Checked Out: Cinderburg Part 21
My second summer at Cyprus ended up being the start of what I like to think of as my Year of Chaos, broken up by infrequent and short segments of calm.
Sylvia left for her promotion at the beginning of July. The branch spent the next four months managerless with Mia and I filling that role unofficially.
With no real manager, the general mood was bleak. My fight with Barb was still very fresh, and it ate away at our morale for a time to come, affecting more than just the pair of us. So we just avoided each other.
About a week after our big blow up, she came to me and said she hoped we could get back to how we used to be. We both knew how much we missed the other. I told her I would try. But the fallout from our custody battle, then Sylvia’s subsequent manipulation of feedback put me in the worst state of mind when it came to my coworkers. I pulled back from everyone until the moment that Sylvia recanted everything. But by then, the damage with Barb was done.
Timing, as per usual, was the worst. It’s one thing to lose a manager during a hiring freeze. It’s another thing to lose a manager during a hiring freeze in the middle of summer.
During this time, extended absences of staff struck, some voluntary, others not. One coworker, Mikhaila, ran to Russia for almost a month. She either met a man while there, or had already known him. With her quiet, watchful ways, she never really divulged a lot for us to know.
About a week before she was set to return, she posted a few videos to social media featuring her and this man at a party. The party featured a three-tiered cake, sparklers, feeding each other cake, and Mikhaila in a white dress.
“She got married!” Zahra immediately theorized. The rest of us had to agree. Everything about her party looked like a wedding reception. We were all scandalized. Quiet, unassuming Mikhaila had gone to a country clear across the world to get married.
Diane sent her messages immediately to ask her about it, but she never got back to her.
When she returned a week later, she told us she wasn’t married, only engaged. The man would be following her to America once his citizenship paperwork went through.
During Mikhaila’s absence, River also disappeared, but not of her own volition.
About a month or two after Amy announced her pregnancy, River also announced hers. Unfortunately halfway through the summer, she suffered a miscarriage and spent the next six weeks at home, recovering from the ordeal and taking time with her family to mourn.
Myron disappeared whenever he built up enough leave, so every other week, he’d call out at the last minute. Barb started calling out more, too. And with Amy’s pregnancy progressing along, she left for doctor’s appointments. Mia also disappeared at one point for a whole week, which was way out of the blue for her. She first contracted pink eye, and then developed pneumonia while recovering from that.
With a branch that was supposed to have 15 full-time people, we were short by about 5 during the worst of the hiring freeze.
Our head of branch services, a man named Gary, visited our branch often in the absence of a manager. But this did little to actually fill the gap.
The tightness of staff was felt across all branches.
Gary’s reaction to this was to enforce a scheduling change across the whole library system. Per his new rules, staff at all branches were now to work every other weekend. No one wanted this.
There were slight differences in working at large versus small branches. The small branches worked every other weekend, but they were closed on Sundays. So while they worked more weekends in a year, they always had a guaranteed day off each week. The larger branches worked every third weekend. We had to work Sundays, which were the worst, but we didn’t have to work as many weekends in a year.
This change for the larger branches was rough. With us being open on Sundays, it meant every two weeks staff would work seven days in a row. We were exhausted. We felt overworked. We felt like we never left the library. Like we were trapped there and we couldn’t escape it’s book-lined walls.
The change went into effect around Labor Day. Within a week, staff at Cyprus were asking Mia and I when things would go back to normal. Much like with the questions about when the hiring freeze would end, we had nothing to tell them. And so, we waited.
But I encouraged many of my more reliable colleagues to start using their paid time off. We’d be no help to anyone if we were passed out from exhaustion.
As we battled our own staffing issues, some magical message was forecast directly into the minds of the worst possible patrons for miles around, and over the next few months, they all came to Cyprus.
Next time, we’ll learn about the first fecal fellow that plagued our fall.
Until then, I remain…
-C Quill
