You're Here Because You're Considering Employment. Therefore, read this. - Collection Development Coordinator Campbell County Public Library Employee Review

The culture here was one of passive-aggressiveness, much talking and complaining among staff about upper management, and overall low spirits and even lower motivation. It isn't evident at first, but after a while, should you decide to work there, you will feel it. I think even upper management like the branch managers feel it. The problem is the trickle-down effect of the director. He is former military and it shows, and I wasn't the only one who referred to his background when upset with his behavior. At least three staff members shortly after I got there warned me about him. One staff member, who was in HR herself at the time, expressed to me that he made her cry on more than one occasion because of his angry and condescending attitude. I had worked there successfully with branch managers for years. To my knowledge my work was excellent. My reviews were always glowing, and I made many achievements while there. It was immediately after I talked to my supervisor (the director's immediate subordinate) to inform him I was going to be leaving my position several months hence (something I told him many months prior that I was considering) that the director called me to his office with my immediate supervisor AND NO HUMAN RESOURCE present. There, at that meeting, I was treated not only to a side of the director's personality I had only heard about, but also one that was shocking despite what I had heard. It was condescending, hurtful, out-of-line and legally would have presented him and the library with a challenge HAD he had a HR person there. i should have asked for one, but the meeting took me so off-guard. I thought he was going to wish me well; that is how normal the working relationship seemed to be for the years I was there until that point. Instead, he made comments about my personal life and made pejorative comments about my need for therapy, saying that my depression was something I needed to get a "handle on" if I were to continue to work there. He insulted the position itself saying that all I did was "sit around and order books all day." This reflected his own inadequacies as a director for even wishing to pay for such a position if he thought that was the case. He said he didn't "like my attitude" but gave no examples. He called "ridiculous" the fact that I emailed HR about a question concerning how to tabulate holiday hours for one of the employees I supervised, thus insulting my intelligence and vast experience with such matters. He referred to what I considered collaboration with branch managers (and they as well) as inappropriate requests of them and that they "have more important things to do than to placate the needs of my department." To close his "meeting" he told me he didn't have to honor the two-month notice I gave; instead he could fire me then and there and by not doing so he was showing me mercy. He insisted that I was to have no further direct communication with any of my colleagues. Instead I was to only speak to my supervisor who would then relay my communication to the intended party. The director came directly from the military to the field of public libraries. I was told by a few that this is one reason he could act as hot-cold as he did. Without any warning, others said and I learned, he might turn on you and bring up things that you were never advised of before, and which quite frankly seemed to be made up solely to belittle a person. That might work in the military but it had a chilling effect in the public library setting. What happened there was something I had never experienced in my entire working life. I've had managers good and bad and I've worked in workplaces both bad and good. I knew I needed to leave that place and so I attempted to do so with a few months’ notice in order for them to find a replacement I could properly train. In the end, because of the demanded constraints on how I was to conduct my job, I couldn't work there any longer. I was told I was not allowed to mention this meeting to anyone or he would fire me immediately. I couldn't even tell HR. A few days after this I was present at an all managers meeting, and he was there. Without belaboring the details, I will say that in front of everyone (who supposedly did not know anything) he mentioned how easy holiday time was to report even though it could be really confusing for some of us (and he looked right at me). It was so obvious that everyone acted confused, but the HR person knew exactly what he had done, and she turned red and lowered her face. I worked two more weeks, and I left and never returned. I sent HR a letter to arrive the day after my last Friday there. I look back and I am sickened that someone like this man would have ever gone into the field I had been a part of for so long, because people like him only belong in one place: the military. He has no business being there. Perhaps you read this and think I'm just another one of those former employees with a grudge who never did anything productive and complained all the time and so has no real right to make any of these statements. Everything I say is true. I wrote it all down immediately after I stopped crying and shaking from the shock I felt. I tried to pursue it legally, because he truly ventured into some very gray areas by what he said. He outright ridiculed what is legally considered a disability even though i never affected my work. I had nothing but excellent reviews, with accolades for the achievements I had made in such a short time. He didn't have HR present. In short, he was a perfect example of the things any manager should never be. The biggest regret I have about how it all happened is the fact that I couldn't tell any of my former colleagues goodbye, and I had worked closely with many of them, successfully. Nobody ever knew what transpired that day and probably never will. For all I know he talked about it afterward to those who asked and blamed it on my disability that I left without any notice. The only other regret is that I allowed myself to be so taken aback by the sea change in his attitude toward me that I was unable to say what I needed to say, and what I would advise anyone in that situation to say: "I'm sorry, but before I listen to one more word I want someone from Human Resources in here." What he did and said that day was not management. It was belittlement and dictatorial. It has no place in such a workplace.