Lunch at Applebees with our Supervisor

Lunch at Applebees with our Supervisor turned out to be a “free for all” when he brought up the subject of Corin (the girl who was to have been using the digitizer that Christina was using to capture all the BDM of the state of Maine).  The day that Corin came to look at the job to see if it was something she might like to do, she was wearing a very short sundress with thin shoulder straps and our room is set at 64degrees and it is so cold that we wear sweaters while in the room.  Both her supervisor and myself said to her that she would need to wear a sweater when she came to work in this room because it is so cold.  Corin is about 20, has tattoos and piercings in her top and bottom lips, nose and eyebrows.  Not one thing was said to her about her strange look, just remarked about the need to wear a sweater.  They had Christina come back and to some training with Corin and tell Corin where she left off with the BDM and how to run the machine to capture the rest of the BDM.  At the end of the training with Christina, Corin told her supervisor, Lorraine, that this was not the job for her and so she left.

Our supervisor had a meeting with David Cheever, head of the Archives, to talk to him about how to get the records of York humidified and prepped ready for digitizing.  Sometime during the conversation it was mentioned that Corin had come in to work but left and that I had said to her that there was a need for a sweater.  Somehow our Supervisor jumbled things together and came up with the conclusion that Corin left because I had said something about her piercings, tattoos and need for a sweater and he got really steamed at me and verbally berated me at Applebees.  This left me gobsmacked to say the least.  In my own defense I reminded him that there is no way anyone can know what prior experiences people have had and that noting that one needed a sweater to work in this room was totally innocuous and not something that could provide grounds for deciding to not take a job.  He did not accept anything I said and then strongly warned me about how I was a missionary for the Church and that my actions reflect badly upon the church.  Now I wonder what kinds of experiences he has had that culminated in this verbally abusive outburst on his part?  What did he bring to the table and how should he have handled his own feelings without injecting them into this situation?  The total effect of his attack left me devastated.  It was mean spirited of him to inject himself into a situation that was totally unconnected to what he does and wrongheaded for him to make the assumptions he did.  The Doctrine and Covenants points out that “it is the nature of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority as they suppose, to exercise unrighteous dominion.”

So, I have been in similar situations before and did nothing about it but this time I decided to take the bit in my mouth and search to see where things went wrong.  However, when I got to work on Thursday, I was in no shape to work.  I had not slept Wednesday night because I was so upset over what our supervisor said and had not slept well even the few nights before due to his manner of “teaching” us how to use the new DCamX that is coming out soon and how he wants 19,600 images per week with these delicate 200+ years old court papers.  Anne took me aside and we talked for quite a while.  She has had dealings with our supervisor before so she went to Mr. Cheever and told him what had happened to me and he said that the subject of Corin had come up but that they had found a new person to take her place.  He told Anne that in no way did he ever intimate that the comment about needing a sweater was the reason Corin had left but our supervisor decided that he needed to ‘teach me a lesson’ and presumably that is why he broached the subject at lunch.

I talked to Lorraine when she came in to see the replacement person for Corin and she told me that in no way did I say anything amiss because she was in the room at the time and also remarked to Corin that she needed to wear something warmer.  She then said that Corin has been written up at other offices where she has worked for inappropriate clothing in the work place and that Corin does not work well with people and only will work if her boyfriend is in the same office room as her and a number of other things that may have impacted the situation and including the fact that Corin would be the only young person in the room and that the work was not suitable for her to do.

I am very sad at the shabby treatment I have received at the hands of our supervisor.  He seems to also have made up his mind that Bill is not doing what should be done.  I guess its measurable outcome over people, that drives our supervisor – so much for the business model.  I wonder how much human wreckage litters the  halls of business establishments due to people in supervisory roles who demand outcome in an effort to make themselves look good in their superior’s eyes?  It is unfortunate that the Evil that men do lives after them, and the good is oft interred with their bones.

At lunch time, Anne and her son came in and took Bill and I to The Great Wall of China buffet for lunch.  It was a much needed band aid for battered volunteer workers.  On the way back to the office, we got stalled in traffic because someone tried to drive a truck under an over pass and got stuck because his load was too high.  So we had to backtrack and go to the office in a different route.  I am eternally grateful to Anne for her friendship and caring.

About 1.30 Jeff came into our room to take us down to the humidifier room to show us how to separate out the papers and start the humidifier and then how to put them out to dry.  The paper we are working with has a high rag content and it absorbs moisture quickly and becomes pliable enough to stretch it out and become workable and not crack or crumble as we set it out on the table to digitize it.

The folders that they traditionally use would cost $17,000 to purchase and use for York County so we are doing some sort of stopgap measure.  The papers will be separated out by acid free typing paper on which is written the names of the people involved, the volume in which they are noted and the court docket number as well as the judicial term, and then inserted in a folder that is limited to that particular court term.  We will use a lot less of these special folders this way.

We have to write on the separating papers in lead pencil because it lasts forever whereas ink pens fade in time.  We know a lot about fading after digitizing many volumes whose pages are fading fast.