adventures in funemployment
I lost my job at the beginning of November. This is the second time it’s happened since 2020, and all of it is another story for another day. But about a week after my layoff, on a lark and to stave off unemployment depression, I researched how to get a job at my local library. As a thing to hold me over until I figured things out or found a “real” job, as it were. I figured I could take a break to pursue my high school Party Girl dream for a bit.
It was not a straightforward process. My local library is part of a county system that uses a third party for hiring and HR. I had to do at least a little bit of digging before I found the proper website to see if my library was even hiring. I mention all this to say that I thought I was doing this for shits and giggles, and I could’ve easily given up the pursuit like fifteen minutes in if that were really the case. I didn’t. I found the third party company for my county system, found the listing for my local branch, and applied.
And I got the job.
What you must know is that I haven’t worked outside of the home for almost as long as my kids have been alive — about fifteen years. I’ve basically always been in tech, which is its own self-selecting group of weirdos, and this has sustained us through several moves, giving me a great excuse to never leave my house and find community.
The thing is, I may be weird but I’m not socially awkward. I can be a normal human being in society and have regular degular conversations, so even though I have been yearning for years for community, I didn’t think being a shut-in was really affecting me.
Welp, I started my job at the library this week and it has been wonderful, but my god, I am too soft and sentimental for this job.
The other day I helped an older gentleman check out a bunch of DVDs to help him pass the time as he recovers from a medical procedure. And a tween came up to my workstation to check out at least a dozen books — many of which were loved by my own kids — and I watched her carefully stack them in order before putting them back in her grocery bag.
Each time I put any of the board books or picture books through the sorter, I think about how somebody just read this book to their baby. Some kid out there wanted to learn more about how to be a great soccer player. And because I live in a conservative area, my heart is filled with joy every time I come across any book on race or social justice in the book return. Like, I hate people but I also love people. People hold so much possibility and curiosity and potential for good.
As a patron, I have always known the library to be a magical place. But as a worker, I now see the library as a rare treasure that bears a heavy burden for a community. It’s not the same as a retail space or a corporate job, where every individual piece is a part of a capitalist machine.
The library is a building that houses free shit for everybody in the community, that is still somehow clean and respected (for the most part). It has books and storytime activities and computers and water fountains and power strips and copy machines, and you can literally sit there all day; and as long as you’re quiet and not making a mess or harassing others, nobody is going to bother you. There is no other place in this capitalist hellscape where that is allowed.
More than that, imagine you’re a kid being raised in a conservative household, and you’d like to learn something about Buddhism, or your period, or non-binary people, or maybe even what it’s like to live in New York City. You can literally go to the library, find a book on any one of those subjects, spend three hours reading it, and you don’t even have to check the book out or even put the book back on the shelf. You’ve learned something that will never show up in your search history that your parents will never find out about. This is why libraries are so powerful and also in so much danger.
I’ve spent fifteen years working in technologies that have benefited corporations at the expense of people, that have drained vital natural resources, and that have aided the violence of the American empire. This is the first time in my twenty years of working that my labor has contributed to something that actually matters, something that might actually be a net positive in society.
It pays almost nothing compared to my previous salary, so I’ll eventually have to find something else to supplement this, but this is the most engaged I’ve ever been at a job. It’s more physically demanding — I’m standing and walking around all day rather than sitting my ass at a desk — but I’m using far less mental resources on the cognitive dissonance of doing work that’s incongruous with my values.
It’s nice. I may be broke but at least I’m not morally bankrupt.