 All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today, and it will be posted to our archives for you to watch later at your convenience. And I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries here in Nebraska, so similar to your state library. So we provide services and training consulting to all sorts of libraries in the state, so we will have shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. We also provide public academic K-12 corrections, museums, archives, et cetera, et cetera. Really our only criteria is that something to do with libraries, something that libraries are doing, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, could be anything. Oh, sorry, sound just cut out. Hold on. Hey, what was that again? Yeah, I just noticed that my audio connection cut out for a minute there. It was me. It was us. All right, let me try this again. We have with us today our guest speaker, Brooks Arco. Good morning, Brooke. Good morning. I'm wondering if I should do that again. And she is a library director in here in Nebraska, in Blair, Nebraska at the Blair Public Library and Technology Center. And she's going to share with us wonderful tales from the dark side of library management. And many of us, I'm sure, have experienced this. If you haven't, good for you. And I will just hand it over to you, but to take it away and tell us all what you've dealt with and how we can handle it ourselves. Sure. So, and just to check, you can see my screen, right, my slides. Yes. Yes. Okay. Your slides. Yeah, but your first slide is up there full screen. No problem. I just want to make sure before we get started. So my name is Brooks Arco and and I've, I've not been in library management that that long, which is, which is kind of ironic, I would argue. I've been in libraries for over 10 years in different positions. And then I've been in library management for about the last four years. And then I wanted to explain why I wanted to do this, do this presentation. I did this presentation at NLA and I wanted to do this presentation for other reasons, because, you know, library management is one of those things that how to put this it seems like a lot of people get thrown into and they don't. You know, if you're like me and you have, and you have training and stuff or, you know, you went to school for various courses. There's not a lot of courses that teach management. I think my management education consisted of, I think there was one assignment I did about cutting people and managing a budget and it was mostly focused on X plus Y equals Z in your salary and if you have to get rid of someone. And on paper, that's really easy. But in practice, I mean, that was it for my education. They did not talk about what are the HR issues you're going to deal with what do you do if you have, you know, bad management in place there I mean there was nothing. There was nothing that was given to me or taught to me at any point in my time at school about managing people. Yeah, library school when I was in library school, which was a long time ago but I have this memory of an administrator class administrative class and all I remember from it was having to do a floor plan of how would you rearrange the library to be more like better flow and put things that I'm like, that was fun, you know, little diagram chairs and things, but as far as people I don't remember a thing about that now. I mean that's, that's something and it's not it's not an indictment of education or anything like that it's just, it's hard to teach it's hard to learn it's hard to practice. It's kind of, it's one of those things where it's, it's, how do you teach this. I mean, how do you talk about this without making people mad. You don't want to tell tales on your boss or anything like that and so I am fortunate enough to have a essentially what I term a completely sanitized situation in which I'm able to talk about. I see if you're like me you're part of a lot of groups that talk about library things and I feel like lately, especially in the last couple years, I've seen so many anonymous posts about bad work situations bad bosses and how do you handle that and what do you do and, you know, that's it's such a difficult situation to be in. And it's, it's hard to give advice that fits. And it's, if you're dealing with it you don't know what to do and I mean at the time that I was dealing with a lot of this, I didn't even have groups to go to to like put that question to him so it's kind of one of those things where it's like I had no resource. And I'm not saying this resource and I do want to preface this by saying, just because this presentation doesn't mean I am like the best boss in the world. This is not a humble brag or anything like that it's just, here's my experience with this. I hope it helps in some way. You know, ultimately, we're here to learn, we're here to kind of share knowledge. I, you know, I would argue that's the whole point of this. I'm sure it's, you know, it's a good, a safe space here for people to share if they want to. And I will mention, you know, as I said, there is a place for you to ask questions put in comments. When I read those off of everyone's ever watched the show, I am less in various rare cases I never say oh so and so from so and so library said blah. So, anything you say here will be completely anonymous. And that's, like I said, I'm fortunate to have a sanitized situation but I just feel like I see more and more people who are, who are in bad work situations and they don't know what to do and everyone feels like they're the one experiencing it. So I just wanted to talk about this and kind of, I think it's a conversation that needs to be had. Clearly there's not an epidemic but there's, there's bad managers out there. And there is a conversation that needs to be had about how do you deal with this. And so with that, I'll kick off. So, I was doing this in a, in like a video game theme so you know, boss level one will have the final boss at the end so I was kind of thinking in that regard so my, my first bad boss is what I would call a micro manager so to kind of set the stage here I came in as a part time circulation assistant was what I was called I was working on my MLS I was getting my education so this seemed like a good way to, you know be still be practicing as a librarian and then working on my MLS. So, my CERC supervisor at the time was basically, I mean, you think micro manager, and it's kind of like, Oh yeah no I've had people do that this was to a T. I mean, they, this person managed essentially managed to full time people and four to six part times depending on the number of hires, you know, as hiring ebbs and flows. This was such a bad situation I was kind of joking I looked up traits of a bad micro manager and and this individual checked all those boxes and I thought, Oh, that's, that's pretty bad. And then I was looking up this working on this presentation. This was, this was honestly an environment of fear. You know I put micro manager and and that's kind of a light way of putting it. This was really an environment of fear that this person managed. And then they do it then so when you have someone who's in control of an environment like that, they are going to isolate you from the library at large. And so I put in that third point they they undercut other departments library with gossip. I mean, there was several times I can recall that any other department in the library that was not this person's department. They, their workers were not doing their job or were you know, I mean, taking too many coffee breaks or they just were incompetent, etc, etc, etc. And essentially what was happening is we were being isolated from the library at large we as CERC assistants were essentially isolated in that we know we were built in an environment of mistrust of other departments. You know anyone in not anyone in management but this individual. This was an interesting individual this person I saw them. I think I worked, I worked in this position for about is about a year and three quarters. I saw this person yelling at another manager. What I did not realize at the time was that other manager was this person's boss. This person yelled at their boss and nothing was done about that. I mean, so for me to think, Oh, I can, you know, if I have a problem with this person I can go to that person's boss. It's this person straight yelled at their boss in front of other staff members. And so it's one of those things where you're like, Oh my gosh, what have I walked into. So, you know, there's there's aspects of that where it was so difficult. And with this I mean there was, there was things like in this environment where we weren't allowed to answer the phones. And basically, you know, this person was the only person to answer the phone. We were not to touch the phone, unless that person even if that person was in the bathroom. We kind of had to hold out for like the third ring. And if the third ring would come and they hadn't gotten out of the bathroom yet then we could answer but I mean it was, you were absolutely not to touch the phone. You had to sit at the desk and this is some people do this. We had to sit at the circulation desk and do nothing. I mean we were supposed to stare out and just wait for people to come in. It was, it was not a good environment. I mean it was, this was micromanager to a T. So, with that I put on here, you know, part time staff, myself included, even though I was working on my MLS, even though I'd been in libraries for years on top of this. We were not to, I mean we weren't just not trusted for anything. So, there were preferable tasks that you could be doing. And those were, I mean, this person had their favorites. And so if it was a preferable task, that went to, that went to this person's favorite. You know, we were considered incompetent. Essentially, we were just not to be trusted. We couldn't, we could not, no decisions could be made. The other thing is we did have in this environment, there was harassing behavior. And this person tormented a fellow staff member. It was bad. I mean this person was all the time. I mean it was probably a couple times a week that this person got yelled at they were yelled at in front of us. And it was essentially kind of like a back away situation, which is bad but you know with when you're in this environment, you don't want to draw attention to yourself. You don't want to be the target of harassment, which is sad. It is upsetting. So not only was this this manager harassing focused in on another staff member to harass all the time constantly. This is also coupled with there was several race related remarks made at that in that area around I mean around me in front of other people and it was it was completely inappropriate. So, you know, I'm kind of internally as I'm getting my internally as I'm thinking I'm getting my degree I'm like okay this need, you know, this needs to be reported. The problem with that is is you know I got up my gumption. I, so I'd gotten I'd gotten promoted to Children's Librarian, and I'll talk about that a little bit more later but I'd gotten promoted and I thought okay, I got up my gumption. I went to this person supervisor. I was like I'm going to I'm going to do something about this. And I reported it, and it was brushed off. I was excused. It was brushed off. It was ignored. That that was really disheartening, you know, because I had it took a lot for me to kind of get up my gumption to go against this person because this person had a lot of connections and management amongst the staff and, but I was like you know I'm going to do right I'm going to do right. It just it went nowhere. It was brushed off the race related remarks were brushed off the harassing behavior was brushed off it was just not just ignored or excused or whatever. And that was really that was really hard to do and I mean, it was. So here's a perfect example so you'll notice I have a have a crane on there. So we I was sitting, you know, we sit at the front desk and we're not supposed to do anything touch anything, etc. Okay, fine. We're only there to serve the patients. Okay, so one evening or I think it was an afternoon I, I know how to fold a paper crane so I sat there. I took a piece of scrap paper and I folded a paper crane out of scrap paper. Well, there was an empty drawer in the desk and I had I had set it in there. And I, you know, just, it was cute I folded it and I just kind of had something to look at up at the desk and I folded a scrap paper. Well, at one point the director somehow saw those and another think I showed my coworkers because they just thought it was cute so I showed my coworkers my little folded cranes and, and we had it in the desk and somehow the director at the time saw those. And it then turned into a witch hunt. And I wish I was joking about this. I really do. And it turned into a witch hunt for who had, who had folded the cranes. And I think the way my schedule was I worked a week on a week off and they had found them right as my week off and started, and they pulled in every single circus assistant to find out who had misused the scrap paper. And it was, I was like, is this really a good use of your time. I shouldn't say but I mean it was, it was one of those things where I just thought, really, really, and then, and then the order came down, you know, they pulled in all the staff members, and they question them and we're like, who, you know, who folded this. And the funny thing is, is no one gave me up, which I guess speaks to the solidarity of us, which is, you know, from a manager's point of view that's both good and bad. You know I was glad my coworkers were looking out for me, and you do want that in a staff you know you want your coworkers to look out for each other in a situation but ultimately as a manager I look back on that and I do think this was such a bad situation, and we were so mistrustful of our manager. What would have happened if I'd been doing something else, something less fun, something more serious. They wouldn't have, they probably wouldn't have given me up to this person because we were so, I mean she was, this person was so reviled that it was like, we're not telling you anything about our fellow people you know. I don't know what it is they do. The band, yeah, and the band came down you were not allowed to touch scrap paper for anyone but a patron was like, okay, this is excessive. So, I mean that was, it was it was just everything cranked up to 11. You know, and I wish I could joke about that I told that story to someone and they kind of looked at me and said are you serious and I said yes, yes I am. I mean the band came down you do not touch scrap paper unless it's for for a patron. So, you know, that's so I mentioned this earlier about solidarity. You know the team did look at it for each other and that is a good thing you do want co workers sharing and you know working together but there's things like we would, I call it institutional knowledge we would pass down. We would hire someone and we'd immediately pull them in and kind of be like okay, here's the things like don't take off this person don't do these things you know this and that so we would pass on our knowledge to the new person to keep them out of trouble. And there was things like and this is a real story this is what you know we would tell people as a group. We would tell people that you had to be careful about finding messes because if you found a mess. The search supervisor would force you to clean it up. Even though we had a maintenance staff who was on call. The search supervisor would force you to clean things up, even though we had maintenance staff who would do it. No problem. They're like careful finding a mess. They'll force you to clean it up and you got to be careful of that. And it was just those things like that and that's not great, you know, from looking back from that that's not great you don't want that. But, you know, in this in this case there was so much problems with this that we weren't doing more work. We would only do the work that we were assigned. Why would we do more work that that could you could get in trouble for that I'm not kidding. If you were trying to be proactive and find more things. There was a real chance of being in trouble if you acted without this person's knowledge. So, you know, it's ineffective for us we have we had no authority to make decisions we'd have to take notes on the weekends and pass them up and everything. I mean we had no, we had no liberty to make decisions or solve problems. It just created this huge backlog of stuff that had to wait till this person came back. It's not a great situation and you don't want that kind of situation it's bad deal and obviously it's a bad boss. So I mean that was kind of that situation. And there's just so much with that it's just not great. So, these kind of things reflect. I mean, your, your people using your library will notice this too, that how things are at the library it's it's not just. It's not just internal. I mean, yes, people don't understand yeah. Yeah, and people were scared I mean patients were scared of the Cirque supervisor. I mean they'd come in and it drove a lot of people off this person had favorites and they would get preferential treatment it just it was bad the patrons picked up on it everything I mean they would get mad at Cirque staff because everything had to go through this person and we were allowed to make no decisions. This wasn't great, but how does this person who has all these things who has harassment who has the racial comments who has this this bad behavior. How does this person exists. Well, unfortunately, it takes two to tango. So, this is part of a chain here what you're seeing is a chain, and that chain enabled this behavior at multiple levels. So, moving on to level two. Why, why did that person, why was that person able to thrive. Well, because that person's immediate supervisor was also ineffective this was an ineffective boss. They were afraid of confrontation, they would not handle problems they wanted to sit at their desk. They wanted to do stuff at their computer and then that was it. Again, this kind of goes back to we as librarians are not typically taught to lead to to work in a team to manage HR to do things like that where we're not taught that it's and I understand it's hard to teach but this is an effective supervisor like I said earlier, they were yelled at by their immediate report in in the public in front of other staff members. That is stunning to me that that would. It is. I mean, this person the search supervisor was calling this person telling them that they were stupid that they had made all these mistakes, etc, etc. And I mean, the search supervisor undercut their immediate their immediate supervisor they undercut them to us. We were not to trust the search supervisors boss. That person was not capable. They were only good for approving time sheets. We are not supposed to trust them. So again, we were this isolated group we were been isolated. We had been, you know, taught to not trust anyone. And it was a classic abuse situation. I mean, we were being held hostage essentially and the search supervisor made sure that we had no one to go to because of the search supervisors immediate boss is being yelled out by them being told, you know, we're being told they're not capable. And we feel like that's the case. How do we go to that person. We can't we don't trust them. Why would we, you know, they're not in the mud with us. So, again, it's like I said, this person was just ineffective. But the thing is, is, you know, like I said, there's a chain here. If you went up the chain, the search supervisor reported to the it was the adult circulation librarian at the time, and the adult circular circulation librarian reported the director will a director at the time, trusted and place the search supervisor over everyone else, they would go out for lunch for things the search supervisor knew the director's parents. Ah, there you go. Yep, yep. So new new their parents and the you know, things like that and so there were there was more at play there and it was, it was very disheartening for us I mean, it was it was just it was hard. So the ineffective supervisor, they were just like I said, I went I got up all my things I got it to report. And that was all brushed off. You know, I, I thought I just really pat myself on the back when I went in there to report it I really did. And it was just, it was all brushed off it was all dismissed. The harassing behavior but again I guess in reality, if you're being harassed, can you recognize harassing behavior of others who know I mean I couldn't say. And so I don't know if you know that was part of it but this person the ineffective supervisor did not want to engage with with that person, and then my I call I call the director at the time a consummate professional. They just sit in their office and just have things run. You know, they wanted they expected everything to run. They didn't want to hear about problems. They didn't want to have to step out and solve anything. So, you know, a lot of bad behavior by employees was slipping by. I mean, like I said, we were, you know, we as search staff we're not reporting things we were not doing more work than we needed to. This ineffective supervisor was essentially allowing the search supervisor to just run rampant. I mean, that is that is not a good situation it's, it's bad, and it's just bad service all the way from top to bottom. And I think our patrons could sense that, because basically they wanted to come in check out books and leave. And if there was a problem with their card or with their materials. I'm not engaging with any of that by library by forever. And that's sad, because it's, it's one of those things where your patrons are leaving your patrons are not. They're not happy with their library they don't feel her, you know, it's just a it's a bad situation and this was just a bad chain of management. You know, this creates so many toxic situations and, and like I said, you know, we're, we're wrapped up in this abusive behavior we're not recognizing, perhaps and, but who do we go to, you know, again, we're seeing these problems but the, the, our immediate are technically the search supervisors, boss is complicit, the director is complicit, we have nowhere to go. And we as part timers also, you know, we don't understand the capacity in which a library board governs this was a governing board situation. We don't understand something I was thinking of I'm wondering if you're going to mention that what about the public library the library board. We as part timers don't understand how that works. I mean, realistically, you know, we're kind of just there to come in clock in clock out and kind of just bear the burden of all this. We don't understand that we can go up and you know go to the board or, and we had an HR person at the time but again, you're kind of not seeing, you're not seeing any avenue to which to deal with this. If it's all the way up. What's the point in trying to go to HR. You know, we just we didn't we didn't see a purpose we didn't understand how that governing board functions. And, you know, it's hard. I mean we were part timers what did we know. Yeah, we did not we did not feel like we could do anything with this. It was just kind of a bear it, look out for each other. So we had a really tight knit tight knit circ team. And we protected each other but that was really all we could take care of at the time. And it's, you know, it is depressing. It's, it's a bad situation and it's, you know what what is a good solution to that. I think a lot of it, you just mentioned being part timer that I think is a key to this when you have people who are not full time so they are not. Oh, yeah, they just don't spend as much time there so they don't know what are the ins and outs it's just a part time job I don't know everything that goes on here. So I'm not here often enough. You know, I'm not here, you know, eight hours a day five days a week or you know whatever the schedule is like you said you work every other week. I mean, yeah. I mean, we're not, we're not sat down and explained to have a library governing functions. You know, I like I said I was working on my library degree but I was the only one in that pool of circ assistance and the search supervisor who had any kind of any kind of educational background in libraries. And I'd been in a lot of libraries, but not in a capacity to know how to deal with the board. So at the time even I was kind of like, well, you know, just grin and bear it. And, and there was no, hey guys like if you have a complaint like here's our HR person and this is the complaint process I mean none of that was talked about ever. Why would it be because that just creates that creates an opportunity to file a complaint. And it just it just didn't happen. So I mean this this was not a good situation this was a bad situation. And, but it gets worse is what's even sadder. So, so one thing to be learned from this to take from this is, you know, ultimately, you have to be amongst your staff you need to at least be on a talking basis with them. I mean, we were, you know, favoritism was rampant. And again, like I said, there was these these connections at play that were allowing leverage amongst amongst people that was probably not appropriate. Ultimately, me looking at that situation to myself I said, you know, this may be a cut and run situation. I mean this seems to be a top to bottom problem. And, you know, if I see that chain I say, Oh, I'm out of here. I, you know, I'm not I'm not dealing with this. You know, I have other places to go and some people have that luxury and others don't. No, you may be in a situation where you have to stay at that job and be in that job. And, and if, if, if we had felt like maybe we could have gone to our managers, the different managers at the time maybe we could have pulled them aside or talked to them or made some kind of in way to speak with them in a private manner but, you know, the director never comes out to talk to us director comes out to talk to the supervisor, he flips around and goes back and that's it. I mean, we don't ever so we don't ever see the search supervisors boss they don't come and talk to us. Nobody talks to us nobody you know nobody wants to know it's all the search supervisors supposed to filter all that garbage out. And so we have no again this goes back to where isolated we have no avenue to do anything with this. But, like I said, this situation. It seemed like a top to bottom issue and unfortunately that that was the case at the time, but it gets worse. Yeah, yeah. And this is this is the worst of the worst. So, here I am. This is not a picture of me, but this is me. I'm bright and shiny. I just got my degree. I'm ready. I'm ready to be a librarian. So, I interview at this library and I get I get to be the children's library and so this is me starting out by head of one department a little department you know staff of three at one full time person and two part time people. So, you know, I'm just, I'm just just a good starting point a small staff, we work really closely together, things like that I'm happy. And then, again, that's that is that is me in despair. At the time of my departure, I had somehow acquired four different departments. I had a staff of 14, and I was the only management level person standing left standing in the building, excluding the director. I was the only manager left after after my tenure. And my departments if I tell you my departments that will make no sense to you because I had just been this is it all been piecemeal together. I had I was in charge of maintenance, the Spanish language department or the multilingual department, children's librarian, children's and team librarian, and then, despite not being an adult circulation library and I was in charge of the circulation desk which primarily served the adult collection so I had somehow acquired all these departments, and it was, as people were ticked off, you know, I, I somehow started acquiring things, and it was not, not an occasion for joy. All the other managers just left or had no, they were fired. Okay, I sat in I think I counted it up. It was somewhere between five and seven firings. I sat in on and and most the managers ended up being fired for one reason or the other. Was it legitimate, I'm not sure I could I mean, you know, from the perspective perhaps there was some of it but. So basically, it turned into a dumps library is the first thing when you when you were a circus assistant is a different library. This is the same library. This is how bad it got. Because you know a new director comes in, and I thought okay, things are going to change things could all this stuff is going to all this stuff is going to get sorted out the new director is going to come in and break the chain, and it's going to be great. So I went to the new director's library and and I thought okay, you know, let's go to work. And this, this was not great. Um, so this boss presented themselves as a compassionate boss, oh I'm here to fix the problems. I'm going to listen to you guys I'm going to do all this you know and so we thought oh great a breath of fresh air, it's it's going to be a new era, a new era, and sadly this is all. This is this person's first director position and on paper everything was great they had they worked in libraries for a couple years they had a library. I think they had a, you know, had education and libraries etc. Problems started after about six months. So like I said, there's this disconnect amongst the bosses so so the boss tries to start working on this. Hey, fine, you know, I'm all behind that. Well, this is kind of what sent this person into a tailspin the HR business manager was caught stealing, amongst other fraudulent activities. They were I mean and there's things like they were writing checks to themselves. They were fudging the vacation hours that they had, giving themselves more time. They were selling stuff to the company credit card. I mean there's something let's see this person went to a stay at an HR conference and bought Cirque du Soleil tickets for the company credit card. Yes, that makes sense. Pretty gutsy moves you know it's like oh this is this person is pretty gutsy. Because there was no who knows what they ended up how much money, it took from the library so HR was suspended and then fired and, and that kind of tipped this person over the edge unfortunately. I think the amount of stress and the combination of the situation tip this person into being a bad boss they had good intentions when they started and I really want to be clear about that. They had the best of intentions when they started and then it just, it spiraled out of control. So, in a period of about nine months there were six people fired, and one person demoted. And a lot of that was managers I started out. Let's see. I had started out I was children's librarian so I was considered a manager at the time. And I was part of several other managers, and it was just like watching them fall. I mean tick tick tick and there they went. So and to add to this stress so not only has this person caught somebody you know embezzling and then it kind of turns into a whole bad situation. The library was undergoing a renovation project, like, right as this person was caught embezzling the library is getting ready to start a renovation project. So and that's a whole nother level of stress. So at the time the director says I can't deal with all these managers reporting to me because there was, I think, six to eight people direct reports to this person and so they restructured and there's three managers, myself included and the IT guy and then that the director. Well, basically I watched everyone else get fired around me. And, and I sat in on them. And that's what was bad. I mean it was, it was kind of like, why am I here. I'm the children's library and I shouldn't be in here. But it was one of those things I think it, it just started. So one, you know one person got fired and what would happen is this person would get it in their mind that somehow, somehow another person was undercutting them and something's wrong and it was, I don't want to say paranoia but it was just one of those situations where someone got the bad eye, and then that person was in for it, and they were, they were hunted down until they had enough to fire them. You know, and this was, it was bad and as people got fired as stuff got restructured I started acquiring departments, because there was nowhere else to go with them. There was nobody else to assign them to. It was just me, you know, and so eventually it was down to me. And the demotion was supposed to be the other manager, but the other manager was somehow this person was the ineffective supervisor and they ended up getting demoted. And another person who, and again this is kind of bad, bad practices all around this person that they promoted to be my co manager. It was someone they knew, it was a friend, it was a son of a friend, and that's not how you hire. No, that's a red flag all over the place, all over that, yes. And honestly this poor person, you know, was this person a bad person? Probably not, but this person was probably set up to fail. They were, they were very quickly, I think they within a month or two of them starting they were promoted to manager of, I think, two departments. And then they were just basically set up to fail, because then stuff started going wrong because this person had no experience. They were, they were kind of, I won't say mismanaging, but they were not good at it and they did not have experience doing it. And so they were kind of things were being mismanaged and the director took after this person and eventually ended up having to fire this person because they'd done some stuff. They'd kind of miss, miss, they'd fudged with time sheets, which is a big no no. They kind of fudged some time sheets. And the funny thing is they had fudged the time sheets under indirect pressure from the director at the time from the director because there was some stuff with time sheets and clocking in and out and so they had fudged time sheets. As a result of the pressure they were under from the director to make sure time in and time out was correct. And so that was kind of like strike, you know, strike one or two and then there were some other things and basically they were set up to fail and they ended up being firing as well. So, ultimately, it was me, the management team consisted of me and the IT guy under the director. And, and this is, this is where it gets, it gets worse, it gets worse. You know, fun fact, Ingram will cut you off from books if you do not pay for I think it was six months. Ingram will stop sending you stuff. And we found that there, I would think. Right. So, so this person because the HR business manager and you know been fired, then they had been fudging stuff. This person basically could not function with bills. They, they could not handle the bills coming in they could not, you know, in a timely manner get things out they could not pay for things they were so paranoid. We went without new items in the library for I think it was six months. No new items, absolutely nothing. And there were complaints from patrons or complaints from staff, somebody wrote a letter to the board, which got put in a like you know we had like a little feedback box and the letter was to the board, and the director read it, and so well they don't know what they're talking about and threw it away. Things were, I mean, on the surface everything looks fine and dandy but there are these severe issues you're having. I mean, well library doesn't have new items for six months because they weren't paying their bills. I mean that that's just crazy. But it was happening. So, again, so the director decided they were going to assume the human resources job. So, like I said they overanalyze this they they weren't trapping people and that's how all these managers got driven out is they were in trapping people. And where do you go to report this your HR person is your boss. You know, so that that second department manager there conflict of interest there. And that's the thing is is they thought it would be fine. They thought oh I can assume that you know no big deal it's not it's not going to be a problem. But when you have all these people getting fired. Where do you go with that. I mean when you're seeing these people being driven out when you're seeing this laser focus again. Where do you go to that so again I mentioned that second department manager so they were promoted and then about seven months later they ended up fired. And so that was when it got down to me in the it guy, and then coven happened. And so it gets I mean coven just put the pressure on everything and I know, you know, coven was a time when some people rose to the occasion and did great things and others did not. The week we shut down. The boss was gone that week. They were, they lived where they lived. They lived six hours away from the library. Their husband was employed six hours away from the library, and they were there buying a house that week. And even living in this community in which the library director they live six hours away so the boss was over buying a house that week. So we get shut down so boss says shut down, and then we don't hear from the boss for days. And if you remember this time it was really scary. You know what everything. Yes, it was chaos and yeah, it was chaos. I mean, how's the virus spreading. We're touching things, you know books are coming back patrons are coming in. So we shut down. We don't we shut down on Sunday, and we're just told to go to work. Don't don't serve patients we're going to close the doors just go to work do shifts that it up. That's what we're told. The fear intensifies. So the staff kind of ramp up so staff were obviously concerned scared. I, I as the only manager in the building and hearing this and I said okay, okay, we're going to put together a letter guys, you know I said, I hear this. So let's have a meeting so we gathered up. And we said okay let's let's report concerns what are the concerns we want to you know the board at this time is deciding what to do about coven and and we'd like to have some input on this. Um, so we put together a letter, and I sent it to the director say hey director you know we had a meeting today and we just wanted to pass along our concerns about you know coven and what will you know we're our suggestions for how the board should act. I get in a lot of trouble for that. I get in a lot of trouble for that. The, the boss came back at one point through the letter on the table and said where did this come from. And I got I got in a lot of trouble and after that, after I sent that letter. I was, I was on the hit list. So, I mean, it was a it was a bad deal. It was it was bad. And we were in the process of gathering documentation because this this was again like I said, we have all these abuses going on. We have all these problems these bills not being paid these things happening. The it guy and myself were as the only managers who were aware of the full scope of this we were gathering documentation. We were getting ready to go to the board, you know, and we, we were trying to be nice. And unfortunately, that's what killed us. And we failed. I'll say it. We did not do the right thing in the situation. We, we were gathering all the documentation we were kind of, you know, getting things together. The directors only the directors parent died. And we were trying to be sympathetic. And so we held off. And, and the director was gone and bills are piling up and things was happening. And the director really never came back after I mean they they were back, but they weren't mentally back and, and what happened is my co my my coworker got cornered. And it got thrown out that we were looking at going to the board, or it got out that we were looking going to the board. The director went to the board and undercut me and said that person's looking to get my job, and they're going to come in here and tell tales. And so the blame was shifted and all the things that had gone wrong. I had somehow had had had a hand in and whatever. What should we have done like I said we failed, we failed this person did end up. So when we were prepared to go to the board we're getting ready to go to the board probably would have been in, you know, early early that year and then you know like I said the bosses parent died and then COVID hit and so, but we're still documenting. And then, and then like I said, I get I get undercut to the board to the degree that I know that none of them believe me. I mean it was bad I things were said and I was like okay, but what should we have done. The second we had the second we had even some of the things a quarter of the stuff that we had. We should have immediately gone to the board. I mean we should not have waited. We were trying to be nice and waiting is what got us. So the library board president was not objective, and they believe the word of the director. And I knew that if I went to the board, I would be seen as going after that person's job I just want to push them out for the glory of that job. You know, I our joke at the time was we're keeping the place together with scotch tape and a toothpick. I mean we're we're the little little Dutch boy the dam. We had our fingers in the hole. I mean that that was us that was our daily credo for keeping things together because we were at the time was with no director we were trying to run things and get stuff done and take care to care bills and when things needed to be called and done we were taking care of it but we're the little Dutch boys in the dam and and and we failed we did. So, you know, and there's worse stuff that this person did I won't get into all of it I mean there was definitely, it was some racist, I mean racist comments and things like that. And in the harassing their passing shifted to me and I had documentation of this purse of my director at the time harassing behavior towards me. And so you know when it when push it come to shove I was ready for that if it, if it came to it. So what had ended up happening and this is director came into inheritance of a sizable estate they're actually no longer a librarian. So they came into the inheritance of a sizable estate, and they got out of libraries and so kind of just, you know translated balloon, but you know what do you take from that I mean this this was high, you know high pressure situation I'd been in for a couple years now and it was kind of like ah, so, you know, transparency when possible. It's so important. I think that's, there was this huge disconnect and again it was between the leadership and the people with the boots on the ground. And then there was some transparency, hey guys, I'm not buying new items because I'm trying to get you know trying to get things squared away after after the HR business person I mean even that would have been enough. But really, what should have happened absolutely was, how do you handle complaint. What is the procedure, nobody knew that I mean, when when your director is the HR. Where does that go, you know, honestly it should have been made out like hey if you have a problem with the directory you need to go to the library board president you know they'll hear you issues, hear your issues and things like that. You know and with that with that procedure you need to know what is an issue. I think it's you have to be brave enough as a manager as a leader of any sort to empower your staff to sit in tell fun doing something shady HR, you know go to HR or go to whoever and this is where you need to go. And ultimately it's you have to get on top of issues before they become full scale problems so much of this stuff could have been headed off. This person had not just sat in parallelization of doing anything. And I know they were under a lot of stress and I do I do give them that. Ultimately, do I think this person was a bad person. No. I think I think power got the better of them and kind of went to their heads and they were on and just reacted poorly. So, you know in hearing this you're thinking oh Brooke was on the bandwagon. Well yes and no. You know, I'll admit, when you're in a position where you could be fired, because I watched all my co managers get fired so why was I not on the on the hit list for for quite a while. I probably was on the bandwagon. You know, I was just trying to do my job and honestly internally I was like please leave me alone please stop dragging me into these HR things I just want to be the children's librarian children's have fun. But, but was I I mean, I was probably I was probably essentially kind of on the bandwagon I was just trying to do my job and and all I could offer this person when they would ask my opinion was. This is how I would do my, you know this is how I would do it but, you know, and my staff. I think my staff I kept them from the worst of it for good or for bad. My staff knew that I had worked my way up my staff knew I had done all their jobs and so they could trust me to come in and take care of things. And so in that I was taking care of my departments. And so for the good or the bad I had shielded them from a lot of the issues. And I had probably preserved the reputation of my boss. I don't know if it was to my detriment or not. And I who knows you know ultimately what's the answer so I want to end I've got I've got something here it says the most expensive shelver so in library school I heard something. And it, it kind of stayed with me. So I had my, I had a professor, and they said, you know, your director can go out and shelve books on the shelves but what do you have then you have the most expensive shelver. And I think that's, I understand the point, but on the flip side of that, I think you need to know your library runs from top to bottom, you need to know what the low people on the rung are doing you need to know what their day to day is you need to know what the middle, what the middle level people do you got to know that. And so, I think this idea of, of well you don't need to be out doing stuff like that I'm like, you know, maybe do. You need to learn my my this previous this bad bosses, this last bad boss the time, couldn't even check out books to patrons. They were so isolated from the daily tasks of running the library then couldn't even check out books to a patron. They had no clue how the ILS system run. We had biblionics at the time and it's not, it's not too hard but they had no clue how any of that ran. They just were so separated from from the reality of the day to day of a library it was it was kind of astonishing. And I do want to say this, doing the right things will sometimes cost you. I felt that I was trying to do the right thing I felt that I was gathering evidence and I was going to old Brooks going to step in and you know, I'm going to step in and expose evil doers. It cost me. It cost me a lot. My work environment became very toxic, very bad. I had, you know, I was I was on the I was on the receiving end of harassment and, and I think the only saving grace is is, I was doing my job to a T, and I was documenting everything. And they had nothing they could fire me on. And I think that's probably what kept me I knew that if that director had stayed they would have found something to fire me about. They ended up leaving and so I still had my job. But, but I do want to say that sometimes doing the right things will cost you and that's an ugly harsh truth. But, and it's doing the right thing as far as your job and keeping the library running I mean you do feel I think you know. Not a responsibility but you know, it's your library and you want it to do well. Yeah, you don't want to destroy it because by just letting things happen, although sometimes that might be an answer you know I've let them that the other people. The bad boss fail, you know, don't don't fix things for them or, you know, but that's a hard thing to balance to. And there's also doing the right thing, something that you've kind of alluded to but is self care. You know, how much do I want to get involved in this what can I handle right now. I had a situation in the past where I was, I had an opportunity to ramp up an issue I had with a previous supervisor. And I was asked by their supervisor, do you want to do, you know, this, and there was in it was, it was not a good time for me to have all of that going on is this is a long long time but this has nothing to do with coven. But and I was like, Yes, I want to but I don't think my brain and my emotions and what I'm was happening right now in my own life. It's not the right time. Yeah, and I ended up still being in that horrible situation for a while longer and in hindsight, I'm like, I wish I had had the confidence and the strength at that time to do it. But I just didn't I had to take care of myself, and I let that person stay. I let them affect other people. Multiple people left the on who are supervised by this person because they were such a bad supervisor. And I was like, I wish I could have but at that time it was just not. And that's so hard to it's hard to take that step back and say, you know, I need to do this, and it's going to it's going to hurt it's going to be rough, but I need to do it, and that's hard to and probably yes it, you know, honestly, I think there was a lot of a lot of, and I'm going to say this was you had to weigh the morality, weigh the morality of doing it and you know, at the time I felt like I was a friend with my boss. And so for my friend's sake I was trying to stave off doing this and, and, and yeah same thing like you I there was so much, there was so much mental anguish involved it was it was not great. And I know like I said, people get into these situations and then they don't know what to do and. And if I had gone to the board. I probably would have ended up fired after they had talked to after the boss to talk to the board and it just was, it was a bad situation. And I was going through a lot of I mean there's, I was not taking care of myself in terms of mental health. Absolutely not because I was so keyed up on stress and you know, trying to take it a library and it was like, I, you know, my co workers the people who worked in my departments. I was trying to take care of them too and it just. Yeah, like you said, a lot of a lot of bad stuff continued to happen because I did not pursue this. I did not pursue this issue. The second I had a couple of things and could have done something about it. And then something that happens that's a thing that is a mouse long time ago. It's hard not to feel guilt about it forever. But at that time it was the way had things had to go and hopefully now in the future. I know for myself, I am in a much better situation now. Things did get better. I can say that. It's a lot better quicker, but you can only do what you can do. Don't feel guilty if you can't take on the enormity of something that is happening in that that is. Yeah. And it's it's hard to work up the courage to go, you know, and get your evidence online and start collecting that and that's really hard. And I said, you know, I've seen a lot of questions about this and and I completely understand and commiserate with anyone who's trying to work up the courage. It's very difficult. And if you've done it, I tip my hat to you. We have someone who's coming saying to broke you are very resilient. Thanks. I hope so. I, you know, I, I look back now and I think, well, I learned a lot. It was a good learning situation. I took a lot from that I took a lot. You know, and I do want to say this. Like I said, the ultimate the, the, the Boston eventually ended up leaving. I, they had good idea had some good ideas they had some good things. I think they weren't prepared for that situation and I think that they let it get the better of them. And, and I wish they'd had some own self recognition of like, Hey, this is not good for me or I need to, you know, reach help or get help or whatever. But that was all what I needed to handle this. And I, I need to admit that I can't handle this and I need. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately if that person and, and that was the other thing too is probably if they had had an assistant director or had more managers, the load could have been lightened but because it got rid of all of the managers there was no one to help. That's a lot for them. I mean here in Nebraska we have many small staff libraries but that's not the situation everywhere so elsewhere it could be. Yeah. Yeah, and this is I mean this is, it was unusual for that many people to be fired in such a short time and this was on a staff, the staff. Ultimately automatically replacing that same position. Yeah, no, I mean they paired they did just managers would go and they would get paired it would get paired down to the existing managers and then like I said, ultimately I was the only one standing and I just kind of thought oh no, like where did everyone go. Yeah. So, as, as success here anybody have any questions don't be and said anything during your presentation that's fine. Does anybody have any questions comments thoughts suggestions you want to make go ahead and type into the question section. We do have some thank yous coming on for coming through for this presentation this is great. It's good to hear that we're not alone in these situations if people are having this that this is the kind of thing that can be out there. And, you know, figure out a way to deal with it and I think there's some good tips and good I think you gave a lot of good warning signs, you know, look for these early warning signs of something that might be worse and see if you can't head it off with the people this the bad managers a little better before things get totally off the rails. Well, and it really is one of those things, you know, look, look into your HR manual or your personnel manual know how your complete procedures run. Know the avenues with which you can take if you're a city department, you know know how that functions, just, you know, be. I'm sure if you have an HR person you could probably shoot them questions and get little tentative answers before you, before you go full, I go hi I've got all these things but. Yeah, yeah, just you know and educate yourself on you know anytime you have a job, what if something does I'm not saying it will I'm not coming into this position saying okay I'm here to figure out who's doing something bad. Yeah, you should know everything's a bit you know what is there should be an employee handbook or if you are employees of the city, a city employee handbook or documents that you can just get access to without having to like. Like if you do ask a question of HR will I think you're going to be wanting to do something like no I just want to know where I find this info. Just in case before something comes up I don't want to be flailing around and thinking I don't have any. Anything that I can do about it. Yeah. Now it's, it's a tough situation, and this library you wanted it to succeed. And it just, it was kind of just like limping along and you know it's, it takes more than one person to fix something to and let that be said I mean it would have at that, at that point, it would have taken a team and unfortunately that was not the environment under which it was currently in. Well, I'm glad you're here in Blair now in this book. I think things are going there you've been there since 2000 sometime. Yeah, 2020 October of 2020 is so I was like I was I'm apparently I'm known around the city is the coat the covert interviews like thanks. I remember that it was like a new director in the big very beginnings of covenants like oh my gosh, we're getting hired moving jobs cool. Yeah. All right, look like any questions came in any urgent questions right now that's perfectly fine. You all have this recording later to refer to and brook will send me her slides as well. Yes. And if you do want to reach out to her possibly privately to have any sort of conversations. Blair public library and Technology Center. You can find her online there very easily. Oh, we do. Oh, wait a comment coming in. Great. Thank you so much. It says thank you for sharing your story. This is helpful for someone dealing with management. Thanks again. Yeah. Yeah. No, and anyone is dealing with it now. I, you know, I do wish you the best of luck and I do hope things work out for you. It's tough. And I've been there. I mean just know others have been there. It's very frustrating. You've been through as the person you've ever such a, I think a perfect storm of just people who are bad at their job, people were indifferent of their job. Oh, going up the chain. I mean that kind of thing is like a lot. I mean, you know, typically it may be just a single person you're trying to figure out and deal with, but having this whole chain that you did was just like, Yeah. And that was, I think that was hopefully out of the ordinary. I know. And, but good news is I get to share it. I get to share with everybody but it was, it was just kind of like, Oh no, this goes all the way up. Well, I'm glad you came out of it. And you're still here with. I see a lot of libraries. That's the part that I would be most worried about. All right. All right, so I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen to wrap things up for today. Thanks so much. This was great. I was glad I get to have you on the show. As she mentioned at the beginning, this was a session done at our LA conference for you, not Nebraska, the Southern Nebraska Library Association annual conference last month. I think time goes by so weirdly now. Christmas is almost here. And so I asked her to come on and share with more people here on our show so I'm glad you were able to have you and this is great information I think it'll help a lot of people. I hope so. Yeah. So that will wrap it up for our show. As I said we have a recording and our archives are right here. This is our main page. If you just use your search engine of choice and look up and compass live where the only thing called that on the internet moment. Nobody else is allowed to use that name. But right here is our archives right underneath our upcoming shows. Most recent one will be at the top here so by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest recording should be up here. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show even if you weren't able to show up live you'll get an email from me letting you know that it's a bit up. And to our we have a mailing list in Nebraska we have a Facebook page which is linked from everywhere here's our Facebook page if you like to use Facebook give us a like over there. See we have reminders about logging in today's show our presenters and then we do post when the recordings are available as well. You can also on Twitter and I think Instagram is the other thing we're using and come live is the hashtag for the show so you can keep an eye on things we're doing over there. In our archives here while I'm here I'll show you we do a search feature if you want to search for a particular topic to see if you've done something on it you can. You can limit in just the most recent 12 months if you want something just current or our full show archives, and that is because, and I say I'll do this. Close your eyes near this goes back to when encompass live first premiered which was in January 2009. And we do have all of our show archives here, as long as we have a place to host them they'll always be up. But some of our older things, of course, some shows will stand the test of time, some things will become old or outdated, and the information will be no longer good anymore resources and services may have changed drastically or disappeared completely staff may be at different libraries. Now, who presented. So just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything you watch on our archives and so they're all dated here's you'll know when it actually was originally presented. So, next week, our topic will be our best new children's books of 2022. Sally Snyder who's our library Commission coordinator children and young adult library services will do talk about all the best books for preschool through elementary school that she read this past year. We also have a best new teen reads coming up she does these kind of two companion shows on children's books and then on January 11 already got her 2023 dates coming up. She'll come back to talk about teen reads the best new teen reads that she read in 2022. So if you're looking for those two shows sign up for either of those. So while we're here to I just want to give a plug for something else we do online we do this weekly show and come alive, but we also host the big talk from small libraries online conference, which is where for small libraries to present about things they're doing and for us here in Nebraska and for this conference we consider small libraries as libraries with a population served or FTE of 10,000 or less so all of our presenters are from libraries who have 10,000 or less people they serve. They're from academic school, whatever, and the call for speakers is now open. So please if you are a small librarian you'd like to present this is please submit a proposal if you know any small libraries you think would be good share the news spread, spread the word this is a national conference we do with people attend and present from all over the country. So the deadline to submit proposals to December 16 2022. If you want to know what's been done previously if you're interested we do have all of our previous conferences listed here in our archives on this. Our first one was in 2012. So, please do sign up to do a proposal or spread the word for us. Other than that that wraps up today. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you Brooke for being with us again. And has done a previous show for us. So, and hopefully we'll see you all on future episode of encompass live. Bye bye.