On Library Training

Second raindrop of my day (liberally laced with muck): I have to endure more training sessions.

I knew this. I was just trying to avoid it. But today I got the email with descriptions of my choices listed. I always try to cultivate some sort of hope for this sort of thing. I'm an idealist (no, really, I am) about the whole library thing. I believe that if you put a bunch of library people in a room, with enough coffee and three or four pressing library-related issues to thrash out, that by the end of the day they would have, if not solutions, then a pretty tasty dayful of dialogue behind them. It would feel like progress.

Instead, we end up in rooms where bad public speakers stand in front and natter on in a "who moved my quesadilla" BAM! BAM! machine gun Emeril-style, spouting the latest buzzwords like change management, or fish, or ideafication, or whatever else the Joneses are keeping up with lately. Or, we end up in small group exercises where role playing games are supposed to teach us something completely obvious, like being nice to the public, or dressing nice and smiling, or playing well with others. If I don't do any of these things already, I should not be sent to a seminar, I should be warned and then fired! Conversely, if I already do these things, I should not have to sit through a class on them!

I don't want to sit through another training exercise that treats me like I can't find my mouthhole with a fork and a roadmap! I don't want to suck it up and take it and pretend that someone is getting something out of this cesspit of inanities. I don't believe in that person. I believe in the library! I believe in all the intelligent, quirky, problem-solving, beautifully sensible library people that I've met! I want to talk about problems we're having with the computer system, or porn in the library, or security issues, or even intellectual freedom if that doesn't tread too close to politics. I want to find out what my coworkers know, and what they use, and how they deal with everything...and I want to fix what's broken.

So, lets make a deal. In your roster of training sessions, offer me one in every four. Make one for me--the problem solver, the do-er, the intellect. Leave out the business-self-help-speak, leave out the cuteness, make it lean and spare and solution-directed. Do we have an issue at the library? Do we need to talk about harassment, or service, or whatever else? Let's sit down and talk about it like adults. And if you manage it; if you can speak to me without condescension or bad similes, then I'll uncross my arms and participate, and at the end of the day, I might even applaud.