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Boss
by Emily Eckart “Where are the deliverables?” His voice reverberated in the windowless meeting room. The three librarians—he thought of them as young, middle, and old—quivered in their seats. Their usual habitat provided camouflage: stacks of books, piles of school bulletins, typewritten working papers bound with staples. But here, in this bare room, they were defenseless. They stumbled through a presentation on research support for faculty, forays into Twitter, the new online course materials platform. It allowed students to download readings in a .zip file, and it streamlined the process of requesting copyright permission. There was just one problem: instead of cutting costs, the program had increased copyright bills by nearly thirty percent. “Okay,” he said. “We leapfrogged ahead to this new system. It has been perceived across the university as a significant project. For that, kudos. But—” The librarians, in their pearl necklaces, their shawls, their glasses perched on spinsterish noses, stiffened in unison. “—We didn't meet expectations on the financial side. We did not anticipate and understand the copyright economics.” The librarians glanced at each other. He knew what they thought of him. His neck folds billowed over his shirt collar; he was mostly bald. His long earlobes somehow seemed villainous. He had once heard the middle librarian quip that he'd sprung to life from a Dilbert cartoon. He was their enemy, the source of all evil and budget cuts. They'd hate him even more when they discovered what the higher-ups had in store. An eighty thousand dollar deficit was roughly comparable to one person's salary. The deans had left it to him to figure out which librarian to axe. It wasn't as though he liked this job. He had three teenagers, all who wanted to go to college. He had elderly parents who had lost most of their savings in 2008. He had worked longer and longer hours, desperately watching his investments, urging the digits to grow. Last month, he'd woken up in the middle of the night with severe pain in his chest. He clutched his wife's arm, unable to speak. A single night in the hospital had cost them $8,000. Later, he wished he could have known it wasn't a heart attack. “Roger?” he heard the old librarian say, the one he had already chosen. The young librarian didn't earn much; she learned technology the quickest. The middle one was the library director. The oldest, two years from retirement, didn't understand Google, or how to create a simple Excel spreadsheet. Two weeks from now, when it was announced that her position was ending, it would take eight more months to phase her out. There would be plenty of time for her to make a voodoo doll, throw darts at his picture, burn him in effigy, earlobes and all. As a child he had loved the library. While his parents worked until 8:00, he wandered the stacks until nightfall, taking in the silence and the scent of books. He looked for volumes that had never been checked out before, so he could be the first to experience their secrets. When the deans had merged the library with IT, putting it under his domain as CIO, he had experienced a surge of excitement, a hope of working on something meaningful. He didn't know it would be like this: convincing the deans that librarians were necessary employees; that the building shouldn't be shut down part-time, though surveys showed students used Wikipedia instead of books. Maybe this eighty thousand dollar concession would buy him time and sympathy, keep the doors open for another couple years, for the few who still liked to wander the stacks. “Yes, sorry,” Roger said. “I've had a tiring day. I'd like to thank you all for the synergy this team has developed. We've achieved a lot of progress in bringing the library to the digital age. Meeting adjourned.” He watched them go one by one. The oldest left last, her shawl wrapped around her frail body, her gray hair spiraling down her shoulders. I'm sorry, he thought. I'm sorry. |
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