Working For a Living
I work as a tour guide at a history museum. For my own job security, that's all the information I'll give.
'Cause now I'll proceed to give all the shit 'n' dirt about my job. And it'll be ranty and you'll like it. OR ELSE! Gaaah!
I worked at an art museum for all four years in college, and I got good at art show design, hanging art, making labels, and making a museum look nice. When I graduated, I couldn't work at the university museum anymore. Even though my boss really didn't want to let me go, there wasn't anything he could do. For a while I looked around at art museums in the area, but none of them needed a full-time preparator (my job at the old museum). I looked at other jobs, and started to get desperate. It's a pretty bad economy. When I found that the history museum just a couple of miles from my house was hiring tour guides, I sent my resume along with a glowing letter of recommendation from my old boss.
Hey, I could work with kids! For $12 an hour, and full time with benefits, I could definitely do that. Especially when they mentioned that if I went back to school, they'd pay up to $51,000 tuition and/or books. Doesn't get a lot better than that.
It's a great artifact collection. World-class, in fact. Apparently the curator, Kristen had recently revamped the entire museum about one year before my arrival. It certainly looked different from when I'd come on a school tour as a kid. There'd even been a lot done since the last time I'd visited (junior year of college). Things were very nicely organized now. But the labels were very inconsistent-looking (some from the 1960s, some probably from the '80s, and some just a few years old. Surprisingly, there were a lot of spelling errors, mainly in the newer labels.
I asked some of the other tour guides about this. They said they were intimately familiar with the museum's numerous spelling errors. Apparently one tour guide even made a comprehensive list of the errors and presented them to the curator. That didn't go over well. That tour guide eventually got so frustrated that she quit her job several weeks after I arrived.
There are also a lot of bugs in the cases. By the way, just so you know, it's bad to have bugs in the cases in a history museum with lots of priceless ancient artifacts. You're supposed to take them out so they don't produce bacteria and attract more bugs. For a long time the tour guides wrote down where all the bugs were on the safety sweep sheets, which are filled out three times a day. Eventually when the bugs didn't get removed the tour guides just stopped bothering with it. It didn't stop annoying them, though.
Only the curator can open the cases to fix things. There was a label that had fallen and landed upside-down in one of the cases. The kids on the school tours commented on this almost every single day. The tour guides politely brought this up to the curator (and wrote it on their safety sweeps), but once again, no dice.
Many of the numbers next to the objects don't match the descriptions. A lot of visitors complain about this, too.
But the curator doesn't have to hear about it. "Don't tell her about it," the tour guides confided. "She's really sensitive about that stuff. Trust us. Well, I wanted to keep my job and get along with people. So I kept my lip buttoned and kissed some major butt.
If it annoys everyone else, it's kinda excruciating for me, whose job it was specifically to fix these kinds of things at the other museum. "Ya think the curator might let me work on this kind of stuff if I asked her?" I questioned the receptionist, who had plenty of her own beefs with the management. "After all, when I interviewed with her, she was really excited that I had training in just those areas!" She just shook her head at me sadly. "Not gonna happen, dude. Try not to think about it."
I later found out why the labels haven't been remade lately. Apparently PageMaker hasn't been working on the curator's computer, and I.T. hadn't come and fixed it yet. But you can make really nifty-looking labels in Microsoft Word. The only thing that's really important is consistency. And not having typos. But apparently she really LIKED PageMaker, so I wasn't gonna speak my mind.
Lip buttoned. Kiss butt.
I quickly got good at giving kids' tours. There was this other tour guy, an old guy at least in his 60s named Bill. Bill gave great tours, especially for the little kids and the seniors' tours. A couple of months ago, Kristen (the curator) declared that he was "a detriment to the museum." Apparently she felt that he wasn't giving accurate information on his tours. Which is odd, because every time she'd told him what to fix about his gallery talks, he'd always done it, and with a smile to boot. I'd even based all of my talks on his. And by this time Kristen was praising me, saying I was a wonderful guide.
Methinks there was some sort of personal issue here. Bill was banned from giving any talks or tours and was relegated to working in the gift shop. He really needs the job, but he also loves it. All of the tour guides were outraged when this happened. Bill's a really sweet old guy. But no one wanted to lose their own jobs. There wasn't a lot we could do.
The other supervisors are just as bad, in their own ways. Mostly they're about covering their own butts, like we are. Sometimes they get lazy, though, and sometimes they get personal about stuff.
One of the tour guides, Erica, was going back to school for museum studies. She once got curious and asked one of her classmates (who had visited our museum) what she thought of the place -- just to see if she was being oversensitive about all of the technical problems in the museum (after all, she saw the problems every day). Her classmate launched into a lengthy tirade about all the things we've noticed, and a few things we hadn't seen or didn't even notice anymore. But Erica's main problem was with our direct supervisor, Frances. It had gotten to the point where the two of them just avoided each other whenever possible.
Just over two weeks ago, Erica finally gave her two weeks' notice. She had three days left to work, when she arrived at the museum only to be taken aside by Frances and told she could go home and wouldn't have to come back. She was given pay for the time she'd been scheduled to work, which was nice. But she has something like a thirty-mile commute, and Frances easily could have called her to let her know she didn't have to drive all the way down to the museum just to turn around and go home.
Also...we really needed to keep Erica as long as possible because as soon as she left we became grossly understaffed. Two hour-and-a-half tours in one day are about regular for us. Three tours full of noisy kids means your voice starts getting severely strained.
We all now have three-tour days every day until we can get a new tour guide trained.
'Cause now I'll proceed to give all the shit 'n' dirt about my job. And it'll be ranty and you'll like it. OR ELSE! Gaaah!
I worked at an art museum for all four years in college, and I got good at art show design, hanging art, making labels, and making a museum look nice. When I graduated, I couldn't work at the university museum anymore. Even though my boss really didn't want to let me go, there wasn't anything he could do. For a while I looked around at art museums in the area, but none of them needed a full-time preparator (my job at the old museum). I looked at other jobs, and started to get desperate. It's a pretty bad economy. When I found that the history museum just a couple of miles from my house was hiring tour guides, I sent my resume along with a glowing letter of recommendation from my old boss.
Hey, I could work with kids! For $12 an hour, and full time with benefits, I could definitely do that. Especially when they mentioned that if I went back to school, they'd pay up to $51,000 tuition and/or books. Doesn't get a lot better than that.
It's a great artifact collection. World-class, in fact. Apparently the curator, Kristen had recently revamped the entire museum about one year before my arrival. It certainly looked different from when I'd come on a school tour as a kid. There'd even been a lot done since the last time I'd visited (junior year of college). Things were very nicely organized now. But the labels were very inconsistent-looking (some from the 1960s, some probably from the '80s, and some just a few years old. Surprisingly, there were a lot of spelling errors, mainly in the newer labels.
I asked some of the other tour guides about this. They said they were intimately familiar with the museum's numerous spelling errors. Apparently one tour guide even made a comprehensive list of the errors and presented them to the curator. That didn't go over well. That tour guide eventually got so frustrated that she quit her job several weeks after I arrived.
There are also a lot of bugs in the cases. By the way, just so you know, it's bad to have bugs in the cases in a history museum with lots of priceless ancient artifacts. You're supposed to take them out so they don't produce bacteria and attract more bugs. For a long time the tour guides wrote down where all the bugs were on the safety sweep sheets, which are filled out three times a day. Eventually when the bugs didn't get removed the tour guides just stopped bothering with it. It didn't stop annoying them, though.
Only the curator can open the cases to fix things. There was a label that had fallen and landed upside-down in one of the cases. The kids on the school tours commented on this almost every single day. The tour guides politely brought this up to the curator (and wrote it on their safety sweeps), but once again, no dice.
Many of the numbers next to the objects don't match the descriptions. A lot of visitors complain about this, too.
But the curator doesn't have to hear about it. "Don't tell her about it," the tour guides confided. "She's really sensitive about that stuff. Trust us. Well, I wanted to keep my job and get along with people. So I kept my lip buttoned and kissed some major butt.
If it annoys everyone else, it's kinda excruciating for me, whose job it was specifically to fix these kinds of things at the other museum. "Ya think the curator might let me work on this kind of stuff if I asked her?" I questioned the receptionist, who had plenty of her own beefs with the management. "After all, when I interviewed with her, she was really excited that I had training in just those areas!" She just shook her head at me sadly. "Not gonna happen, dude. Try not to think about it."
I later found out why the labels haven't been remade lately. Apparently PageMaker hasn't been working on the curator's computer, and I.T. hadn't come and fixed it yet. But you can make really nifty-looking labels in Microsoft Word. The only thing that's really important is consistency. And not having typos. But apparently she really LIKED PageMaker, so I wasn't gonna speak my mind.
Lip buttoned. Kiss butt.
I quickly got good at giving kids' tours. There was this other tour guy, an old guy at least in his 60s named Bill. Bill gave great tours, especially for the little kids and the seniors' tours. A couple of months ago, Kristen (the curator) declared that he was "a detriment to the museum." Apparently she felt that he wasn't giving accurate information on his tours. Which is odd, because every time she'd told him what to fix about his gallery talks, he'd always done it, and with a smile to boot. I'd even based all of my talks on his. And by this time Kristen was praising me, saying I was a wonderful guide.
Methinks there was some sort of personal issue here. Bill was banned from giving any talks or tours and was relegated to working in the gift shop. He really needs the job, but he also loves it. All of the tour guides were outraged when this happened. Bill's a really sweet old guy. But no one wanted to lose their own jobs. There wasn't a lot we could do.
The other supervisors are just as bad, in their own ways. Mostly they're about covering their own butts, like we are. Sometimes they get lazy, though, and sometimes they get personal about stuff.
One of the tour guides, Erica, was going back to school for museum studies. She once got curious and asked one of her classmates (who had visited our museum) what she thought of the place -- just to see if she was being oversensitive about all of the technical problems in the museum (after all, she saw the problems every day). Her classmate launched into a lengthy tirade about all the things we've noticed, and a few things we hadn't seen or didn't even notice anymore. But Erica's main problem was with our direct supervisor, Frances. It had gotten to the point where the two of them just avoided each other whenever possible.
Just over two weeks ago, Erica finally gave her two weeks' notice. She had three days left to work, when she arrived at the museum only to be taken aside by Frances and told she could go home and wouldn't have to come back. She was given pay for the time she'd been scheduled to work, which was nice. But she has something like a thirty-mile commute, and Frances easily could have called her to let her know she didn't have to drive all the way down to the museum just to turn around and go home.
Also...we really needed to keep Erica as long as possible because as soon as she left we became grossly understaffed. Two hour-and-a-half tours in one day are about regular for us. Three tours full of noisy kids means your voice starts getting severely strained.
We all now have three-tour days every day until we can get a new tour guide trained.