You Don't Know How Beautiful You Are

It’s putting into practice what I spent studying for six years at post secondary

Everybody is pretty nice and helpf so far

I work half an hour less every day than I did at my old job, but I get a day off every three weeks because I actually work an extra half hour daily than I’m expected to and bank the time.

The commute is shorter even though it’s actually further from home (thanks, downtown city transit, for being the worst)

I get to read kids’ books to kids

Benefits what whatttt

I have to work approx 1 Saturday per month but it’s ok because I get a day off in lieu and my manager has been so nice and has tacked it on to a long weekend for the next 2 Saturday shifts and I never even asked her. That, combined with the banked days off, means a five day weekend over Thanksgiving.

I come home chipper and happy, rather than exhausted and depressed.

People understand what you do as a library services specialist more than what you do as a document controller at a private company, so it’s much easier to participate in forced small talk at extended family functions and social outings.

More access to more books (this gets dangerous, as my TBR pile is not shrinking)

You can read in the lunchroom on your breaks and no one will bug you about it. No one will come up to you and try to talk to you about what you’re reading while you’re clearly engrossed and do not wish to be disturbed.

You’re encouraged to take your breaks, and your manager takes hers, not like in the private sector, where you’re definitely allowed to take breaks but feel guilty for doing so because there’s so much work to do and your boss barely takes a half hour for lunch. I always took my full hour lunch break but would often not take one or both of my 15-minute breaks because I was too stressed about the workload I was given. And I wasn’t even that bad. I know lots of people who worked very late hours trying to show how productive they were and how loyal (read:enslaved) they were to the company, desperately trying to one-up their coworkers in an attempt to be as far away from the six-month firing list as possible. Now everyone at that company is leaving for other positions because there’s no work coming up and they’ve essentially cut it down to the most core number of employees needed to run the company that they can’t afford to fire anyone anymore.

Coworkers are not trying to one-up me or sabotage me in order to stay afloat and keep their jobs, even though they didn’t do much or know much but felt threatened by my education and logic and didn’t want to change their shitty document management practices in order to be more efficient and do a better job. Rather, my coworkers are so helpful and nice and thoughtful. I mean to repay them at our next team potluck by bringing a vegan snack with no nuts (why are librarians plagued with food allergies?). I will say that I miss my old coworkers who had MLIS degrees, they were the cream of the crop and I’m only talking about other coworkers when I describe the saboteurs and the apathy.