Book Companion:
Library and
Information Center Management,
Seventh Edition
Inequitable Treatment?
"I've had it, this place is driving me nuts, not to mention my boss," I grumbled to myself as I tuned out the world and walked back to my desk. "How could the workday fall apart 27 minutes after it started?" It all began when Mrs. Payne (pun intended) walked through the door at 8:27 (late again as usual). I was around the corner and out of sight when another worker asked Mrs. Payne a question. All I heard was her loud voice raised in anger as she argued with the other worker who promptly asked: "What's your problem?" and proceeded to tell her off. "Yea! Way to go, Mrs. Young, give her a dose of her own medicine" I thought to myself. The boss was also in her office listening to the exchange. A few minutes later I asked her a question about the technical aspect of the online bibliographic information system. Before I could finish my question, she let me have it too: "It doesn't matter," she yelled. "Make a note of it; you'll have to do your own changes from now on."
In reply, I said "That's your job, not mine." All the while the boss had been sitting in her office with expressions of amazement on her face at the behavior displayed by Mrs. Payne (which was her normal behavior when the boss was not around). Mrs. Payne has always thrived on controversy and possessed no tact at all. She is aggressive and intimidating to the average person including the boss.
All of a sudden the boss came out of her office and said to me, "You will have to do what Mrs. Payne is currently doing in the near future." My temper boiled higher and hotter. I clamped my lips tightly together in fear that I might say something that I would later regret, tuned out the world, and returned to my desk.
It all started about a year ago when the whole department received job reclassifications. Mrs. Payne was made "supervisor" of the conversion project to convert the catalog to machine-readable form. She was to learn to edit records on a new system at another site before it was installed in our library. She was also to help the boss with card production in addition to cataloging duties in order to get the "Library Associates" job title. I took on the responsibility of binding all monographs, processing reserve materials, assisting with the AV materials, cataloging and inputting new material not yet on OCLC, member cataloging (those without subjects or classification numbers), in addition to copy cataloging.
"Why should I have to take on duties assigned to someone else? Is it legal to 'dress-up' a job description just so that person can get a promotion and then delegate those duties to someone else without equal pay?" In addition, Mrs. Payne has only done card production when the boss was away on vacation and the part-time librarian did not do it.
At 10:00 the boss came and asked if I would take a break with her because she felt that I wanted to talk (rubbing salt in the wound). I said no, but said I would if she insisted. She said PLEASE (probably to soothe my ruffled feathers). At the break she told me that we all have to do editing when the new system was installed and that she was sorry that Mrs. Payne had told me in the manner that she had.
"Are you being fair to me or the other worker? How can you justify Mrs. Payne's higher position and higher salary when our jobs will be the same? Her 'supervisory' duties of the project will end in about a year and only consists of answering questions from two part-time employees, who come to me when she is not around, which is quite often. By the way, I feel that you reward her bad behavior by reacting in the manner that you did this morning. I also feel that you are just a little intimidated by her."
She could not answer the question of how our jobs differed, but offered to rewrite my job description to include the new duties!
WHAT SHOULD I DO???