It has been made crystal clear to me that I have no future in my full-time employed post. Sad after nearly 8 years, but I have had enough of fighting and there is no more I can do.
So what’s happened? Weeeeeelllllll… Basically I got it wrong, as ever. Guess I’m too much on the side of fairness and the little people. It all blew up yesterday when I sent an ‘All Staff’ email from a Unison contact advising people they did not have to reveal their strike intentions to management. Simple piece of information I thought, and in the absence of a Unison rep at work, necessary. Ooooooh no! I got called in to see ‘Head Honcho’ pronto and firmly had my wrist slapped! “As you are a manager I expected better” was the basic line, whilst I am thinking how interesting, suits them to call me a Manager now but I am not treated as one and DEFINITELY not paid as one! It was too much after the crappy week I’ve had and I blubbed like a baby, to the point of hyperventilating almost!
I spilled my guts. He now knows my financial woes and that I am retraining, which is something I’ve not even shared with my line manager yet (btw now’t to report there about to go to lesson 3 of my part two driving test training section – doing okay, I think… Test booked for 21st August in Barnsley (!) ). All he could advise was I talk to my line manager. Who took 2 years to get me a response to my pay rise requests (for me and my two assistants) and only got on with it when I threatened to take things higher (it was unsuccessful and she hid behind Council software which out me at the scale I’m already on! Effectively I’ve had a pay cut for 3 years and things are now dire), who has told me I need to start leading lessons in information literacy etc, then I can be ‘considered’ for a rise despite evidence of my attempts to do so for many years! And evidence of successes. Who values not at all the myriad extra-curricular opportunities I put on. Oh the Head even said how much I was valued and that our Primary Headteachers have spoken glowingly about me… whilst saying how he wished he could show emotion so easily and then comparing me to every woman he knows (hmmmm…). Why do I have to blub to hear that? And how are platitudes meant to pay bills?
So I give up. That’s it. If I see out the next academic year I’ll be amazed, though it would be a nice and proper fitting end to everything and I could do all my clubs, competitions, events, activities and lessons for a final time. But can’t see it at the moment. I shall freelance with Debate training I hope, and maybe there would be scope to freelance information literacy in local schools. Otherwise I hope to be a driving instructor for the majority of my working time and start living life to suit me, my family and my friends. 11 years as a qualified and chartered librarian down the pan. There’s no future in it, Doncaster Council destroying our public library service (if you’re on Facebook find the ‘Save Doncaster Libraries’ group) and the Government not making school libraries statutory have made sure of that.
Feel sad now… not good for an optimist… 
