I oversee a group of employees at the library. Each day I give them an assignment. It's not that I'm a micro-manager it is that in a library certain parts of the collection need specific types of attention at different times. I won't bore you with all the details. Each day I go up to the collection and write an assignment for each employee scheduled that day. I base it on the number of hours they will be working. Today I went up a noticed that the Juvenile and the ESL section need a lot of TLC. As I walked into the re-shelving room one of my employees was already up there. She is one of my hardest working employees. She immediately approached me regarding the Juvenile collection and said, "I would like to do it! Please assign it to me." The collection is quite large and she is working today only four hours so I was reluctant to assign it, but decided to break it up over today and tomorrow to insure it got the attention it deserved. I handed her the assignment and began on leave. She stopped me. "nib! I notice the ESL is also in disarray! I will do that as well!" I told her no. That I had assigned that to another employee that is working for seven hours today. She then basically begged me. I said no...that it was very important that she focus on her own assignment and leave the other employee to his assignment. I told her she can't fix the entire library. She can only fix what she can...don't kill herself trying... and that the library will be here tomorrow. With that I smiled at her and left.
As I walked away I thought: "Wow. I wish I had me to stop me when I tried to take on everyone's stuff that wasn't mine." It was then I realized what I said and laughed out loud. Students turned and looked at me...I must have looked crazy! Did I really just think that!? I wish I had...ME?! Really?!
2 comments:
Why wouldnt you want you? You sounded very rational and the advice was good. You need a you distanced from you to give you perspective, right?
She sounds like a very valuable employee, btw. Keeper.
She was a great employee...unfortunately due to changes in financial aid she was ineligible to return this next semester. I have my feelers out in the district to get her hired at least hourly.
That is just it! I need a me that is not me that will give me perspective, that knows everything I know. That's the key!
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