Transfer News

OK, so the system that us Sunday Librarians work for, suddenly decided to close about half the branches on Sundays -- including mine. According to my manager, this came out of nowhere, and she only learned of it midweek. The story is that with the holidays coming up, the system was having severe staffing problems. You see, the system's employees are largely unionized, and thus can't be forced to work on Sundays. However, a lot of them elect to, for the extra money. The system also hired a bunch of people like me and SL2 to just work on Sundays, to fill the gaps. Apparently, some of the regular employees who work on Sundays don't want to work as much over the holidays, and thus they were projecting staffing shortages. So, the people downtown did an analysis of the door counts (which are total BS) and circulation for Sundays, and figured out which branches to close. So last week I worked at a different branch just as a one-time deal, and starting this week, I'll take up residence at a new branch. This new branch is one I've been to, I sort of know the neighborhood, but I imagine it'll be somewhat more challenging just because of the demographics. My old branch was in a wealthy, quiet neighborhood, and the people who use the library there tend to be pretty self-sufficient. This new branch is in an area that is vastly more mixed in terms of race, class, language, etc. so I imagine I'll be kept on my toes a good deal more. Wish me luck... Oh yeah, the good news is that it's a much simpler commute.