The year in pieces

I'm not re-animating this blog. This is a coda or end-piece, or codpiece if you will, to explain why I feel that we have come to a close.

The world of Helminthdale Libraries is become a darker, more savage one than the one I had been chronicling. To be sure, there was always that cruel feral streak of the girls' playground about the place and there were always too many smiling assassins but things have grown appreciably worse as Call Me Dave's austerity measures have hit what was already a basket case of a local economy.

I was having a drink at Bronwyn's leaving do — the latest of many and only the last of this year's — and it was depressing to realise looking around that nearly all the people in the room were historical footnotes, at best, as far as the Library Service was concerned. Including myself.

And the real bloodbath has hardly started: next year, although no libraries are closing there'll be a major cull of front-line staff, books and other resources. Caretaking is already a thing of the past so God alone knows how the buildings will be staying open, what with hardly anyone to staff them and roofs held on with sticky-backed plastic.

For all his many and various faults it's hard to escape the nagging confirmation that the idiot T.Aldous presided over a Golden Age. Sadly, so much of the managed change that could have eased the pain of the new horrors, or even forestalled some of them, were blocked as efficiently and ruthlessly as were all the other grim realities of the new millennium.

But that's all history now.

I can't really bring myself to write about what's happening here. I'd feel like a hospital orderly describing the last days of a dying vagrant. And I'm not up for that.

It's been a great ride and it's given me the opportunity to chat with some lovely people. May Providence look after you. Thank you and goodnight.

I think I'll go home now.

Just a minute

Consternation at Catty Library: Dulcie's on leave so they can't have a staff meeting because she's the only one who's been on the minute-taking course...

A chocolate-themed away day

It's an awful thing but the earworm I've had jingling round in my head this past week or so has been the old theme tune for Uncle Rubbish's Tiny Tots' Tea-Time Toy Time Time:

"It's time for tiny tots' toy time once again.

It's time for tiny tots' toy time once again, yes it is.

It's time for tiny tots' time,

It's toy time for tiny tots.

Yes, it's time for tiny tots' toy time once again, yes it is, oh baby."

Which is entirely unfair, probably, perhaps. But there have been times...

These are difficult and uncertain times and it should surprise nobody that nerves are frayed and tempers on edge and people are feeling threatened. It would be inhuman to expect any different. The problems arise from the ways that people deal with this.

I will offend some of my readership by suggesting that men and women tend to behave differently in these circumstances. Don't care: in my experience it's generally true, with the inevitable occasional exception to keep life interesting. Men, even the best of us (and God knows, I'm not!), go in for a lot of posturing. I've done it myself in my time: you think you're a rational civilised human being then one day you realise you're sitting in an office doing gorilla posturing. Go into any testosterone-fuelled office and you'll see a lot of unconscious yawning and people leaning back with their hands being their heads and armpits in full flourish. Blokes do lots of ritualised "I'm bigger, more virile and more masterful than I really am" nonsense, most of which is utter bollocks (literally and figuratively). Women under threat are generally (generally) quieter, subtler and more dangerous, the primary aim being to undermine, belittle and/or exclude "the competition" by whatever means. And sometimes those means can get pretty horrible.

The library service is mostly staffed by women. Most of the time this is a good thing: there's not a lot of macho idiocy getting in the way of business. Unfortunately when times get particularly bad, like now, we can find ourselves having to manage our way through some very unnecessary and unseemly unpleasantnesses.

It makes me tired: we don't have time for this sort of nonsense.

Vamping till not ready

My days in this library service are numbered. In some ways this is a relief - it's never been a good fit - but in many ways it is to be regretted: I've never been better-placed for getting the stuff done I've been trying to do this past decade.

The good news is that there is almost certainly a job for me "elsewhere in the organisation," at least until next Winter's round of cuts when who knows what may happen. I can't say that I'm entirely thrilled by the prospects but I guess a gig's a gig and all that.

He did the only thing a rational man could do in the circumstances: he got blind drunk and slept with a penguin

We live in interesting times. Here is the company song...

A simple game made complicated by people who should know better

Jack Harry's at Umpty Library's staff meeting, talking through the long and winding road that is the corporation's latest indecisions. In amongst the talk of efficiency and J.Arthur Blenkenstein's sermons on the subject of "adopting a can-do attitude to challenging circumstances" is one shaft of good news. Thelma has been covering Salome's old job as a secondment, it has been decided to make this permanent (thus making Thelma's old job available as an "efficiency" but keeping her somewhere useful and within hailing distance of the national average wage).

"That's not fair," says Andi. "What if one of the Assistant Librarians in this part of the borough had wanted that job?"

"Then they'd have applied for the secondment," replied Jack Harry, simply.

Which saves us any embarrassing questions...

Marvellous experiences in Cork and quite a lot of fun in foam rubber

One of the big problems we have with our staff is their lack of confidence in their own abilities. This is due, in no small part, to the Library Service's policy on personal and professional development: "know your place and stick to it." (Obviously, this is an elaboration of a much more concise policy document.) Today's case in point is Alice, who's worrying about a course she's doing. She's fretting about the bit dealing with decision-making skills.

"I'm going to fail that," she says.

"Bollocks," says I.

"I can't make a decision to save my life!"

"Bollocks."

"I can't."

"Of course you can. Just think of all that crap that was going on the other day. You sorted that out. You couldn't have done that if you aren't able to make decisions."

"Yeah, but I nearly chinned someone."

"You didn't, though, did you?"

"I nearly did."

"Well... It would have been a decision."

"Yeah, but a really crap one."

"So... Having established that you can evaluate a decision, find it lacking and decide to do something else...?"

"I hate you."

Festooned with apathy

I suppose a quick update is called for. It's been a busy couple of weeks, most of the details of which escape me (by design, not accident: they were that sort of detail).

• Salome and Doreen have engineered escapes out of Helminthdale by the cunning wheeze of looking in the small ads in the Library Association Record (incorporating Whizzer and Chips).
• Salome's job is to be done, temporarily at least, by Thelma, with Thelma's job being done by Marie and Marie's job being done by whoever's seen to have some time on their hands at any given moment. (You'll notice that we aren't recruiting new people.)
• Doreen's job is to be divvied up between Julia, Jack Harry and Milton, with bits going to Maybelle or Bella or Thelma or Posy or Lola, depending on the wind direction on the day.

Virtually every partner organisation that we deal with is either being wound up, cut to the bone or has been told that some time next summer there will be a decision to either wind up or cut to the bone. The only reason that we don't know for sure if/how we are going to be cut any further than we already know of is the council's stated objective not to close any libraries under any circumstances whatever. This should be an unalloyed joy but we know that this support hasn't ever extended to giving us the wherewithall to staff them properly so all bets are off as to what this actually will mean in practice.

Happy days...

Look at me! I'm in tatters!

These days I seem to be spending my time censoring or spiking entries to this blog. The stuff that would get me into really deep shit isn't the politics - large or small P. It's colleagues' behaviour. In times of stress people do irrational things. That's understandable and even when it's deeply, deeply irritating it's pardonable. Some behaviours aren't pardonable and it would be quite nice if they were to be put back in the box so that we could concentrate on trying to survive the next few months with the least possible casualties (ideally, none at all but that's looking increasingly unlikely).

A mist of grease vapour

As part of the council's new healthy living initiative library staff have taken to eurythmic dancing in the staff canteen.

A Hobson's choice of dooms

Chatting to someone from the IT Department we get to talking about all the talking about cuts.

"How's your business affected?" I ask her.

"Oh, twenty-five per cent cuts, same as everyone else."

"How's that work? They outsourced you and sold you to the lowest bidder so you're not a council department any more."

"That's true. We're not council workers any more. They've changed the pension and redundancy agreements and they regraded down all our salaries. But when the council's trying to save money we still get our share of the cuts."

"They can't do that, can they?"

Evidently they can.

A mournful concern for what happened

The unions are inviting us to "fight the ConDem plans to destroy public services." It's difficult to rouse oneself to the barricades as it's evident that public sector managers seem to be intent on beating them to it.

The latest news on the grapevine involves a local authority a few miles away. They've sent all the staff above scale 4 redundancy notices. No word of warning, just plop on the hall floor when the postie came a-calling. They will be able to apply for their own jobs, once the council's decided which of those jobs they're not going to cut.

1. Scale 4 is the unofficial aspirational entry level for graduates coming into local government posts. It's the lowest point on the scale where you earn enough to definitely be paying Income Tax and National Insurance, plus the contributions to the fully-funded-by-staff-contributions pension that the government says it can't afford despite the fact it doesn't actually cost the taxpayer anything because it's entirely funded by staff contributions. Scale 2/3 is the actual entry level for most graduates in local government. The payment rate for Scale 1 is actually below the national minimum wage.


2. The clock starts ticking on the day that you are declared redundant. You have 90 days to find alternative employment. At the end of the 90 days you are unemployed. You will notice that this council has decided to have a think about which jobs to keep, then advertise, interview and appoint after staff have received a letter of redundancy.

Touch wood, I don't think Helminthdale will be as bad as that.

Basically, in a word, would you sell your house to a gorilla?

Seth's been mostly working by himself since Alwyn retired last month. He wants to be able to take some days off. He's not directly employed by us, he's part of the council's Land & Buildings Management Agency so he has to ask them to provide cover for his absence. And they generally say that nobody's available because half the staff were laid off a couple of years ago in one of the council's efficiency drives. (Being a council efficiency drive, the savings in staff salaries are more than offset by essential overtime payments and building project over-runs.)

Today he got a 'phone call. They had found somebody who could provide some cover.

"If you send that bloke here he'll be going home in a body bag," advised Seth.

"You don't want him, then?" asked the supervisor.

World Cup Willies

An edict from the Chief Executive. Staff are invited to watch the England match on Wednesday on a big screen in the Presentation Room of the Town Hall.

It's academic for those of us providing services to the public but it's still engendered some controversy, with the camps evenly matched. On the one hand are those who see it as a way of managing potential absenteeism, with the opportunity to foster a bit of team spirit as a happy by-product.

On the other are those who think that in times of swingeing "efficiencies" the signing-in book would be the draft copy of the roll call of Those Who Probably Wouldn't Be Missed.

Breathtaking

Where else would a recently-retired paramedic be told that he's not a qualified first aider?

What kind of spirits insist on communicating through a Morris Minor hubcap?

I'm chatting with a colleague who's having problems with the serried ranks of his council's Human Resources Department.

"I have someone on long term “sick” leave who is healthier than I am but I got told off when I suggested I couldn’t affect the date of her return as she would return when she wanted to and not before and that would be just after the bank holiday when she was due to go on half pay. Our HR “Advisor” uttered a sentence prone to get anyone heading for the roof:

'Why would going down to half pay after six months off be a factor in her coming back to work? Surely she will come back when she is better and not before.”

Astonishing. Our HR department reckons that death and cremation is only a marginally-acceptable excuse for absence.

Paranoia

Some places are worse than us by a long chalk.

A friend's been retired a couple of years now. He's had to stop having lunch with one of his old workmates as their Chief Librarian saw them together last week and gave the poor woman a formal reprimand when she returned to the office.

I had wondered why, one time I went to visit him, he insisted that we drive thirty miles out of town to meet his colleagues for lunch.

It's the end of day two and the Saxons are having a party

It's Salome's last day today. She'll be doubly missed: she's loud and raucous with a filthy sense of humour; and we're not allowed to fill any new vacancies until April, which is pretty much our usual state of affairs even when the council's swimming in money. Posy and Lola are bracing themselves for a sudden increase in workload, which is inescapable given all the programmes and projects being imposed on us from on high, on top of business as usual. There are going to be some seriously sore heads at the work place tomorrow.

T.Aldous' "end of the month" retirement turns out to be "retires at the end of next week." This should prove interesting as none of us are convinced that he realises he's actually going.

Give me liberty bodice or give me death

We thought that there was an air of excitement about Salome's desk over the past couple of days. Today she has had confirmation: she's got another job. All of a sudden, all the stress and tension falls from her and she's been all sweetness and light all morning.

"They've already sent me the training induction plan," she tells me.

"Training induction plan???" we cry in unison.

Such are myths and legends born.

Does anyone have a favourite woodcock?

I shall hang you on doodads no longer: this is an outline sketch of the salient events of Mary's last day in work.

The staff had organised a pot-luck brunch for Mary (which gave the caretaking and cleaning staff the opportunity to join in) and a lot of goodies were provided. People popped in from all over the place, including escapees like Jimmy Huddersfield, Tilly Floss and Onabushkan Flo. It was all very warm and convivial and pleasant. Warner Baxter popped in to say cheerio to Mary. And he waited, and everyone else waited, and Mary waited...

T.Aldous made a big fuss and got everybody into the staff room who wasn't needed to cover the front line in the library. Everybody got in, awaiting the presentation of gifts and card. T.Aldous returned, said thank you, took a photo and disappeared.

Eventually it started to dawn on people that that was that and they slowly drifted away.

Just after lunch T.Aldous made it known that everybody was to go upstairs to the Lending Library as he wanted to present Mary with the thanks of the Library Service and a parting gift. Now, this was well meant but... It would have been OK in a branch library, where the customers know the individual staff very well and are grateful for the opportunity to say thank you and good luck to departing people. But not often in our biggest library, where service tends to be a bit more of the production line methodology. And especially not as it's been a quarter of a century since Mary worked on the front line. The customers looked on bemused as T.Aldous did his spiel and Mary tried not to be embarassed.

The gift was a nice bouquet of flowers in a box. Which isn't the gift we've all chipped in for. And Mary's not had her card yet. We're hoping that both are being saved for the evening meal that's been organised for next week.

As I said the other day: well-meaning, but really not quite right.

Then Mary attended her last Policy Team Meeting, where they discussed the latest budget cuts.