them when I can and when I’m allowed. I also have some recovery, understanding of what makes people tick, some experience with what happens when they come unglued, a bit of psychology and the ability (much of the time) to see both sides in a conflict; that I think I can handle most of what I’ve seen happen at the desk—even some of the really gnarly things.
My boss reminded me that had a meltdown when I was training at the desk in 2002. Understandably that makes her nervous. She risks losing her “best page ever” to a position where he could meltdown, then she’d also lose another clerk.
I told her that I was completely overwhelmed back then. I wasn’t comfortably familiar with the page position, nervous I was perfoming it poorly, nervous about working in general, and that I was uncomfortable with myself, and thus uncomfortable with others. Then on a busy Friday afternoon I was thrown into the front lines in a position where I’d had no prior training.
I felt I was upsetting people because I didn’t know how to do some things, was not allowed to do others (pages can only do certain things, even when working the desk) and quickly got confused, frustrated and overwhelmed. I was going to quit the whole job entirely after about half an hour.
I’ve grown considerably since then. I work the desk fairly regularly to cover for breaks and have come in early when we’re short-handed to work the desk for an hour or more. While it’s still mildly frustrating when I’m not allowed to handle certain transactions—even something as simple as someone paying a fine—I don’t feel bad (either professionally or personally) about handing the patron off to the regular clerk. Any mild frustration (and it’s very mild) disappears with the next patron.
My boss then apologized that all the current staff had taken most of the hours from our departing clerk’s shifts, and that what remained was all day Friday and all day every Saturday. Only twenty-five hours per pay period total.
“So you’re saying I’d get 2½ more hours per pay period, over half-again the hourly rate and a five-day weekend?”
“When you put it that way,” she replied, “it doesn’t sound bad at all.”
“No, it doesn’t. That’s why I’m considering it.”
In a futile attempt to finally turn me off to it, she told me, “You’d have to train your own replacement. I’m not training two pages this year. I’m getting tired of it.”
“Really? You’d let me do that? I’ve wanted to help train new pages, and you’re saying I can do the whole thing? Show them everything I’ve learned? Wow! That’s great.”
She capitulated.
She can’t interview anyone—internal or external—until my co-worker actually leaves in September, so there’s plenty of time to mull the whole thing over. I’ve made my desires known, and countered initial objections. I can still change my mind and she can still say no.
