Employee Management Relations

Merijoy and Jo

I wouldn’t start here if I were you. Start at the beginning for this to make more sense.

I worked several places in college. My high school job working in a movie theater got me a spot at a theater in the same chain near my dorm. There I was fortunate to work for Merijoy. From whom I learned a whole lot of what I know about how to be a manager (though I didn’t apply any of it for many years.)

I’d worked in a theater for three years in high school. A big fourteen-plex. It operated, I worked, moves were shown, popcorn was eaten. I learned a bit from the one competent manager who was there briefly, But it wasn’t until I worked for Merijoy that I understood how abysmally badly that theater limped along. Merijoy ran a tight ship. She was on top of every aspect of it. She inspired nothing but loyalty and respect from her staff. She’s a friend to this day.

Merijoy worked with her staff, jumping in when it was busy, assigning tasks based on skills (I was never a good person to work the ticket booth, though as I got experience I did do it some. I once carded a 35 year old for an R-rated movie.) But I could clean a theater fast. I could make popcorn perfectly every time. And man can I up-sell. If you want to run out of big popcorn bags and soda cups, put me on concessions. It was my favorite job of all time. It was an ok job until I met Merijoy, then I learned what a team can do when they have someone competent in charge. I’m convinced that Merijoy should be Chief of Staff in the White House. She could make any team a winning team. Competent people are part of the team even when they lead it.

I was so fortunate employment-wise. I always have been. Even in college when I worked a little during the year and a lot during the summers, I had good luck. I’ll tell you a bit more about those other jobs. I was a student academic advisor. Which has to be the most terrible cost-saving idea ever. Having students advise other students on what classes to take is someone in higher ed’s sick joke I guess. Lots of schools seem to do it,“inmates running the asylum.”

To my view, allowing college students to advise each other is just another indication that almost nothing you do as an undergraduate (where you go to school, what classes you take, who you live with, your major…) matters even a tiny bit. What does matter, the point, is to go and get out of it all you can. Learn how to learn. Learn what kinds of knowledge are out there. Stretch your wings. Think. But don’t worry overly much about what you’re thinking about. You’ll come out better in the end regardless. Wish I’d known that when I thought life could be planned.

My other “best” college job was working as a “Library Automation Assistant” in the Middleton Health Sciences Library. And that was the best because I worked for Jo Crawford, in her wonderful crew of IT roustabouts. I learned a lot about technology that doesn’t exist anymore (Novell servers, dial-up modems, and databases loaded from folders of CD or Jazz discs.) But what I really learned was how to learn about technology. And that “how” is 80% “try things until you figure it out.”

Obviously it was pre-web times, so people shared knowledge more locally. IT folks wore a lot of hats then. But we also just had to try things. That hasn’t changed. The best IT people try things (not on Production systems!)

At the library I supported medical doctors using primitive computers and modems to dial in to our Medline and other databases. If that sounds like a rough kind of phone support, it was a challenge. Not the least because those doctors would be using their *only phone line* to dial in, while also needing to use it to call you for help. And because doctors have never been known for their love of technology. They haaaaate it. Also they don’t listen, but the problems they cause by not listening are still your fault. It was my first indication that Doctors might be something less than perfect.

I had a blast. I found that I loved user support. I loved wonky servers that the library couldn’t afford to replace. I once salvaged a hard drive to replace a malfunctioning one in a server, but it was the wrong form-factor, so I slung it in the bay with duct tape. And another server that had to be booted every morning had a “sticky” drive, so we popped the thing open and banged the drive a little to get it started. Don’t let anyone tell you that smacking a machine won’t help. It might. Though usually they don’t like it and you have to know when it helps and when it does not.

But back to Jo. Jo taught me to be fearless with technology. I’ve never loved it the way many of my colleagues do. I don’t have the technology curiosity of a true technophile. But I’m not afraid of it, and I know the best way to figure something out is to play with it. (I’m also a big advocate for “development” and “test” systems, because sometimes uptime matters. The difference between the better and worse tech people is whether their willingness to try stuff is accompanied by the arrogance of thinking they should try it in Production when that isn’t absolutely unavoidable.)

But in the end, even with Google available now, just figuring it out through trial and error is what makes you competent with technology. And many other things. Competent people aren’t afraid to try things. And try things I did in Jo’s shop. And like my high school Physics teacher, being around Jo was inspiring. So while I’d never considered a career in either libraries or technology before meeting her, after working for her I didn’t much consider anything else.

Jo once took me with her to the American Library Association convention in Washington DC and I got to be useful there. While there I saw her approached by a panhandler. Jo had packs of raisins in her purse for that eventuality. Jo planned, always. And Jo was compassion in a human costume. I learned more than I can catalog from her, but that’s a thing that stuck with me. “I might meet someone who needs me, and I’d better be ready on the spot.” I’ve shifted to foil packets of fish and chicken rather than raisins, because eww, raisins. But Jo showed me that it’s actually really easy to help people, and it rarely has to involve anything it isn’t easy to give.

The lessons from Jo also involved foresight. Jo’s compassion led her to think ahead. Maybe she encountered someone sometime and wasn’t able to help, didn’t like it, and let that motivate her to be ready the next time. I’ve had that experience, so I appreciated Jo’s preparedness and took the hint. The lesson there, that we don’t just plan for ourselves alone. We plan for the people around us. It’s possible to plan to take care of things for other people too, and there’s a lot of pleasure in that. pleasure in actually taking care of people even in tiny ways, and pleasure doing things competently to prepare.

Which is how these two folks tie together for me. Merijoy built teams that were truly “team-like.” Teams you might see in movies, though her teams just showed movies. Jo had this broad planning mind that took into account people she didn’t even know, only theorized might need her. Her work team was outstanding as well, but she had a kind of effortless ability to care in advance.

The effect of good, competent (or in rare instances, Competent) management can’t be overstated. We all know that. A workplace in the worst company on earth can still be a haven with the right manager. People become better and happier with good managers. Everything gets done better, faster, smarter with good managers. Management skills can be learned. Why we tolerate anything less is a mystery to me. I’ve been lucky to have some outstanding ones, so you’ll be hearing about some others later on.