Management Via E-Mail

Make sure that your underqualified, promoted-once-too-often manager ass avoids direct communication with staff by sending out pissy e-mails regarding triffling, unimportant issues, instead of making an effort to communicate directly and verbally. This will give you an air of importance; it will make you seem like you're too important to talk to your loser staff. Don't worry about sinking the morale of your staff by being a non-verbal e-mailer. Instead, worry that maybe your staffers think you've become a useless coward.

Power struggles, Participating in public

Workplace power struggles can be publicly manifested in a number of ways: personal interactions, mass email, physical posture, etc. Want to get involved?

Ways to challenge the authority of your committee chair...

• Call a meeting and set the primary agenda items
• Arrive early and sit at the head of the table -- normally occupied by the Chair
• Conduct the business of the meeting (give handouts, ask for departmental reports, etc.)
  
• Rephrase what the Chair says in your own words (for everyone else's benefit)
  
• Be aggressive and doggedly defend your ideas, regardless of relevance
• Re-send (to the committee) mass email messages the Chair has already sent to the committee members.
  

This is just a start. Be creative and seize the power.

Meetings, Scheduling

Do not schedule committee meetings (that are not "lunch meetings") during the traditional lunch hour (12:00-1:00). If you are not paying for or preparing lunch for everyone, you should schedule the meeting in the morning or the afternoon. It is also courteous to allow a 30-minute buffer on either side of the traditional lunch hour because not everyone eats at exactly the same time you do.

J

PowerPoint, Reading aloud from

Before you read the content of your PowerPoint slides aloud to a captive audience, be sure to promise them that you won't read the slides.

And just for the record, it doesn't make it any less painful if you have pre-recorded yourself reading the slides and you play the MIDI file instead of reading it live. People who do this are begging to be physically assaulted.

J

Handouts, Matching Your Outfit to

When preparing for a bibliographic instruction session, remind yourself that it is never a good idea to match the color of your handouts to your outfit. Especially if you only wear purple and turquoise--your favorite colors--on a daily basis.

Fantasy Baseball, Participating In

It's perfectly reasonable to use your down time to participate in a fantasy baseball league. Just remember, if your team is hopelessly buried by, say, early June, then you should probably stop spending hours scouring the waiver wire for a closer and get back to work. Just remember, if Curt Schilling were healthy, you'd be kicking ass right now instead of entertaining ridiculous trade offers. And remember, young librarian, there's always next year.

*sniff*

Unusualness, Broadcasting your

If you are a librarian with a tattoo, piercings, or punk rock hair, you are obligated to make a web page about yourself. Do your part to change the face of librarianship by broadcasting your own coolness through a vanity web site.

J