Don’t Have Any Misplaced Loyalty - The Library Does Not Care About You
Pros
Serving the community and fulfilling some aspects of your passion. The people you trauma-bonded with over years of poor management and horrible leadership.
Cons
Individuals at the top identify problems but never fix them. They also do not hold themselves accountable and acknowledge their own role in the systemic issues plaguing the library system. The Chief Executive Officer does not hold toxic leadership accountable. He doesn’t resolve anything, just shuffles people and positions instead of fixing the actual problem. He creates spreadsheets with goals but doesn’t ever work to achieve them. Uses peoples’ passion against them and is shocked that morale is so low. Recently he blamed staff for overreacting because they received ineffective communication from management on a sensitive topic. He did this publicly on television interviews instead of blaming inept leadership. This is verifiable by searching for this organization and looking at the recent news. This could have been resolved with a solid communication plan developed before they started communicating with staff. His stance on this topic tanked morale and placed blame on staff instead of those who caused the problem initially. Human Resources department is a joke. Takes up to 6 months to hire anyone. Little to no communication with applicants. They also do not fire anyone. They will not make decisions and this creates a bottleneck for the whole organization. There’s no way for high performers to advance. They only receive additional work and maybe an exceeds on their performance development rating. Heard a supervisor tell someone not to work as hard so they wouldn’t be disappointed when they do not get the raise they deserve. Library does not want independent thinkers or those who strive for excellence. They only want to maintain the status quo. They take advantage of your passion for librarianship and drains you of your talent, skills and ideas. DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU OR YOUR CAREER GOALS. Only cares about taking advantage of your goodwill and using you until you cannot even recognize yourself. Toxic and abusive culture. The worst attribute is the blatant racism and sexism. There are multiple instances of systemic racism and sexism. Here are a few: 1. Because of the constant turnover, there are high level positions that need a placement while they search. In the last 2 years no female has been made an interim. Every recent interim position has been a male. A female was asked to take over the duties of an entire department with no employees (they all quit) and fulfill the job duties of a leadership level position. They required her to perform these duties for over 6 months and told her she was “coordinating” rather than being an interim. After doing these tasks for months, they opened a supervisor position and did not even interview her. 2. A high level employee was fired last year. There is a supervisor in that department who is African American. He has all of the necessary certifications and qualifications to serve as the interim while they search. Instead of offering the interim position to him, they offered the interim position to a white male who is not in that department and does not have the necessary certifications required by the position. They have not started a search for a permanent replacement in this time and the interim is still in place. 3. Constantly talented and hard-working females are passed over for inept and under qualified white male candidates. This is not conjecture, these are facts. You could talk to any mid-level employee and they can validate the statements above.