Whereas a Librarian Offers A Different Kind Of Service

The demands of your overlords are slowly squeezing off your joy supply

Today I spent a bit of time between library programs offering another kind of service, that of sympathetic ear and encouraging word. Everyone experiences irritation at some aspect of their job from time to time, but a trend that I have been noticing more and more in the workplace is what I like to call:

The Competency-Heaping Effect

It seems the more capable an employee is; the more responsibility and expectations are heaped upon that employee. If talent or competency is noticed, then it is expected for that person to be bled dry by their organization to the tune of the score of a Superman movie. Offering creative content, or facilitating an imaginative, people drawing program requires an immense amount of creativity, planning, and execution. To expect an employee to deliver that type of quality day after day, while shrinking their planning time seems a little counter productive to me. In fact, I think a lot of this phenomenon stems from the sheer amount of choice that we have when it comes to stimuli in our society. I would think that a couple of amazing choices planned by an appreciated and excited employee offered every week would be vastly superior to having the choice of a program every day given by a burned out, over-burdened employee who is just trudging through the motions.

The limits of human productivity come into play when one thinks on this theme. When does the line between productivity get crossed into outright drudgery? At what point do we need to step back as a people and evaluate what we are doing to motivated people in the name of providing vast amount of "choice" regarding content.

This is not about work ethic. I love to work; it feeds my soul. I run a farm, home school my children, work part time at a library, take care of my disabled husband, and try to be a somewhat passable mother. I am constantly in a state of work. My concern stems from an awareness of the misery that I can sense emanating from many of the doers in society that I interact with. They were once happy in their endeavors, yet that happiness is being wrung from them all in the name of "productivity," "relevance," "numbers," and "multiple programming options." Adding more chaos to this misery soup is the reduction of pay, hours, and staff, yet at the same time there is an increasing pressure in regards to creating more output. What we do for an occupation is only a part of who we are, and we should not have to sacrifice our entire well being on the altar of the workplace effort-sucking sponge, all to be considered a valuable and productive employee.

I would love to hear from the Steemit community about their experiences, thoughts, and potential solutions to this observational opinion. Or you could all just call me a whiner on behalf of other whiners, any and all interaction is enjoyed!:)

The above photo of a very loved kitten was taken by the author on my cat hair covered iPhone.