Read Obnoxious Librarian from Hades Online
Authors: Dennie Heye
It´s a new year, a new budget to burn, a new batch of new hires to harass and a full year ahead for obnoxiousness.
The end of every year is always a very busy one as all the licenses for the electronic journals, e-books and databases are up for renewal. It´s that time of the year where I have to work out how to match the decreasing budget with the price increase from the publishers. As most publishers are monopolists, it is very hard to negotiate. Every year our procurement department is baffled by dealing with a monopolist - how are they supposed to benchmark prices and play one vendor against the other? Every year I have to convince them that you cannot get e-journals from 20 different sources at competing prices. And no, you cannot get every article or e-book for free via Google.
The worst thing is always the price negotiations with a monopolist. I have always imagined the following discussion at a publisher before them go to meet a librarian for renewal discussions:
Junior sales weasel: "Ok, as you asked me to I have pulled up the file for the customer. What is the new price we will quote them?"
Senior sales weasel: "Easy there, pricing is a very complex art with many variables that come into play. I look at usage, content value, market dynamics, client reputation, the stock market, the shoe size and of course my expected Christmas bonus."
Junior: "Well, how did you then determine the original price when they started with electronic journals and books?"
Senior: "We invent a large number. We see whether we like that number. Then we develop a formula based on historical print holdings, a globalisation fee, a hosting fee, an indexing fee and a one-time set up fee. That formula is precisely the number we want. We then made sure that every price model expect for the all-you-can-eat package is unattractive."
Junior: "How do you make them chose for the all-you-can-eat package if that might not be what they want?"
Senior: "That, my young friend, is a trick of the trade. The library may only look at one small part of the package. Of course that does not create enough revenue to warrant the whopping Christmas bonus I was looking for. So what I do is set up a "free trial" on all our e-journals and e-books. I then send out e-mails to different users at the company telling them about a one month free access to all the content. The word gets around and soon all the users are using a huge amount of content. I tell the librarian that it is a "demand measurement exercise" to "optimize spending versus usage patterns". After a month, all the users are used to having all the content and I suspend the trial. The users start demanding access and I send the librarian a proposal for the all-you-can-eat package which is priced attractively. He finds the budget somehow, signs in blood and makes the users happy. Then after one year we start hiking up the prices based on increased usage - and since the users have grown used to having access, there is no way out."
Junior: "You also told me about a wonderful invention called Dee Ar EM to further annoy the librarian and have more control over the users?"
Senior: "DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a wonderful invention. Every publisher has invented a different version of DRM to restrict usage of downloaded content. We can restrict printing, copying, sharing copies… basically everything people could do with a paper version, we can prevent. Brilliant. And we can interfere with the competition as our DRM plug-in makes the plug-in from the competition crash."
Junior: "I get it. As you also asked me, I have worked with our legal staff to create a new license document. I think you will be pleased with this, as I have increased the amount of legal complex words by 50%, added more hidden clauses, used the tiniest print I could find and in a footnote even make the librarian sign away his soul to us."
Senior: "That's the spirit! So before we go over to the sucker… I mean, customer… let's drop by the car dealer so I can pick out my new car which I will buy from my Christmas bonus."
It is Friday afternoon, just before the long dark tea time of the soul ("The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is that state which one's soul enters at about 3 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, when one has had all the baths that one can usefully have that day and no matter how long one stares at an article in the paper one will never actually read it, nor use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes" - Douglas Adams). In the background the soundtrack to "American beauty" is playing and I am staring at the wall, trying to come up with input for the latest management idea…
With the financial crisis in full effect, management is looking for cost cutting everywhere. If you were to ask me, if we cut back on management meetings we would save a lot of money. Management meetings usually have a dozen highly paid executives wasting time in a room, coming up with clueless plans. But then, if these highly paid executives were not in meetings, there is nothing really useful they could do instead.
So the latest brilliant idea is to cut back significantly on training and replace it with "a culture of lessons learned":
"Hades Corporation is a knowledge driven organisation. We need to exploit our own knowledge assets further to leverage our investments into intellectual capital. The new lessons learned program is aimed at identifying, sharing and using lessons learned based on our own experiences and insights. This will result in enhanced productivity, efficiency and employee morale - after all, we all have a lesson we can share with the rest!"
Too bad these managers never learn from their own miserable failings in the past. But of course, being a dutiful employee I will contribute to this initiative by teaching lessons:
1. A l-user (library user) calls me to complain that his / her personal storage folder in the document management system is full. I will quickly investigate whether any material in their personal folder has blackmail value for the future and if so, copy that for myself. Following that I will delete all the files in their folder and tell the user I have given them new storage space.
Lesson learned: l-users need to think before asking and phrase questions more precisely. They should ask, "my personal storage area is full, can you give me additional space?”. The best practice answer is "No", by the way.
2. I will use the standard desktop sharing software available on every computer to secretly monitor search behaviour. Normally this software is used only by the helpdesk to solve problems, but I regularly use it to give virtual training. I have found out that via a simple hack I can activate the screen sharing on the user end without the l-user knowing it. This way I can monitor the l-user's search behaviour and give helpful feedback via on screen messages: "NO! That's the WRONG database! Try again", "Why oh why are you searching with just 1 keyword????!" and "Oh come on, don't you know that Google offers only non-validated, low quality information???!"
Lesson learned: think before you do and Big Brother Librarian is watching you.
It is Thursday afternoon in the library and I am sipping my green tea while listening to a relaxation cd, specifically designed for librarians: sounds of pages softly being turned, people whispering, books gently being reshelved and librarians shushing people.
This week I learned (again) that even though I have many good ideas to improve how this organisation works, I should not pursue them - or at least have someone else suggest them and then get swamped by the procedures, politics and e-mail cascades.
On Monday I had a great idea to improve the so called off boarding process, which is the haphazard process that should be followed when employees leave the company. Of course Hades Corp has automated that as (and I quote from our intranet): "off boarding is an integral part of the global employee management system, We have automated many of the time-consuming tasks associated with processing employee terminations or separations. Our off boarding is a consistent process and uses artificial intelligence for gathering relevant information, triggering time-critical actions (e.g. conducting exit interviews, notifying payroll systems and benefits partners, etc.) and it reduces the processing costs and compliance risks associated with employment termination."
In reality off boarding is a series of e-mails sent to the manager (who is far too busy and does not care anymore, as employee X is leaving anyway), the human resources focal point (who is offshored to a cost advantageous country, and basically just tries to survive the sheer amount of admin work for the remaining staff) and the employee who is leaving (who considers him- or herself "untouchable"). The result is that after that employee leaves there is a whole range of problems: invoices come in and nobody knows what to do, systems have passwords that nobody knows, the ex-employee is still listed as a contact on the intranet, library books are never returned etc.
So for some strange reason I had the idea that we could improve this by simply connecting different systems to each other to create a checklist of all information related to the employee who is off boarding: a list of books they borrowed, a list of contracts in their name, outstanding invoices etc. That list could then be sent to the manager and the employee, requiring them to tick this off before the employee leave or otherwise both of them have to pay a penalty. I went wrong at the "simply" part. Nothing is simple anymore. We even had a special program here internally to reduce the amount of red tape - the program was called "decomplexify". Simplification was probably a too simple word.
I was surprised to find that there was an actual person I could talk to about my improvement idea, instead of a lengthy form to fill out. Let me recap the conversation I had with the business and solution analyst:
"This is Brandon from the business process improvement team - please tell me about your valuable idea which we will listen to because we care as much as you about making Hades Corp the best it can be"
(I explained my idea to him)
"Ah. Good idea. Yes. Let me just see how we could make this work. Right. First of all, I will label this as a new set of enhancement requirements for the employee management system. I will engage with the architecture and standards team to see how this fits into their landscape model. Then I will have a face to face with the appropriate members of the functional steering committee to make sure your requests are assigned to the appropriate functional portfolio. Once that is done the functional portfolio analyst will analyze, assess, coordinate, prioritize and approve the set of requests. This is of course depending on the impact of your enhancement requests, as we may have to escalate this to the business administrative systems enhancement governance committee. They define the strategic administrative priorities and make appropriate decision as required consistent with their accountability. To ensure proper funding for your enhancement requirements, we will have to liaison with sponsors within the functional administrative units. Are you still with me?"
"Well, Brandon - that sounds like it will take forever, can you tell me how long this will take?"
"Sorry, as a business analyst I cannot answer practical things like deadlines or timeframes, as that is not within my responsibility. But rest assured that I will be generating a lot of forms for you and get you wrapped up in a whirlwind of meetings with IT architects, portfolio managers, steering committee advisors and business analysts to keep you from your normal work."
"Brandon, let's just forget about it, ok?"
"It was nice talking to you and I will send feedback to our management that the employee management system is meeting all requirements, as nobody is suggesting improvements. Have a nice day!"
Luckily there is as always the official way of doing things, and the way to get things done. In this case, I just happen to run the local book club… and several wives of senior managers are members. Yesterday evening we had our monthly book club session, and before we started to discuss "The time traveller's wife" we talked about what was bothering us. The nice ladies in my club were concerned about my fruitless efforts to improve the work culture at Hades Corporation. We talked about how their husbands were more concerned by their targets and bonuses, instead of helping their employees. And book club members help each other out… so this morning I received a personal phone call from the senior vice president of global IT, asking me to meet with him later today to discuss my highly interesting improvement idea. When I thanked him, I could swear I hear him mumble "yeah, I just want my wife to stop nagging me about this… ".
It is Monday afternoon and I am having a small celebration in the library, as the blog has reached the 400 subscriber mark and I have survived the monthly support staff managers meeting.
The monthly support staff managers meeting is by far the most soul crushing meeting I have ever encountered. However, I have to attend as otherwise library hostile decisions will get taken by the others. One time I was ill and that day the rest decided to switch paperclip suppliers without consulting me, especially because the library has very specific paperclip requirements to clip circulation slips to magazines. Rest assured I took my revenge by later on ripping out selected pages of their desk copies of the dictionary.
The other attendees are from other support departments: IT support, accounting, human resources, office maangement and internal communications. Like the library, all these departments are pretty much seen as second rate by management and the employees. Support departments don't get invited to attend strategic meetings or future roadmap workshops. That leaves the support staff managers meeting for us as the main opportunity to execute our office politics and power play.
The meeting itself has no real agenda, as everyone keeps bringing up his or her own personal issues during the meeting. This prevents the others from being able to prepare for issues like the theme for the annual office Christmas party, the office supply policy or the mandatory font type for the intranet. The person bringing up the issue has the element of surprise and can try to lobby with his or her potential allies before the meeting.
The discussion is always very interesting, as the issue discussed is not the issue at stake. No, there is a myriad of underlying personal grudges, hidden agendas, sabotaging and personal vendettas. As I have been in the same job for many years, I can now often predict the outcome of every discussion as I know who dislikes whom and what everyone's personal dislikes are.
If you were to record the meeting, I could provide an insightful commentary track: "the office manager has just proposed to introduce a mandatory registration form for office supplies. Before the meeting she has bribed the HR manager with the promise of giving him the first option on an office with a window being available. The proposal is on the table… and the accounting manager is immediately up in arms about this. He is straining himself to control his anger, as he rants about endless rules and procedures which have no real effect on the bottom line. Underneath this anger is his frustration of being in the noisiest office of the department, right next to the clunky old photo copier and fax machine. He is also still angry at the human resources department for not allowing him to apply for a promotion 4 years ago."
To add to the liveliness of the meeting, the chairperson for the meeting is rotated amongst the members. Everyone looks forward to his or her turn to blatantly dominate the meeting. It is not a lot of power, but as we have little power outside the meeting, we enjoy this brief, but very enjoyable wave of power.
So once again I came out of the meeting alive and with only a few lost battles. But sometimes losing a battle is needed to win the war in the long run. I am feeling upbeat and thankful for getting out of the meeting and decide to share my positive feelings with my l-users (library users): I will not post the list of staff with overdue books and reports to the front page of the intranet but instead just sneer at them when they return the items.