Job Article

I work as a circulation clerk for a local suburban library. A common misconception is that a library is a boring place to work, however, it is comparable to that of a company’s customer service. Dealing with the public is not always easy. Unlike the type of business that was described in Richtel’s article, a library is not out to make a profit. It is state funded and municipal taxes pay our salaries. What the article is describing is the means in which companies control their employees to maintain efficiency and accuracy. McDonald’s, for example, uses call centers to maximize profits by sparing no wasted time at the drive up. This is related to what Marx was discussing when the capitalist, driven by profit-making and competition, resorts to maximizing the amount of labor-power that he or she can extract from the worker. At the library, managing time and efficiency are still important but not as strictly regulated. This might be due to the fact that there is no profit involved, however, our library is one of the busiest in our system and the state and library board look at that. We have to be efficient and accurate in order to meet the needs of our patrons. The more people that go to the library more often equals more funding to meet our demands. The library board is also responsible for dividing the tax money into our wages. We receive annual raises which are based off of manager reviews and merit. So there is some incentive to working hard. The management of the library is set up like a hierarchy. Each department has managers, the departments are overseen by the administration and directors, and the administration is overseen by the library board, which is made up of elected officials. This makes employee evaluations even more important. Since the board sets our wages, it might not be eager to dish out money to employees that are not efficient and accurate because they can supply that money for other library programs.

Job Comparison

I have only worked one job in my short life. Thank God the job is almost parallel to the job that Ritchel described in her article. The job that I worked at, as you can tell, was McDonald’s. I was a lobby maintenance worker who worked my way up to a cashier. McDonald’s is one of the most difficult jobs to work at. Everyone from your managers to customers look down upon you, sometimes even co-workers, when you work maintenance as I did. I worked at the McDonald’s at Navy Pier, a huge summer tourist site, which thus made this McDonald’s a seasonal employer. They hired loads of workers for the summer months and laid most workers, or as management called them, “under performers” off. This, like the red box, inspired workers to do as much as they could to show that they were dedicated employees and worthy of keeping after the summer tourist season had ended. Most of the employees were young, as was Ms. Vargas, most got paid minimum wage which was $7.75 at the time of my employment, I later heard that it was raised to $8.00. Like Ritchel’s article, our break time was recorded also. Workers were given a thirty minute lunch break, during that time, they had to punch out of the work clock when there order was being taken and punch in once they were done. We also were being watched every minute to ensure that performance wasn’t slipping and that worker weren’t “stealing from the corporation”. There were cameras everywhere from the lobby to the freezer, our privacy was really invaded. The last thing I want to share is that on Labor Day when most people were fired, it was payday, and in order to extract that last little bit of labor time, management made sure that everyone worked their full shift before they got their check and found out if they were being dismissed or not. True work of a capitalist.