Stacks & Scandals...

Hello, Hoboken. Let’s talk about the Library.

From the outside, it’s everything a community could dream up: story times that pack the children’s room, smiling staff who deserve medals for patience, and events that make the place feel alive. But step behind that circulation desk, and you’ll find something else entirely, a slow-burning workplace disaster disguised as civic pride. And here’s the plot twist: it’s not the patrons making it hell. It’s “management.”

The irony writes itself: a library capable of organizing the world’s knowledge can’t manage its own people.

So, where does one begin with this comedy of incompetence?

Let’s start with the “internal survey.”

Months ago, the Board of Trustees, bless their belated curiosity, hired a consulting firm to figure out why staff turnover had become a revolving door. They wanted to know why good employees were sprinting for the exits. So, they surveyed current and former staff, hoping for truth.

And what did the survey show?

Well, from the only two pages shared with staff:
• “Between December 2020 and April 2025, 58 full-time and part-time employees left: 30 full-timers and 28 part-timers.”
• “Most staff feel their voices aren’t heard, that management is distant from their concerns, that budgeting, personnel support, and discipline lack transparency, and that basic functions like book processing and tech support need improvement.”

Translation: everything’s broken, and no one’s listening.

Two pages out of an entire report? That’s not transparency, that’s interpretive fog. Which means someone else will have to tell the rest of the story, since leadership won’t.

Let’s also note that the current director has been in charge for nearly that entire time. But we’ll circle back to her in a moment.

Now, about those “basic functions.” Here’s a plot twist even Kafka would reject: the IT department, responsible for servers, printers, and all things digital, is also tasked with processing books. That’s right, your tech team is moonlighting as catalogers. Never in library history has “turn it off and on again” also meant “check MARC records.”

Then there’s the IT manager, the early riser who clocks in at 7:30 a.m., two hours before anyone else. Are those extra hours for “book processing”? If so, why is there still a year-long backlog of unprocessed materials, including Spanish-language titles that never reached the shelves? So what exactly happens during those pre-dawn hours? Hard to say. But the paycheck seems to know. If he’s being paid extra to process books, and they’re still sitting in boxes, that sounds a lot like time theft, doesn’t it?

The Board might want to ask why 60% of library card activity is now online. Maybe it’s because the physical books are still waiting for their grand debut. And before anyone blames supply chains, please. This library has proven it can order books from anywhere when it wants to.

As for the IT team itself, they’re trying. Really trying. But their manager? Managing from afar. Literally. The team’s juggling a packed Makerspace and endless support tickets while their boss directs traffic from a different building, giving orders through a chat app like a ghost with Wi-Fi.

And speaking of ghosts, rumor has it this particular manager shares an office, and a schedule, with a certain HR higher-up. Funny how accountability tends to vanish when your boss is also your dinner date. When HR and IT leadership are that intertwined, it’s not collaboration, it’s camouflage. It’s hard to enforce rules when breaking them would cost you date night.

Oh, and the cameras. Staff say they’re being watched, remotely, from home. Because nothing says “trust” like surveillance footage streaming from your couch. When this was brought to the director’s attention? Silence. The kind you could shelve under Complicity.

Meanwhile, HR and IT’s entanglement festers. Anything he does gets swept neatly under the rug. The IT staff break their backs while their manager keeps hours that don’t match the library’s, parked far from the people he’s supposed to lead. Maybe, instead of hiring more staff, management could try aligning the ones they already have with reality. But what do I know, just a common-sense observer with functioning eyes.

And let’s not forget the rules, which apparently apply only to some people. Did you know not everyone gets a 30-60-90 day review? So, if you did, you might want to ask yourself why you were singled out when others weren’t. Fairness here isn’t a principle, it’s a selective perk.

Now, about the director, or should I say, the politician formerly known as library director. Because when you search her name, that’s what appears, not leadership, but campaign slogans. She’s turned the library into a stage, hiring friends for workshops, using PR firms to polish her face under the guise of “community engagement,” and cozying up to local politicians like she’s auditioning for her next run.

And because this circus always has another act, let’s talk about the Wi-Fi situation.

You’d think a public library’s Wi-Fi program would exist to help community members in need, students without internet, families trying to apply for jobs. You’d be wrong. Apparently, the library has been footing the bill for one of the mayoral candidates’ Wi-Fi. For six months. Yes, the same routers meant for patrons who actually need them are being used to keep a politician connected.

Paid for by the library. Approved by the director.

If taxpayer-funded internet now doubles as campaign support, I guess the rest of us should line up too. Since the library’s covering Wi-Fi bills, make sure you send in your request, apparently all it takes is a little ambition and the right friends.

She’s rarely at the library, too busy collecting lanyards at conferences. When she does appear, it’s like a royal visit. She doesn’t talk with staff, she talks down to them, all polished smiles and “I’m the face of the library” energy. Real communication happens through her executive assistant, that’s not her title, but it might as well be, her personal courier ensuring nothing ever sticks to her if it goes wrong.

Once, when a staff social worker reported being stalked and harassed, the director’s response via email was, “How do I get out of the loop on this?” Compassion clearly wasn’t part of the leadership training, or any of the conferences she loves so dearly.

Meanwhile, the PR firm keeps churning out glossy press about “innovation” and “community impact,” repackaging the staff’s real work as her own brilliance. At the last staff development day, she told everyone that “clarity is kindness.” If that’s true, her kindness must be hiding in the same drawer as that missing survey report.

But let’s be clear: the real library isn’t built by consultants, PR reps, or absentee leaders. It’s held together by the staff who actually show up. The ones who unlock the doors every morning, shelve the books that do get processed, run story time with energy they don’t have, and still manage to treat every patron with patience and warmth. They’re the reason the library still feels like a safe place for the community, even when the inside feels like chaos.

To the staff who stay, who show up despite it all, thank you. You’re the backbone of this place, the reason the lights are still on and the doors still open. The community deserves to know the truth - and they deserve you.