Obnoxious Librarian from Hades Read online

  Bruce smiles when he opens his laptop to start his presentation: “Well, let me start by saying how delighted I am to work with an esteemed team like this to bring cost effectiveness to the next level by combining radical new ideas with bleeding edge technology and “right sourced” for an optimal balance between shareholder ROI and customer focus”. He didn’t even blink an eye or breathe during that blurb, which makes me wonder whether he is a cyborg. And did I see my manager start to drool?

  Bruce smiles at me like a cobra that is going to hypnotize a mouse, so I quickly mumble a prayer to Ranganathan (the saint for librarians).

  “Your manager and I have had several inspiring conversations about the future of the department and came up with out of the box ideas for cost effectiveness. Based on my extensive experience in this area and your managers’ insight, I am sure we have wonderful solutions to talk about. I’d like to present our ideas to you and then have your open and honest feedback. Getting a mutual buy in is essential to embed cost effectiveness in our hearts and minds.”

  “Our first idea was to abolish a central collection of books and journals and use the peer-to-peer model. So rather than having a central repository, items would be with a staff member who uses it and then is passed on when requested by someone else.”

  (Well, that would be a quick way to ruin a library collection, let the patients run the asylum).

  “The following idea may sound too radical for you as a librarian – but let’s keep an open mind and let try to visualize the potential of this: instead of subscribing to many different databases and journals, let’s use the synergy of wisdom of crowds combined with the power of the social network. Hades employs many different unique individuals who all have a pool of knowledge and a wide network. This is a unique, unrivalled, untapped potential which we can leverage to answer any question in our company”.

  (Ok, let’s replace authoritative information sources with what a friend of a colleague says, based on a blog he read last week).

  “And lastly, but surely one of my favorites which was brilliantly suggested by your manager – we all want all our information online, at our fingertips. So instead of a slow migration towards a complete e-library by acquiring licenses with different publishers – let´s make a big bang. Let’s ship the whole book collection of to our business partner in India where everything will be scanned and wiki’d.”

  (Hey, we haven’t been sued for copyright violation yet – let’s make sure we will be the poster child for copyright violation!)”

  Bruce smiles and looks at me as if I am a walking reduction target. But he surely hasn’t expected to deal with the force of the obnoxious librarian. “Bruce, before we go into detail of the different ideas – I was just wondering… how did your great advice help your previous customers like Enron and WorldCom? And would you care to explain to me how ethical it is that you are a major shareholder in the Indian business partner, which you recommend?”

  Bruce’s phone starts ringing at the exact moment my boss turns to him with a bewildered look on his face. As the look on Bruce’s face turns from a smirk to sheer horror, he quickly leaves the room while talking loudly on the phone. My manager runs after him, so I guess the meeting is adjourned.

  The one where a plan comes together

  It is a gloomy Wednesday morning in the library and I am just about to recategorize all my desktop items in a more feng shui manner. Seems like putting the trash-can icon right next to the library catalog icon gives off bad vibes to all new catalog records. But before I can bring back harmony to my desktop and continue to enjoy my new Eva Cassidy CD, Sue (my passive aggressive assistant) hands me the phone: "The CEO's secretary for you".

  Ah, that is the type of calls I always enjoy, as much as you can enjoy a verbal torture. The CEO's secretary is a woman who obviously has been instructed to keep the CEO as far removed from employees or decisions. Either that, or she just likes demeaning people.

  Let me put it this way: I once needed to get the CEO's approval for a very large project proposal, so I wanted to make an appointment. The secretary asked me to explain it to her, and I hadn't uttered two sentences when she interrupted me: "and is there a point you are trying to make?” I quickly swallowed some rude remarks that came up, and I cut right to the chase about the decision I wanted to put to the CEO. She sighed deeply, looked at me wearily and said, "You people really can't make any decisions yourself, can you?”

  So with that in mind I took the call:

  "Hi, how can I help the CEO today?"

  "Listen up: you have ruined the intranet. The new navigation confuses the CEO. So undo all the changes right away."

  "Well, we just finished a three month intranet improvement, where we worked with focus groups to improve navigation, the search engine and the lay out. All the focus groups agree that the new improvements are helping to use the intranet better."

  "Why wasn't I involved to represent the CEO's wishes?"

  "You were invited several times but replied, and I quote 'I have no time for this type of details, shouldn't we outsource this anyway'"

  "I don't recall that. And by the way, the CEO really does not like the use of an owl as the intranet mascot. He prefers to use a unicorn."

  (Now she is getting on my nerves but luckily I have a flash of brilliantness)

  "Mmmmm… the owl hasn't been the intranet mascot since February 2003. I am just checking the log files here, and it seems like that was the last time the CEO or you have accessed the intranet."

  "Your systems are obviously full of mistakes, which doesn’t surprise me, as you can also never find my documents. I insist you fix the intranet as we just discussed and demonstrate it to me later this afternoon "

  Ok, now I have had it. The reason why we can't find her documents is because she refuses to put them in the document management system. She only stores documents on her local hard drive, never makes backups and then blames us when she has deleted an important document. But this is going too far, so with a grin on my face I start to work on my cunning plan.

  [Later that day]

  As colonel John “Hannibal” Smith once said: “I love it when a plan comes together”. The CEO’s secretary is delighted: the whole intranet is changed as she, sorry, the CEO would like to see it. I even changed the font and background color especially on her request. Little does she know that I have redirected her browser for the intranet to a locally stored set of web pages. Every link to another page will show an error: “the web server is being serviced, check back in 15 minutes”. Her attention span is 5 minutes maximum, so most likely she will not be waiting for that.

  And while I was at her computer, I changed the settings of her Microsoft Office to save directly to a workspace in the document management system.

  Intermezzo: the librarian's worst nightmare restaurant

  Last night a sales manager from a potential new vendor took me out for a dinner to discuss potential opportunities (i.e. another shot at a big year end bonus). He said he'd take me to a restaurant that would be perfect for me. He was so wrong.

  The restaurant had books as the central theme, but for me it was like being in a nightmare. Books are my friends. Books have feelings. Books should be cherished.

  Books should NOT BE USED as pillars between tables by driving a metal stake through a column of books from the ceiling to the floor.

  Books should also NOT BE USED as a nice way to hide the restaurant bill in by cutting out a section of all pages of the book.

  And the one thing in this restaurant that almost made me shriek out of frustration: I was facing a wall of the restaurant filled with bookshelves. ALL the books were in total random order. Fiction mixed with non-fiction. Different languages mixed. No classification whatsoever.

  It took me a while to calm down when I was home that evening. I had to reread three chapters of "The history and origins of cataloguing" before the shudders were gone. You bet that vendor will be on the blacklist.

  The one where a d
ead end becomes a break through

  It is Monday afternoon, just after lunch and I am catching up on the latest library 2.0 jargon to mix with some new budget proposals. All of a sudden, my boss pops in with a big smile on his face: “Have I got news for you!”

  My boss waves with a fancy letter in his hand and sits down: “Did you know J.M. Byron is about to retire and make a huge donation to the IT department?”

  “J.M. Byron – he must be like what, 85?"

  “He'll be 70 next month and now is planning to leave Hades Corporation, but he wants to leave a legacy.”

  J.M. Byron for many years topped my list of customers that I could live without. Since he had been around forever, he had opinions about everything. And since he was an engineer before becoming a board member, and engineers can do everything – running a library and records department is a trivial thing. He would look for every opportunity to corner me next to the coffee machine or the copier and give his 'advice' on how he would run a much better and efficient library.

  My boss taps the letter in his hand: “Seems like he wants to donate quite a sum of money to your department, which comes in handy to remodel your library and of course the offices of the senior managers.”

  But you are the only senior manager in this department!

  “Ah well, I have always had my eye on a nice big corner office, a big antique desk with green marble inlay and a signed picture of Bill Gates, right here.”

  My librarians’ sixth sense is now picking up signals. Bad patrons never just go away. And they never go away and make life better for anyone… they use their farewell to take a final stab. And of course, I am right.

  “However, J.M. Byron has one condition that must be met before he makes this donation. He seems be a real book collector and wants us to take his collection of books, which is unique in the industry. You will be so pleased to have this in your library – here, look at the list.”

  I look over the list and gasp for air. The list contains every book my predecessors and I have weeded out of the collection for the past 25 years. Every time we weeded the collection, J.M. Byron would be fuming at us for daring to throw out a key book, which must be kept in the collection. Even if we argued that we already had multiple copies, the book was a very old edition or very outdated, he would be upset and accuse us of not being true librarians. He would then take all the books and leave, making us happy that we'd gotten rid of them.

  Now all these books would be coming back to the library and we would be required to keep them in a specially renovated “J.M. Byron” section for at least another 25 years. Luckily, my trained cataloguers eye scans all the tiny print with the conditions and finds something interesting.

  “Aaah well, too bad you didn't read this correctly – he wants the books to be stored in the room where he started out originally. And if my memory serves me right, that is currently your office… ”

  So in the end we all win: I get a nice pot of money to redecorate the library, J.M. Byron's legacy is intact and my manager has his nice antique desk. Which is squeezed between four large bookcases, blocking his window and a part of his door.

  The one were a point makes itself

  It is Friday 4 PM in the library and I cannot seem to wipe the grin of my face. Is it because tonight the local movie channel is showing “The Librarian” and “The Librarian 2” back to back? No. Is it because David Sylvian's “The librarian” is on the radio? No. Let me explain the reason for my grin and good mood, even though it isn't payday or “hug your librarian” day yet.

  I am obnoxious, usually to make my point or get even. Sometimes both. But once in a while the universe sees my point immediately and makes that clear. Today was one of those days…

  Every year, my company Hades picks a global target that we all should focus on, besides our normal work of course. Lots of consultants get paid obscene lots of money to come up with workshops, interactive sessions, posters, slogans etc to brainwash all of the employees. Last year the target was relentless compliancy, and we all had to stand up during so called town hall meetings to pledge our commitment to the Hades Book of Compliancy.

  This year the big target is 360 degrees safety (they must have a special guy to come up with the names for the targets). Seems like our shareholders are worried that our safety statistics are not “top quartile” in the industry. I once asked during a departmental meeting with a vice president what will happen because everyone in the industry wants to be top quartile, so it seems like a never-ending race. The VP told me that was a very interesting questions and he'd get back to me on that with more information. I am still waiting. Luckily I am not holding my breath.

  So in order to make us all fully aware of what we need to do to become the best of the best with regards to safety, all our managers have to brief their team on the same day. It just happens that on that day, our manager was in another office overseas. So he decided to kill two birds with one stone and host the safety briefing virtually via our new desktop based videoconference tool. We all have a web cam on our screens, which most of us cover up with a plastic coffee cup. You never know if there is a feature where your manager can turn on the web cam without you knowing.

  At the given time, we all tuned in to our managers' safety briefing via the video conferencing software. The nice thing is that the software also includes a chat facility, which can be used to chat with the presenter… or with others on the session without the presenter aware. You can guess the latter is used the most during management presentations.

  Halfway during the safety briefing, just before I almost doze off after being seriously bored with endless slightly out of focus PowerPoint slides and the monotonous voice of our manager, I hear sirens. But they are not in our building. I hear sirens through my headset – the sirens are in the other office where my manager is. I remembered that one of the very first slides stated very clear that safety must take priority, especially when in doubt. So I fully expected my manager to close the session, apologize and evacuate the building.

  But he didn't. He looked around, mumbled something about it probably being a test and carried on with his slide set. In the background it was clearly visible that other employees were evacuating…

  The one where a meeting is crashed

  It is Thursday morning, 11.02 AM and I am bored in the library. I have already randomly switched signs on the shelves (people like to search for information online, so why not offline), put up the excuse of the day (solar flares) why the library catalogue is offline and changed the interface language of the intranet to Portuguese (it is after all Dia da Liberdade). But still I am not my usual obnoxious, happy self.

  I pick up the phone and call my buddy in meeting services. Just like me, he is undervalued and underpaid. He is a certified facilitator, but spends most of his time explaining to senior managers how to hook up their laptop to the projector. So we both know that job satisfaction will have to come from ourselves. One of our favorite ways to lighten our mood is to crash a meeting: drop into a meeting unannounced and try to create a maximum of confusion without being recognized.

  A prerequisite is that nobody in the meeting knows you, so we quickly scan the list of meetings for today. As our office is also a regional headquarter, there are lots of visitors from other offices who meet here. And we're in luck, today is the first meeting of a cross country group of tax and legal consultants who will spend all day talking about “Shared Service Centers: Off-Shoring or Outsourcing?” Fascinating. That meeting just begs to be crashed.

  Especially for these occasions I keep a sharp business suit in the library, hidden behind the cupboard full of bound library journals. I put on a pair of hip designer glasses and practice my management mumbo-jumbo: “We will dramatically increase our exclusive strong commitment to integrated systems design. A key driver in this process is web 2.0 that will enable the collateral application frameworks” and “We will inevitably take the lead in outsourcing, only to speed ahead of the pack in the world-class fie
ld of the economically sound corporations. Virtual input gives rise to the first class team players, on a going-forward basis.”

  Key to a successful meeting crash is to be totally self-assured and radiate power. So I wait until the meeting has just started and then walk into the meeting room. The presenter stops, and shoots me an angry glare. The rest of the attendees look up and I wink at them: “Sorry, the jet was late. What can I say? Please continue.” I pull up a chair and squeeze the seat as close to the presenter as possible. I open my briefcase, pull out a laptop and put that on my lap.

  With a sigh, the presenter continues his slide set. I have already upset him with my entrance, so now it is up to me to build up my game. And what better makes a statement than a ringing mobile phone? My buddy in meeting services is just outside the meeting room and calls me just as the presenter has finished one sentence. The mobile phone in my suitcase is on top volume with the Macarena. I feign surprise, open the suitcase and turn off the phone. “Sorry guys, I forgot to turn it off”.(Again: Can't get these extra lines to go away… )The atmosphere in the room now gets tense, so we're on the right track. Now I open the laptop and start typing whilst the presenter recaps what he tried to say already twice. I sigh deeply, look up from my laptop and start looking around. I whisper, just a little too loud, to my neighbor: “hey buddy, is there a power outlet here somewhere? I need some juice.” My neighbor wants to get rid of me and points to the power outlet behind his seat in the wall. So I slowly open the squeaky briefcase, get the power cord out and squeeze myself behind my neighbor’s chair. He now has to move his chair forward, suppress his anger but still show an interest in the presentation.