Today I am writing about burnout. I read a great book about this last year and it offered some strategies for me for the past year.

I’ve been reading much about labor shortages and people switching careers lately. Prior to the pandemic, I thought I would be content to be a children’s librarian for many years. Now, not so much.

It’s not just that I haven’t been able to do the favorite parts of my job for over a year – Storytime and event planning/ coordination. It’s how my local government and employer has just taken library workers for granted for over a year.

It the rush to get back to “normalcy” and expanding hours, our so called leaders have had no problem steamrolling over employees in a “my way or the highway” type fashion.

I may be minimizing my chances of finding something new by posting this, but I want out.

I know that I am a resilient person. I even won a workplace award for this in 2018. But even resilient people have breaking points.

It took me over a month to find a babysitter for a couple of weekend hours. Really flexible gig. Only one out of four scheduled interviewee could meet with me at the scheduled time. Lucky for me that the one who could make it is awesome. She got the job. I just found out last Friday that my son’s after school program will be running this year – less than two weeks from the start of school.

But my employer has no problem changing my scheduled work hours on me with only two weeks notice.

It may be stating the obvious, but this is not the way to try and keep good people.

I’m tired of being a public servant. Just because I want to do good in my community, doesn’t mean I literally want to be a servant.

I am so disappointed in my employer’s demonstrated inability to walk it’s so called talk. There is no way that my organization is truly striving towards equity if they are not even willing to listen to their employees. This could have been a time for good changes to be made for improvements not just for the public, but also for those who serve. But it is not really surprising.

Real innovation requires not just ideas and skills, but also bravery. Something lacking in my organization’s leadership.

I know that I am brave. I share my ideas here with the rest of the world and that requires at least a bit of bravery. I am posting this here in hopes that some city/ county leader might read it. Talking with my supervisor does no good if her supervisors have wax in their ears. Or worse yet, their fingers.