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zaichikarkyDuring grad school, I had the great opportunity to work as an student assistant archivist for my school's Special Collections and Archives. I'd worked as a volunteer/intern at three different archives in the area and I was excited that not only was I able to finally get paid for my work, but my work in the Special Collections didn't have to end when I'd finish the collection or project I was processing. I could stay until I finished grad school.
Working at the Special Collections was a great experience overall. It had been different from the other archival projects I had worked on mostly because I finally had a lot of coworkers. In my other projects, it was usually just myself as the volunteer/intern and the supervising archivist. Being someone with possible mild Aspergers, I initially was nervous to work with other peers. I sometimes say "inappropriate" things which women especially chastise me for. While I ran into such problems at the Special Collections, this wasn't really my biggest challenge. I actually met her on my first shift.
I was somewhat apprehensive on my first shift not only because I had never done reference service before, but because I would be working with Grete*, a somewhat hardnosed older German woman who chastised me for chewing gum on my training day when Maria, the manager, hadn't even noticed or said anything if she did. While Grete would continued to chastise me in the future several times, we grew to become friends and I enjoyed her company a lot. The other coworker on that Friday shift was Audrey who seemed very friendly, albeit quite talkative.
Having ADHD, doing any kind of productive work was difficult for me when conversations or other distractions would be going on in the archival processing/ reading room** and I soon found that I could get very little work done on Fridays due to all the socializing, mostly from Audrey's lack of desire to do anything productive. This became accepted even by Grete who was easily the most productive and hardest worker in our entire group.
I think I began to notice the extent of Audrey's complete and utter lack of work ethic several weeks later when her and Grete were discussing allergies and Grete recommended Audrey try the health clinic on campus.
"Ok, that's a good idea!" Audrey exclaimed when Grete suggested it. She then went on her break. Breaks technically weren't supposed to last over 20 mins, but sometimes when the reading room was dead, we would go up to half an hour.
Happy for some quiet time to work on my collection, I eventually noticed Audrey had been gone a while.
"Hey did Audrey go home early?" I asked Grete.
"No, I think she went to the health clinic..." Grete replied.
I looked at the time. "Oh, I think she left like two hours ago..."
Grete sighed and mumbled something about not meaning to go to the health clinic at that very second.
Eventually Audrey came back and continued to engage Grete on a discussion of her experience at the clinic, what kind of medication they prescribed, and whatever else about allergies for the rest of our shift.
I actually didn't have much of a problem with Audrey for the longest time. Fridays became the happy hour day of choice week where our coworkers met for drinks at the bar across the street and since it was always after my shift, I would go. I continued to meet there even after schedules got rearranged from budget cuts.
It wouldn't take me much to get even somewhat drunk from happy hour. Two coctails is all it really took for me to start acting loopy which annoyed some people enough that when they were present for the happy hour, they restricted me to one drink. On one of my two-drink days, Grete walked me to the train station, clearly unhappy about something. It was right after the extent of budget cuts were announced for our department so I thought it was because her hours may have been cut. Mine were cut the most severely since I was the newest hire, and I wasn't really even thinking about it too much at that point.
I asked her what was wrong and all I really remember in my buzzed state was that I was "a breath of fresh air on Fridays" and she would now have to be left alone to deal with the likes of Audrey again without having me there. I was surprised at this and probably said something about not realizing just how much Audrey annoyed her.
I ended up getting two new shifts that following semester post budget cuts when they tried to restrict student assistant shifts to only two per shift. One with Mike on Tuesdays, and one with Michael on Saturdays. In some ways, working with Mike ended up being the same as working with Audrey. Where Audrey consistently acted as if she were in a manic state (she actually may have been), I seriously thought Mike was on speed at least half the time.
During one of my shifts, Mike started chastising me that he didn't like the way I entered the stacks to bring my lunch through to the break room because food should never be sent into the stacks EVER EVER even covered. I proceeded to ignore him and go through the stacks anyway, which probably took some years off his life. After he informed me, in detail of his preferred way of getting to the break room with food, I just decided it wasn't worth the drama and took the longer route.
Mike, in many ways, ended up being even more annoying and irresponsible than Audrey, even though it may just have been my attitude of not wanting to deal with constant chatter, which has been a pet peeve of mine since as long as I can remember. Mike used to work in India for a at least a year or so, and would tell me many amusing tales which I can half remember that dealt with getting the aggressive monkeys there drunk as skunks and the various "liaisons" he'd score in his days there. When Mike went on a month-long vacation that was scheduled for two weeks, I ended up having to cover his shifts at the last minute.I remember Grete once telling Mike that she didn't think he'd make it to 50 due to either a heart attack from stress and overreacting, or some kind of freak accident.
Since I didn't even have any shifts with Audrey anymore at that time, I mostly heard about her antics second hand and through gossip. "I think you're the only one who doesn't know she has actual severe mental problems." Michael once told me. She once told everyone about her experiences in the psych ward. I asked him if he thought this was an appropriate thing to tell all your coworkers and Michael just responded with... "Hm... yeah, but it's Audrey after all..."
When I asked Grete about it in more detail, she confided with me that she thought Audrey still suffered from instability and that she was sensitive enough to pick up when she was having a particularly bad day, or maybe didn't take her medication. The most Audrey ever told me was that she couldn't have children, but I didn't ask why. Ironically, I had my own severe mental crisis a few months later which I now attribute to Bipolar I disorder, where I had to take a "vacation" for a few weeks. I never told any of my coworkers why, although I'm pretty sure Grete suspected something was amiss with me.
At some point, Audrey's lack of care with the work started to affect everyone. During one of our division meetings, our Director brought up some problems we were having, including not being strict enough with noise/volume levels as well as permissible research materials in the reading room, and there was the question of a book going missing during one of Audrey and Mike's shifts and tardiness. I wasn't paying much attention to Audrey talking nonsensically about the book, but I could see Mike getting redder and redder, something I witnessed all too often.
That week's happy hour was replaced with a bigger happy hour as it was someone's going away party (which happened somewhat regularly as it was a student position and most worked at the Special Collections for only a year or so) . Our director wasn't really invited to the smaller happy hours, but she always attended the going away parties. At some point a very drunken Mike ranted to me that the missing book was all Audrey's fault and she was completely talking out of her ass and he was partially being blamed for it. I told him that the Director might overhear him, who Grete and I agreed that we didn't really want to bother with this, and he loudly proclaimed that he didn't care if she overheard. It did somewhat get him to shut up about that at least, although at some point I heard him make a comment directly to Audrey that she looked as if she were in her 40s (she did, but she was in her 30s) and she ended up leaving the party early.
"Audrey seems pretty pissed off at me for some reason." Mike said to me during our next shift.
"Maybe it's because you basically called her an old hag during the party?" I replied.
Mike laughed for a good five minutes. "Really, I said that? Hah, she deserved it!"
A few months later, schedules had been altered again, and I was back to working with both Grete and Audrey. In addition to her using her shifts pretty much solely for her charity work with India, she lost a barcode*** for a rarebook which I couldn't find after she went home, so I had to give the barcode-less book to Maria to deal with since she handled cataloging acquisitions. She asked how it happened, so I told her honestly that it was either a student who accidentally stole it, or Audrey who lost it, though I was banking on Audrey.
I ended up asking Grete if she noticed that Audrey was probably getting worse and how everyone had to deal with her fuckups. Grete then thought of a great way to check just how "productive" she was in her ~1.5 years working at the Special Collections. She checked how many collections she had processed and it was a grand total of one. As a comparison, in the eight months I'd worked at the Special Collections, I think I processed around seven collections. Grete and I got a good laugh out of that too, but mostly because it was just SO bad. I asked her if she thought it was still a bad idea to bother our director about this, and she said it was, however if I was so inclined, I should go talk to Maria, and I did.
Unlike our Director, who was either clueless or more or less apathetic to Audrey's shenanigans, but very strict and harsh when she wanted to be, Maria is probably the nicest manager I've ever had. She is actually probably too nice. She asked me if Audrey still did reference for the researchers, and I did admit that she was still involved with that. Maria then said that she'd talk to Audrey and ask her what her progress on her collection was and if she needed help (as an attempt to get her to stop slacking).
I'm not really sure if this ever happened, because I got an opportunity to work on an internship in Michigan which I took, and let the piranhas fight over my hours. I'd miss everyone there and sometimes wondered if it was the right choice to go to Michigan over staying at the Special Collections until I graduated. Thinking back on it, I'm just happy that my coworker on my internship became a very dear friend to me and was nothing at all like Audrey.
What ultimately ended up happening with Audrey is that a former coworker got rehired to work at the Special Collections right after I quit, and this girl didn't take long to go straight to the Director with her resignation notice and a detailed complaint about Audrey. It forced Audrey to "quit" after her charity work in India enabled her to take a vacation there. I'm not sure if that girl stayed or not after Audrey quit.
*All names have been changed to protect the GUILTY/mostly innocent : )
** In Special Collections libraries, the "reading room" is where patrons are able to research the archival collections which are never allowed to exit the premises. The reading room functioned doubly as a place to do reference for the patrons, as well as the student assistant archivists' primary processing area.
*** Rare books can't have barcodes, or anything affixed to them. The Special Collections I worked on dealt with that issue by placing the barcode and bibliographic information on a bookmark which was just directly placed inside the book
Working at the Special Collections was a great experience overall. It had been different from the other archival projects I had worked on mostly because I finally had a lot of coworkers. In my other projects, it was usually just myself as the volunteer/intern and the supervising archivist. Being someone with possible mild Aspergers, I initially was nervous to work with other peers. I sometimes say "inappropriate" things which women especially chastise me for. While I ran into such problems at the Special Collections, this wasn't really my biggest challenge. I actually met her on my first shift.
I was somewhat apprehensive on my first shift not only because I had never done reference service before, but because I would be working with Grete*, a somewhat hardnosed older German woman who chastised me for chewing gum on my training day when Maria, the manager, hadn't even noticed or said anything if she did. While Grete would continued to chastise me in the future several times, we grew to become friends and I enjoyed her company a lot. The other coworker on that Friday shift was Audrey who seemed very friendly, albeit quite talkative.
Having ADHD, doing any kind of productive work was difficult for me when conversations or other distractions would be going on in the archival processing/ reading room** and I soon found that I could get very little work done on Fridays due to all the socializing, mostly from Audrey's lack of desire to do anything productive. This became accepted even by Grete who was easily the most productive and hardest worker in our entire group.
I think I began to notice the extent of Audrey's complete and utter lack of work ethic several weeks later when her and Grete were discussing allergies and Grete recommended Audrey try the health clinic on campus.
"Ok, that's a good idea!" Audrey exclaimed when Grete suggested it. She then went on her break. Breaks technically weren't supposed to last over 20 mins, but sometimes when the reading room was dead, we would go up to half an hour.
Happy for some quiet time to work on my collection, I eventually noticed Audrey had been gone a while.
"Hey did Audrey go home early?" I asked Grete.
"No, I think she went to the health clinic..." Grete replied.
I looked at the time. "Oh, I think she left like two hours ago..."
Grete sighed and mumbled something about not meaning to go to the health clinic at that very second.
Eventually Audrey came back and continued to engage Grete on a discussion of her experience at the clinic, what kind of medication they prescribed, and whatever else about allergies for the rest of our shift.
I actually didn't have much of a problem with Audrey for the longest time. Fridays became the happy hour day of choice week where our coworkers met for drinks at the bar across the street and since it was always after my shift, I would go. I continued to meet there even after schedules got rearranged from budget cuts.
It wouldn't take me much to get even somewhat drunk from happy hour. Two coctails is all it really took for me to start acting loopy which annoyed some people enough that when they were present for the happy hour, they restricted me to one drink. On one of my two-drink days, Grete walked me to the train station, clearly unhappy about something. It was right after the extent of budget cuts were announced for our department so I thought it was because her hours may have been cut. Mine were cut the most severely since I was the newest hire, and I wasn't really even thinking about it too much at that point.
I asked her what was wrong and all I really remember in my buzzed state was that I was "a breath of fresh air on Fridays" and she would now have to be left alone to deal with the likes of Audrey again without having me there. I was surprised at this and probably said something about not realizing just how much Audrey annoyed her.
I ended up getting two new shifts that following semester post budget cuts when they tried to restrict student assistant shifts to only two per shift. One with Mike on Tuesdays, and one with Michael on Saturdays. In some ways, working with Mike ended up being the same as working with Audrey. Where Audrey consistently acted as if she were in a manic state (she actually may have been), I seriously thought Mike was on speed at least half the time.
During one of my shifts, Mike started chastising me that he didn't like the way I entered the stacks to bring my lunch through to the break room because food should never be sent into the stacks EVER EVER even covered. I proceeded to ignore him and go through the stacks anyway, which probably took some years off his life. After he informed me, in detail of his preferred way of getting to the break room with food, I just decided it wasn't worth the drama and took the longer route.
Mike, in many ways, ended up being even more annoying and irresponsible than Audrey, even though it may just have been my attitude of not wanting to deal with constant chatter, which has been a pet peeve of mine since as long as I can remember. Mike used to work in India for a at least a year or so, and would tell me many amusing tales which I can half remember that dealt with getting the aggressive monkeys there drunk as skunks and the various "liaisons" he'd score in his days there. When Mike went on a month-long vacation that was scheduled for two weeks, I ended up having to cover his shifts at the last minute.I remember Grete once telling Mike that she didn't think he'd make it to 50 due to either a heart attack from stress and overreacting, or some kind of freak accident.
Since I didn't even have any shifts with Audrey anymore at that time, I mostly heard about her antics second hand and through gossip. "I think you're the only one who doesn't know she has actual severe mental problems." Michael once told me. She once told everyone about her experiences in the psych ward. I asked him if he thought this was an appropriate thing to tell all your coworkers and Michael just responded with... "Hm... yeah, but it's Audrey after all..."
When I asked Grete about it in more detail, she confided with me that she thought Audrey still suffered from instability and that she was sensitive enough to pick up when she was having a particularly bad day, or maybe didn't take her medication. The most Audrey ever told me was that she couldn't have children, but I didn't ask why. Ironically, I had my own severe mental crisis a few months later which I now attribute to Bipolar I disorder, where I had to take a "vacation" for a few weeks. I never told any of my coworkers why, although I'm pretty sure Grete suspected something was amiss with me.
At some point, Audrey's lack of care with the work started to affect everyone. During one of our division meetings, our Director brought up some problems we were having, including not being strict enough with noise/volume levels as well as permissible research materials in the reading room, and there was the question of a book going missing during one of Audrey and Mike's shifts and tardiness. I wasn't paying much attention to Audrey talking nonsensically about the book, but I could see Mike getting redder and redder, something I witnessed all too often.
That week's happy hour was replaced with a bigger happy hour as it was someone's going away party (which happened somewhat regularly as it was a student position and most worked at the Special Collections for only a year or so) . Our director wasn't really invited to the smaller happy hours, but she always attended the going away parties. At some point a very drunken Mike ranted to me that the missing book was all Audrey's fault and she was completely talking out of her ass and he was partially being blamed for it. I told him that the Director might overhear him, who Grete and I agreed that we didn't really want to bother with this, and he loudly proclaimed that he didn't care if she overheard. It did somewhat get him to shut up about that at least, although at some point I heard him make a comment directly to Audrey that she looked as if she were in her 40s (she did, but she was in her 30s) and she ended up leaving the party early.
"Audrey seems pretty pissed off at me for some reason." Mike said to me during our next shift.
"Maybe it's because you basically called her an old hag during the party?" I replied.
Mike laughed for a good five minutes. "Really, I said that? Hah, she deserved it!"
A few months later, schedules had been altered again, and I was back to working with both Grete and Audrey. In addition to her using her shifts pretty much solely for her charity work with India, she lost a barcode*** for a rarebook which I couldn't find after she went home, so I had to give the barcode-less book to Maria to deal with since she handled cataloging acquisitions. She asked how it happened, so I told her honestly that it was either a student who accidentally stole it, or Audrey who lost it, though I was banking on Audrey.
I ended up asking Grete if she noticed that Audrey was probably getting worse and how everyone had to deal with her fuckups. Grete then thought of a great way to check just how "productive" she was in her ~1.5 years working at the Special Collections. She checked how many collections she had processed and it was a grand total of one. As a comparison, in the eight months I'd worked at the Special Collections, I think I processed around seven collections. Grete and I got a good laugh out of that too, but mostly because it was just SO bad. I asked her if she thought it was still a bad idea to bother our director about this, and she said it was, however if I was so inclined, I should go talk to Maria, and I did.
Unlike our Director, who was either clueless or more or less apathetic to Audrey's shenanigans, but very strict and harsh when she wanted to be, Maria is probably the nicest manager I've ever had. She is actually probably too nice. She asked me if Audrey still did reference for the researchers, and I did admit that she was still involved with that. Maria then said that she'd talk to Audrey and ask her what her progress on her collection was and if she needed help (as an attempt to get her to stop slacking).
I'm not really sure if this ever happened, because I got an opportunity to work on an internship in Michigan which I took, and let the piranhas fight over my hours. I'd miss everyone there and sometimes wondered if it was the right choice to go to Michigan over staying at the Special Collections until I graduated. Thinking back on it, I'm just happy that my coworker on my internship became a very dear friend to me and was nothing at all like Audrey.
What ultimately ended up happening with Audrey is that a former coworker got rehired to work at the Special Collections right after I quit, and this girl didn't take long to go straight to the Director with her resignation notice and a detailed complaint about Audrey. It forced Audrey to "quit" after her charity work in India enabled her to take a vacation there. I'm not sure if that girl stayed or not after Audrey quit.
*All names have been changed to protect the GUILTY/mostly innocent : )
** In Special Collections libraries, the "reading room" is where patrons are able to research the archival collections which are never allowed to exit the premises. The reading room functioned doubly as a place to do reference for the patrons, as well as the student assistant archivists' primary processing area.
*** Rare books can't have barcodes, or anything affixed to them. The Special Collections I worked on dealt with that issue by placing the barcode and bibliographic information on a bookmark which was just directly placed inside the book
