The World's Common Tater

This past weekend was the first weekend I have worked at the barn in nice weather. That meant the duties were far different than what they have been since I’ve started. It also meant I had my first shift as a sidewalker during a lesson. I was doing several jobs I had done only once or not at all.

Let’s compare my experience here with my experience at the job I left.

First MTR:

I was talking to a long-time volunteer Saturday morning as we were walking out to bring horses in from the field. I mentioned it was only the second day of my walking the horses solo. She said I looked like a natural when she saw me walking a horse in as she arrived.

She also gave me a thumbs-up as she walked past me when I was walking in the next horse.

The volunteer coordinator has only met me twice, but still know my name when she arrived and made sure I knew she would be at the arena for my sidewalking shift to introduce me to the people I would be working with.

One of the people I work with consistently is good about reminding me that things I’m still not good at were hard for everyone at the start and sometimes forever.

Once they knew I had driven the Gator they will send me off to drive around the farm solo to do certain tasks.

After my sidewalking shift, the therapist came over to tell me that I had done a good job and picked up on everything quickly.

As compared to the library:

I had over 20 years’ experience when I went to the new branch.

A good chunk of that I spent scheduling the biggest branch in the system.

The manager still treated me like I didn’t know how to schedule a branch and insisted on reviewing the schedule for a while before I could publish it.

During the pandemic scheduling, I did the work but she insisted on publishing it because she didn’t trust me to do it correctly.

Almost everything I did was micro-managed and criticized.

I could not get a promotion no matter how hard I worked.

No one in management cared when I quit because I was just a replaceable cog in the machine.

After less than a month at the barn and still learning how to do many of the tasks I am already treated better and given more positive feedback than I received in 25 years at the library.

One place knows how to treat people properly. Maybe the library should send managers over to learn from them.