Obnoxious Librarian from Hades

by Dennie Heye

  Rubber stamp throwing is changing my life. It keeps me fit and concentrated - plus, all l-users are now watching their back. Yesterday I was at the library front desk, fully concentrated on fighting a flame war on alt.library.dewey-rulez when I noticed an intern trying to sneak out the door with a reference book. Well, well, well… . we all know that reference books ARE not to be taken away from the library. Just as the intern stepped through the door and thought he was safe, a big rubber stamp flew across the library and knocked the reference book from his hands. He turned around, and *wham* another rubber stamp hit his forehead. Now "reference copy - use only IN library" in hard to remove ink is on his forehead.

  The where we suffer from virtual meetings

  Once every year all the site support services in our country meet for a one day workshop. So the managers from services like real estate, logistics, catering etc. meet to discuss common topics and align improvement plans. Usually we meet at one of our offices and after the workshop go out for dinner and bowling (we´re all a bit goofy). We have about 10 managers from different offices meeting for that day, which is beneficial for fine-tuning plans, sorting out problems and getting to know each other.

  But this year with the financial difficulties, no budget was made available for our workshop. Instead, we were advised to hold a virtual meeting. With all the wonderful technology like videoconferencing, teleconferencing and online collaboration tools there was of course no need to travel. Not only would we save huge amounts on travel and hotels, but we would save all the hours spent on travelling.

  And all this technology was soooooo easy to use, we would need no support to put together our virtual workshop.

  Let me take you to a transcript on how we spent the first part of our workshop, saving tons of money and time.

  [Location 1]

  Hello everyone, welcome to this virtual meeting. I see location 2 and our remote colleagues logged in, but location 3 not yet.

  [Location 3]

  -silence-

  [Location 1]

  Location 3, where are you?

  [Remote colleague 1]

  Location 1, I am receiving a text message from Location 3. They have problems with the videoconference connection and are currently on hold with the helpdesk.

  [Remote colleague 2]

  All, I have audio, but I cannot see you - is there a problem with the connection on your end?

  [Location 1]

  Sorry remote colleague 2, let me check everything. Wait, I will change the settings… ***POOF**

  (all connections are dropped)

  [Location 1]

  Oh dear, oh dear, sorry, sorry, I pressed the wrong button. I will start the session again.

  [Location 4]

  Hello? Hello? Who is this? Is this the finance alignment session?

  [Location 1]

  Sorry location 4, we connected to the wrong session. We will try again. Apologies.

  [Location 2 calls location 1 on mobile phone]

  What happened? The screen is blank?!

  [Location 1]

  Sorry, the connection should come back any minute.

  [Location 2]

  Ok, we will get some coffee while we wait.

  [Location 3]

  (lots of static) Hello? *crackle* Hello? *crackle*

  [Location 1]

  Hello location 3. We can see you, but it seems like your audio connection has interference. Perhaps you can turn off all mobile phones?

  [Remote colleague 2]

  Guys, guys, I am connected. The video seems to lag behind the audio, but I don't know if that can be fixed. Are we ready to start?

  [Location 1]

  Sorry, remote colleague 2, we are still waiting for location 3 to have proper audio connection.

  [Remote colleague 1]

  Location 1, I will drop out temporarily as I need to move to another room. I was using a meeting room which had a double booking. I will grab all my stuff and find another room.

  [Location 3]

  (big echo on the line) Finally-finally-finally! We-we-we can-can-can see-see-see you-you-you and-and-and hear-hear-hear you-you-you. Ready-ready-ready to-to-to start-start-start!!

  [Location 1]

  Llocation 3, please mute your microphone as for some reason there is a big echo. We are also waiting for location 2 to come back from the coffee machine and for remote colleague 1 to find a new meeting room.

  [Remote colleague 2]

  I will wait. I have just tried to upload my slideset to the meeting management system, but I don't have permissions to add files. Can you fix that while we wait?

  [Location 1]

  I wish I could, but remote colleague 1 is the only one who knows how to do that. I will send him an urgent text message so he can do this once he is settled in a new meeting room. Perhaps you can already send around the slides via e-mail to all participants?

  [Remote colleague 2]

  I will do that.

  [Location 3]

  Please be aware that we are on a slower part of the network. We cannot receive large files on the corporate e-mail system, so please send a copy to my personal Hotmail account so I can retrieve it for our location.

  [Location 2]

  We're back! Are we all connected. so we can start the session?

  [Location 1]

  Please stay tuned location 2, we are just waiting for remote colleague 1 to find a new meeting room so he can connect.

  [Location 2]

  Hi, we have text message from remote colleague 1 asking what the access code for the audio conference is.

  [Location 1]

  I will send that to him immediately. Once remote colleague 1 has joined us, we are ready to start.

  [Remote colleague 1]

  Yeah! I am here. But I have to leave in 30 minutes as my VP grabbed me in the hallway and wants to discuss an emergency which needs to be resolved today. Let's move quick. Where are the slides for this meeting?

  At that point I threw my copy of "Library almanac 1986" at the videoconferencing screen and we all decided to go out for drinks to forget about this workshop.

  We were all frustrated, angry and tired as we hadn't achieved a thing. But at least we did not spend money on travel!

  The one where we give presentation advice

  People will often tell me after reading my blog that I don't like management, as I often make fun of managers. Often they are right, I just can't help making fun of managers. I promise to make less fun of managers and more fun of l-users (library users). This time I will actually help managers, giving them advice on how to give presentations. I have seen hundreds of management presentations over the years, and below are valuable lessons learned and observations.

  - Hide behind the desk. Stand in one location, grip the desk and try to disappear behind it.

  - For every minute allocated to your presentation, you need at least 5 slides.

  - Details, details! People want lots of trivial details. Tables and graphs with lots of details are recommended. Spend lots of time explaining tiny, irrelevant details.

  - Presentations are a burden. Don't show any enthusiasm or interest.

  - Forget the old principle- first say what you are going to say, say it and then summarize. Jump straight in, a clever audience should pay attention and figure out what you mean.

  - If you are in a series of presentations, don't refer to others. Where possible tell conflicting stories or contradict the others.

  - Spend 90 percent of the time on the first 25 percent of the slides. Wait until you get a warning that you are running out of time and rush through rest.

  - Use a small font that is hard to read from the third row and further in the audience. Tell the audience - I know you cannot read this… But carry on anyway.

  - Slide design - a bright yellow background with orange font looks fine. If it looks ok on your laptop, it should be fine in a large meeting room.

  - Struggle with the remote. “Oops, what button is this”. Bonus poi
nts if you can get the presentation PC to crash with the remote.

  - Flip back forth looking for slides, never ever see the slides before the presentation as you want to have a “fresh view”.

  - Give the presentation by looking at the screen with your back to audience.

  - If you are wearing a microphone, make sure it scratches against your jacket or else it should be so close to your mouth that everyone can hear you breathing.

  - Read all the slides verbatim, assume nobody in the audience can read.

  The one where we take a day off

  It is Thursday evening in the library and I am tired of working all day to update the records management system with the new retention rules made up by the legal department. I put my feet up on my desk, turn up the speakers to hear the fabulous song "Bodhisattva" from Steely Dan and check the weather forecast. It looks like it will be a beautiful day tomorrow and it would be nice to go to the park with a good book (I found a thriller entitled "Dewey decimated" which sounds intriguing).

  But taking a day off in Hades Corporation however is not an easy feat. Far from that, it actually is quite discouraging and makes you think twice if you really have the time to arrange that day off… :

  - first you have to navigate to the global HR portal, log in with your user id and password (which you have to change every 3 months and must be 12 characters at least, so you write that down on a post-it note somewhere… spend 5 minutes looking under keyboard, in the drawer and underneath a stack of old Library Journals)

  - open the "leave request" form

  - fill out your name, department, select your manager from a drop down list (which starts at "A" and you must scroll all the way down), select the leave date requested

  - close the HR portal

  - open the departmental team calendar in Outlook and block the day you are on leave

  - go to the project team "leave overview" spreadsheet on the intranet, try to download the spreadsheet, find it is reserved (i.e. blocked for editing) by a colleague, call colleague to release the document, download the document, enter the leave in the spreadsheet, upload the new version to the intranet

  - open the time writing application. Find that the password you have in your list is not the right one. Call the help desk to have the password reset. Log in to the time writing application successfully and realize you don´t know what time writing code to use for "unplanned leave". Make up a code. System rejects code. Call colleague. Enter right code.

  - at the end of the year you get a request from the finance department to explain why the time writing overview of leave requests and the overview of the HR department is off by 30 minutes.

  - my manager has one week to approve leave requests. If he is on leave, deletes the e-mail or in general does not feel like logging on to the HR portal to approve my request, my leave request is denied. Then what do you do when you already have taken that day off?

  That process takes roughly an hour and sucks away all the good vibes in the room. It's not only me who has to waste time and energy to satisfy the bureaucratic processes, oh no, my manager gets involved for approval, bean counters in different off shored locations look at the request, route it, stamp it, validate it, forward it and lose it somewhere. So I estimate that following the process of requesting the day off costs my organisation at least $750. I can also just take the day off and don't follow the process. Either way I will take the day off. Hmmm… . what did we recently get brainwashed about?

  Save costs

  Think out of the box

  Challenge bureaucracy

  Avoid lenghty procedures

  Work smarter

  Hey, I can tick all the boxes above by just taking that day off and forgetting about all those procedures, forms and timewasting… ..

  The one where we benefit from bureaucracy

  I received a call from Scott Patterson, the slick salesperson from vendor OverPricedContent Inc. As always he tried to schmooze me by pretending to know me very well and being a "friend". That always irks me, as he would be the last person I can imagine to do fun things with that I do with friends, like guessing Dewey codes, discussing library 2.0 and bashing Google. After not getting anywhere with his small talk, he told me he had been enjoying "interesting" discussions with one of our leading scientists, Adam N. Douglas about a global subscription to OverPricedContent Inc.'s flagship database "HapHazard-Bag-Of-Content-With-Flashy-Features".

  Ok, now all alarm bells go off…

  End users and sales people should never ever be allowed to talk together. In this case particularly, Adam N. Douglas may be a top-notch scientist, but he has no clue about databases, quality information or our limited library budget.

  Scott Patterson is overly excited: "Mr. Douglas said that after the free trial he was very interested in our database, and that he would arrange for you to handle the global license! So, shall I pop over to your office say tomorrow to discuss the size of my bonus… eh.. sorry, the details for a global contract?"

  With some effort I manage to get rid of Scott Patterson, as I first want to deal with my distinguished end user. Since 1996 strangling of end users has been prohibited unfortunately and I have been told not to whack l-users (library users) with rubber stamps anymore. I pop over to the research lab and find Adam N. Douglas behind his desk, almost hidden behind printouts, empty coffee cups, dusty binders and lots of broken pencils. He looks up, flinches, remembers he has not got his glasses on, looks for his glasses, puts them on upside down, looks bewildered, realizes his mistake, puts on his glasses on correctly, realizes it is me and smiles: "Oh hello librarian, am I overdue again with my books?"

  "Adam, of course you are, but that is not the reason why I am here. You have been talking to a sales person called Scott Patterson?"

  "Yes, what a very interesting fellow. He has a wonderful database you know. I tried it and as it has all my articles in it, so that database must be really good. Also, you could change the font size and background color - very handy.

  Also, mr. Patterson was very interested in hearing my feedback as well known scientist, and he asked me to be on their advisory board that meets at exotic locations annually. I highly recommend you set up a global deal, mr. Patterson would work that out with you."

  "Adam, do you know that over half of the content in mr. Patterson's overpriced database is already available via databases I licensed for you? And why didn't you bring me into the discussions?"

  "Mr. Patterson said he already had spoken to you, and that you would be ok with my evaluation - so you think that database is not good value for money… ? Do you think it is a bad thing that I confirmed to Mr. Patterson in an e-mail that Hades Corp. would sign a global contract pending some small details?"

  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

  This calls for action, as this could get really messy. Luckily I know just what to do: "if you cannot beat them, wear them out". So I quickly head over to my good friend Xander de Beaufort in the contracting and procurement department. Xander by day is a supply chain engineer, using his creative talents, knowledge of contract details and skills in manipulating internal processes. At night and in the weekends he is a forest ranger, driving his Landrover through the woods to help the animals and chase vandals who do not respect Mother Nature. I explain the situation to Xander and he suggests that we employ our bureaucracy tactic to wear the vendor out: "we may not be top quartile in cost management or performance, but we are second to none in bureaucracy!"

  Xander will send mr. Patterson a nice e-mail, explaining to him the simple, 12-step program to reach that contract. We'll start with a requirements and opportunity statement review, followed by a portfolio match and market scan based on industry specific benchmarks, leading to either identification of levers in the supply market or the assessment of new suppliers, which surely will bring up a 3 month tender process, resulting in a lenghty tender board meeting to determine the short list. Nearly there, we move on to discussion about price strategies, risk reward models and detail
ed review of the proposed contracts with the sharks from legal, tax, insurance and intellectual property involved. The surviving lucky vendor, who still wants to deal with us, then has the last hurdle to clear which is to get the right signatures of Hades Corp. top managers. Due to the ongoing re-organizations and managers fear of committing to costs, plus the fact that this process of getting the signatures is handled by our off shored financial services group who cannot ambush the senior mangers in hallways or meeting rooms, chances are slim of this deal ever happening.

  The one where we plan a budget meeting

  Every year the ritual of preparing next years budget starts in March. I have barely had the time to spend this years budget,and then I have to prepare for next years budget. It is a familiar ritual between my manager and me: he wants a lower budget, I want more budget. Hence I ask for twice the money I really need, he then dissects the budget and challenges every line item, planning to reduce my budget to almost zero. We go back and forth, until I get half of the budget I requested, which is precisely what I need and my manager has the satisfaction of being a cost focused manager who cut away half of the requested budget.