librarypunk - 077 - Disability and Accommodations feat. Jess Schomberg

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

We're talking about accommodations again!   Jess’s linktree https://linktr.ee/schomj  Media mentioned https://litwinbooks.com/books/beyond-accommodation/  https://works.bepress.com/jessica-schomberg/28/  https://www.sinsinvalid.org/ https://www.uwindsor.ca/wgst/merrickpilling https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-83692-4?sap-outbound-id=DA70FE8AABF69428A26B0BFC99E4CAD1A574A9CE https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-90413-5 https://uncpress.org/book/9781469624891/no-right-to-be-idle/ https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972094 https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/

Oh, did you move his cat tower? No, he's got two cat towers. This is his original one, and we decided it wasn't big enough. And so this one comes up here because he gets sad when he can't sit behind me on the couch when I'm up here on my desk. And so it's up here so he can get right up near me. Yeah. So I got like two hours sleep-ish.

I should be good to work until 2 a.m. Yeah. Hello, I'm Justin. I'm a scholar of communication. Library, my pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they then. I'm Jay. I am a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. Say hi, Arthur.

And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, I am Jess Schaumburg, or Jessica Schaumburg. I am a librarian at Minnesota State University of Mancato, and my pronouns are they them. Welcome. Great to have you. So we are continuing in on our series on disability and accommodations in libraries and at work. And I've been reading your book. I didn't get to finish all of it because I put it off for too long. And so I was reading most of it today.

And then I had to go to sleep because I have to work the overnight shift for finals. So that's what I'll be doing. That's a lot. Yay, academia. It's easy for me to shift my sleep schedule. so I always volunteered to do it, but I don't like hanging out with the cop over night because they keep trying to talk to me. Because they don't have anything to do. I think they've started bringing their cop buddies because the last couple times there have been two cops and they just sit out at one of the little cafe tables.

So keep it busy and not disrupting stuff too much. Yeah, I remember at the University of Illinois when I was in grad school, they got rid of all library security my second year. And so all of the late night and overnight chat reference, which is normally just like, library school students, like sitting in a little cubicle thing until 2 a.m. No longer felt, you know, safe having graduate students do that without library security there. And so that is when chat moved to, like, they let us do it remotely. But then I would fall asleep during chat instead of being like, oh, I'm at a desk and whatnot. So I fell asleep on my chat reference.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dangerous. I didn't add anything for a segment this. week. Let me do a quick check on Reddit just to see. Well, I would like to say I've been listening to your, I just got done listening to your podcast with B from the Death Panel podcast and Health Communism. And my, I have this thing where I give people, other people's names in my head and I keep wanting to call her B. Arthur and I know that it's not right at all. I cannot remember her. That's what I'm going to think. it is now forever though. Sorry. Sorry. It's like I know that's not right, but my brain just like

does that sometimes. But anyway, I was listening to that and that's a really great podcast. I've been enjoying you have had a lot of my favorite people on this podcast or the past couple of years. A lot of our favorite people. We have met a lot of cool people. This is how we make friends. We go, hey, do you want to come on our podcast to talk about something? And now we have, we're friends with people now. Oh, this could be a good one. It's kind of long, though. I'll throw it in the chat just to make it easier,

but I'll see if I can read it as fast as possible. I've got quit my job since I can't get a promotion. I've been working as a part-time library associate for about seven months now, and I just got denied for a third time for a promotion. The position I keep applying for is just a full-time library associate and doesn't require more qualifications to what I already have. I'll say it's more of a leadership position, and they have a slightly more task to do to assist the other librarians.

My first interview was that the branch I worked at and the feedback supervisors gave me was that I needed more experience and to take an initiative to make sure everything in the library is in order. I think she implied that I sit too much. I took the feedback and improved in these areas so I didn't have to be told to check anything. I even assisted with more library club activities and plan my own as well. Okay, you're just doing a librarian's job at this point. Yeah. On my second interview, a different branch, I was told by interviews like me a lot and that I nailed my interview, but they still decided to go to. other direction.

That's not necessarily a reflection on you. That's just somebody. Yeah, they just decided to go with someone else for other reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a reflection on you. Happens everybody. Yeah. My most recent interview about two weeks ago was for the main branch, needless to say, that can get the position, to be honest, I didn't prep for the interview like I probably

should have because I had to schedule it a day after I was notified of it due to me going out of state on the original interview date. The feedback I got was basically I could have done better in the interview, need more experience and relevant work experience? No, you don't. It's library associate. You don't need any more experience than what you've got. You've got way too much. Like, it's great. Yep. I've been thinking about going back to university for a digital media degree so I can work in another industry instead. I guess my main question is, does it seem like I should stick to my job now and try to move up until I go back to university? Or is it better to get a high-paying job? I'm not sure

I'll enjoy as much to save up for university. They're not going to hire you. They're going to give you every reason that they can give you to not hire you and they will never tell you the truth. I, well. It sucks because it's like it sounds like you'd be great at whatever you're going up for. So I have no idea why they're not hiring you. It just must be their other applicants that they feel like, quote, fit, which that's a loaded term, like, put the position more. My observation with stuff like this is there's one person who has enough influence to shape decision-making who doesn't like the poster on a personal level. And that's it.

I had actually, like, this is very well within the realm of my experience when I was working public services because I think I started out as a part-time page. And by the time I got to full-time, I had been working at the same library for, and it's full-time in one position because at one point in time I was working two different positions at two different libraries. But full-time one position at one library, it took me four years. no, maybe not quite that much, maybe closer to three. And I interviewed for the next step-up position seven times before I finally got a position at the branch I was actually in. So some of it, I think, is just perseverance. If you really like the job, maybe stick around longer than seven months. Most of the time, the positions I was interviewing for were at other branches that had other cultures.

So they were most of the time picking people from the branch. that already worked there. They were hiring from in-house, basically, moving them up the ladder. So it was never a surprise to me when I didn't get something at another branch. But, yeah, I don't think, like, one of the top commenters is, like, seven months is not really that long, which I kind of agreeeth, even though it sounds like you're doing a whole lot of stuff and you're doing all of the right, like, this person is doing all of the right things.

But it could very easily just be like, just what you said, there's just one person in the ladder who just doesn't like you and refuses to let you move up for whatever reason, because I saw that happened to a lot of my coworkers and friends, too, who just, no matter what they did, never seems to move up until magically one administrator was out of the way. And suddenly they were doing a great job at everything and were worth, you know? Yeah, like, I would maybe wait to, I mean, as someone who has had awful, terrible administrator people before, I don't think seven months, is quite long enough to jump to that conclusion, unless you have other really good reasons too,

which there might be. But I do agree, like seven months is a little soon, even though it seems like you're doing a lot. I think I would, well, one, those are good points. Two, those are points that a hiring committee could say, and it sounds like that's not what they're saying. Yeah, bad hiring committees. It sounds like this person's doing everything, right?

it's just this library has really bad, like, and maybe not even like on purpose, malicious, just like bad practices on hiring committees. Or it could be like, it would cost them more money and they're getting so much work out of this person already. Why pay them more? Oh, if you just do more and you get more experience and you take more initiative doing this, oh, oops, we're not going to give you a promotion. Just keep doing more things.

Then you'll get it eventually. I think I'm glad that Sadie is here because I'm pretty sure Jay and I could ride the Sinicism train for a couple hours. A bit. And also, I've never worked in public libraries. I've only ever been in academic libraries where I feel like that sort of promotion culture is different. At least I've only ever,

my current position is my only time not being in a faculty role. And so it's like, wait, I can ask for merit raises now. Like, that was not something I could ever do as a faculty, right? So this is a culture. that is foreign to me.

Yeah, all of this sounds very familiar to me. Like, interviewing at a different branch, told you nailed it, but that they decided to go in a different direction had that happened to me multiple times. The most recent one, the thing that gets me about it is being told that you need more relevant work experience.

The thing that gets me about that description is that they say main branch. So if you're working at a small to medium library for seven months, the pace is going to be very, very different if it's the largest library in that system. Because when I was working two different positions at two different libraries, I was working technically the same position, technically the same job title.

But at the small library I was working at, I had so much downtime that they actually didn't know what to do with me because I had started doing the same position at the largest branch in the system. So I was used to doing so many things that at the small, branch were like just were more clear cut. It was like I was there to shelf books and then a person was there to work the desk. Yeah. When at the bigger branch, it was like I was there to shelf books. I was there to check them in. I was there to back up the desk if they got busy. I was there to, you know, help set up events if there was an event going on. You know, it was just so I don't know.

I would say keep doing like they should keep doing what they're doing and maybe try again at a bigger branch later, like continue trying at a bigger branch because that might, that pace might work better. But I can see not having enough relevant experience in seven months to work at a much larger branch with much more, like maybe more expansive responsibilities. So, yeah. Yeah. That's hard to get that experience if you're in a job that is very tightly defined. Yeah. Yeah. We had a lot of, a lot of people who worked like substitute positions at other branches, who were part-time. And that had its own weird politics because, you know, who gets called and what are you getting paid for and that kind of thing. But yeah. Yeah, my first library job was actually

in a public library and relevant to the discussion we'll probably have today. one of the librarians wanted to fire me because I had diabetes. So I think I come by my cynicism honestly there. Yeah, a couple of the people that I worked with when I was working public service who never seemed to be able to get up, who never seemed to be able to get promotions either had some sort of like more obvious disability or quite frankly they were fat. And it was very obvious fat phobia. Like you can't.

you're not fast enough even though, you know, objectively, yes, they were. So a lot of factors in there. Yeah, like, honestly, the whole, like, one of the most bullshit things about any sort of, quote, like, service industry is that whole, like, well, the image you put forward has to meet with our standards. And that lets you get away with so much in discrimination that you wouldn't maybe be able to get away with another sector. It sucks. It should not be that way. Yeah. The thing it's getting me is that they're not really going up for promotion. They're going for part time to full time.

And so it's like it is the same job. And libraries, it just sounds like their library is relying on too many part timers and not filling their full timers. I think part of it is probably because it's only seven months. Yeah. And someone doesn't like them that much and isn't sure if they want to go with them full time. I think it's a mixture of those things. Because if you've already got someone and you like them, why wouldn't you just throw them into the next full-time position you've got?

So, yeah, it might be time to look at something else. But that was Ask Reddit. Callant threw another book away recently. Yeah, I saw that there was backlash, but I didn't look into it. Yeah, it was an Elon Musk book. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Good for her.

Good for her. So, just you want to tell us about your book that I read as much as I could of before I had to fall asleep today, even though I've had like three months to read it. Yeah, sure. I will. So I used to work retail, and one thing I learned from that job is that I am very bad at sales. And over the years, I have not really gotten better. So I will try to tell you what my book is about in a good way. And please ask questions because that's usually where the best answers come from.

But this is a book called Beyond Accommodation, Creating an Inclusive Workplace for Disabled Library Workers. And it's co-written with Wendy Heibi, who just recently retired from an academic library job in Colorado. And Wendy talks about her experiences living and working with disability that it's weird to say that you acquire Parkinson's, but it's kind of like, it manifests itself later in life based on genetics, possibly environmental factors. I think it's not fully known exactly how all of the creative, or not creative, all the things that make it so. And we talked about as we were discussing what we wanted to write, we talked about how neither of us really feel like the accommodation process as a process works really.

and neither one of us really trust the process enough to pursue it. She had talked with a HR person. I have since the book started. Yay, pandemic life prompting me to make that decision finally. And like I said, I still do not have an accommodation and I have not pursued one after talking with HR. And we can get into that a little bit more later. So what we wanted to write was we wanted to write about disability as, a creative experience. It's working through the world, living in a world that's at best

indifferent to your existence. If you want to survive it, you have to get a little creative. And Wendy is also a poet, and she really approached this with a level of optimism and creativity that I really admire. As you may have noticed already, I am a little cynical, So that was not my approach and my part of writing this. But we really tried to write about sort of what disability means, what it could mean, how we can reshape workplaces to intentionally design for a diversity of body minds, bodies, minds, bodies, minds, movements, beings in library work. And how we have to really sort of, I don't know,

one thing I have learned since writing this book that I would like if we could go back in time two years I would put in this is see I'm really bad at sales I'm bad at selling things this is what I would change about it is and I think Wendy is really the spirit that brought us in is that we also have to love each other as we're doing this as fellow human beings in a world that's unnecessarily hostile to humans like it doesn't need to be this way and Jay I saw you have the chat about disability being creative. Did I mishear you? No. Because I was going through notes, and I thought I misheard you. Okay. No, that's, like, if you,

I wish I had some good examples off the top of my head. That was like the whole body mind thing. I'm like, I see Justin has notes, but I'm like, I'm going to jump in whenever I can. And Justin, I know that you wanted to talk.

Maybe what you want to talk is related to this. Yeah, I was going to say that the book is very optimistic, and it's very practical. And I enjoy that. It's very, if this is like your first introduction to disability, activism and language, it might be, it's great. If you are already well on your way, some of it might be a little introductory for you. But along the way, it's very much like, I was getting kind of flashbacks to library school in some of the books they would give us where you're like, how to win friends and influence people.

Like, very practical kind of like, here's why we're talking to you about this. Here's why we're telling you to yes and people. So it is very optimistic as a book in it. So that really comes through in again and again. Yeah, I know that's a lot. That's Wendy, that the yes end is very much Wendy. She's got something of an improv background or at least enjoys improv. And that's a little bit of where her creativity comes in.

Because she's very alert to people and how they work. And if I'm annoyed by somebody, I'm just like, whatever, you're annoyed. I'm not going to think about you anymore. And Wendy's like, hmm, you're annoying me. You're annoying me in this really specific way that I'm going to give a name to. And it's always a really funny and clever name. And it's a coping skill, but it's also, it's relatable if you have experienced it. Because it also creates room for bonding and rapport development.

If you have also experienced the kind of specific ableism that the name talks about. I, of course, cannot remember them off the top of my head. They are detailed in the book. But it was just like as I was reading them when I was reading her drafts as we were co-writing, it was just like, you know, she has Parkinson's. I have a weird mix of different stuff, but we have the same experiences with ableism and with people making assumptions or not recognizing that we're really fully human beings who are there and have different needs than somebody else's needs. and that's just fine, honestly. It's just fine. And the creativity comes through in how we survive that.

Wendy's creativity is in wordplay and poetry and naming things in ways that are both funny and resonant. And my creativity comes through more in terms of strategizing and problem solving and trying to build networks. But there's also other people who, like, since and valid, is a, if you don't know who they are, it's sins, like you're committing a sin against somebody and invalid, like you are invalid or perhaps you are an invalid. And sins invalid is a performing arts company based in San Francisco that is disabled performing artists, telling stories through

performance. And it's just like really creative and really just, just, just that mix of arts and theory. They are, if you've heard about the 10 principles of disability justice, it came out of that movement. And it's just, I don't know, that's as much as I have to say, I think, right now on that topic. I definitely saw a lot of myself in the arts where it was talking about yes-ending and naturally trying to build individual relationships because that's just something I've had to learn to do. It's not something I do naturally.

But it's a skill. Anyone can learn it. I'm an extremely introverted person. I've learned how to do it. You can too. And a lot of that did. There was something very specific, Wendy said, which was, it felt manipulative when I first learned it.

I think that's a common thing. Introverts feel it's like, well, I'm just trying to manipulate people. It's like, no, you're meeting them where you're at. You're creating a meeting where we're at was something I was trying to avoid saying. But you are continuing the conversation and you're using it to basically go, anytime I see an opening, I'm going to educate you about this issue. And that's what I have to do with like Scalcom work is like whenever I see an opening, I just shoot in for it.

And you can do the same thing with disability and keep an eye for openings and just go, oh yeah, that reminds me of this and you bring it in. And you can do that all the time. And it's a pretty good skill, but it's, it takes a little while to learn. You bring up like different disablement theories and models. I'm just going to like speed run through them. So moral, which is kind of the older one, like if you send. Your blood is broken, unclean.

That's why you are disabled. Disabilities of punishment. You kind of see this in the Bible. Your sins go away. Your blindness go away in the New Testament. Medical, so you, something is physically wrong with you, materially, wrong with you. We can fix it. We're not even really looking at you as a person.

Like there's an imbalance of chemicals in your brain. You broke something. You have an imputation. Rehabilitation, which you mentioned is particular after veterans of World War II, getting people back into the economy. basically. So this is something we see with the ADA, especially is, I mean, the ADA came at a specific Reaganite point. So if you don't listen to Death Panel, do it because there's going to be a lot of stuff, I think we're going to have to refer back to. But ADA came in at a specific

Reaganite point to get people off of welfare and government assistance and into these precarious positions. But that's on the rehabilitative model. Social, so the minority model, understanding disability as an oppressed minority that has worked and not worked. Again, like the advocacy and disability advocacy can be very conservative. If there's not a whole lot of class consciousness, it can be pretty reactionary. Not on purpose. It just lacks the analysis that it needs. Impairment and disability are separated. So impairment is sort of like the biological process that's happening and disability as a social process is happening. And again, I think we could probably dig into that even deeper once you get to critical. But like even impairment, what counts is

impairment? Why do we call it impairment? Why is this even a, like, it's sort of the thing of like, why is autism a problem? Well, it wouldn't be a problem if the world was designed for autistic people. So there's a biological component, but, you know, much with sex and gender, we find out, oh, these things are also constructed and their words that we used to describe a set series of things. And critical, which I didn't have any particular notes on, but It's a more holistic and reflective and radical approach to challenging norms. Do they miss any? I know that there was accommodations framework thrown in that section of the book, too.

You know, you give a bunch of academics something to study. They're going to come up with a bunch of different terms and theories. So what you just ran over was a real nutshell version of some of the, I think at this point, dozens I've seen. So yeah, but Jay, you wanted to say something. Yeah. But also I would say like, especially with more like mental health concerns, there's also like a very growing, very like anarchist like mad liberation and anti-psychiatry movement that I won't

say is anti-recovery, but more like the person defining for themselves how they want feel and what they want to be doing and why is this a problem as opposed to what the outside does about it. Yeah, a lot of, um, which is something I've been getting a bit into lately. Yeah, no, no, Madness Studies is really cool. And, um, I think if you're going to dig into that realm, so at Merrick Pilling, I think is the first person to come to mind. Merrick Pilling is a woman and gender studies professor at the University of Windsor. He talks about disability, madness, race, sexuality, and gender. And I don't remember what pronouns Dr. Pilling uses, and I'm not going to guess.

I'll just say Dr. Pilling. It's M-E-R-R-I-C-K-P-I-L-L-I-N-G. But that's a good place to start. I think there's a few other people I can think of. But Dr. Pilling is the first name to come to mind, specifically related to madness studies. But one thing about what I will say to me are the newer models. And then that's just in terms of my learning about them. Because I grew up with the medical and rehabilitation model without knowing that that's what they were called.

And also with the moral model without knowing that that's what it was called. And then I learned about the social model. and pooh, this whole world exploded. And one of the more recent, relatively recent in my lifetime to me, ways of talking about it are the critical disability model or the disability justice model, the madness model. A lot of what they are doing is kind of redefining what the center is and where the center is, and maybe there needs to be more than one center.

And how is it that Bell Hooks puts it, racial, capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist society, what is currently defined as the norm, kind of like what Justin was saying earlier, what is the norm? What is the norm? What is the norm that we're basing things around? Should there only be one norm? And that's what a lot of these newer models of disability got to. And it kind of goes back to what Sadie was saying towards the beginning of this conversation about witnessing discrimination in hiring and promotion in libraries based on disability and also badness.

That, again, it goes to what is considered the norm and the center and the ideal that people should aspire to. And that's one of the things that we talk about in the book as really wanting to, I hesitate to use the word disrupt because of how it has been used in certain fields. to kind of help us look at things a little bit differently without a single center and without such a narrowly defined center that just effectively shuts people out of living full lives or living at all. So I will stop there and move the cat that is right in front of me. Oh, that really picked up in the mic. good.

This is, yeah. She always has things to say. And we are going to sit down and listen. Mechanistic and interchangeable workers

as modernity encroached on work lives. That was the way you put it. That was a way I was taking my notes while laying on the

couch. But basically as I was talking about on the Borges episode, modernity is anything that changes our

lives around the factory. So anything that changes our work relationships, our disability relationships, our personal relationships, that all starts using the logic of the factory.

And that also meant that people who normally would work in, and there's also a big shift of labor in the home to in the factory. And so working from home used to be the norm because you worked in a home, you were connected to the land, you worked where you lived. And so if you could only work doing a certain amount of things because you couldn't move very well, you were assigned different types of work much in the same way that housework is still more or less assigned in our homes. Although I imagine a lot of that is also more modernized as we have a series of app-based servants that we use to call and clean and pets it and take care of our elderly. And so it turns the home into a factory rather than the home into a workplace. I just went down a dark path

there. I don't want to think about that for a moment. It also creates distance between the people who are creating the things that are cleaning our home and ourselves. So we can, it's just easier for us to ignore the suffering that's gone into the mining and manufacturing process. It's a whole different realm of disability studies related to that sort of thing too. Yeah. Oh, Justin. I did not remember which podcast, but I feel like in one podcast of one of the Labyrinth punk podcast, you were talking about your interest in 19th century labor studies. Yeah, that was what I did my master's thesis on. I'll put it in the document, but this book, I'm guessing, was originally a dissertation,

turned into a university press book called No Right to Be Idol, the Invention of Disability 1840s to 1930s by Sarah Rose. And it is a really, really cool, really deeply academic investigation into the creation of what it means to be disabled, who is considered disabled and how disabled people are treated. And really links that to how disabled people started being incarcerated and separated out of the general population of humans during the industrial period and put to. work and made useful. And it's just, I don't know, as I was listening to you talk about that, and whichever episode it was, I was like, I need to share this with you because it seemed like it might be your jam.

Yeah, I think it was probably health communism. We talked a little bit about, it's 19th centuries a little bit later than what I studied. But yeah, I think that was the same episode I brought up something that kind of actually comes up in your book, which is when people were indented and got pregnant, their pregnancy would cause the loss of one or two months of labor, that can be then added by the court back onto your work. And we still have this fear that if we have to take an hour from our work to lie down because of a chronic illness or an ongoing illness, that we have to then make that up at home, do the 9 p.m. shift, do making up the work in some other way, even though you are

working at your capacity. And it's also really hard to manage productivity, which is something that comes up, the efficiency and productivity as the end of labor is also an invention of the factory logic, that efficiency and productivity are the whole sum, and maximizing those is the only important thing in the workplace. And the moment you stop thinking about those is, one, even how do we define them? Productivity is a real weird word, especially in a lot of modern jobs. when you're not just making widgets, which productivity then just means output. But if you're talking about what is productive, yeah, what does that mean?

When I think about the productivity itself as the end goal, it really ties in my mind to Caitlin Rosenthal has a book called Accounting for Slavery. And it really talks about how the modern management logics are and were created, through slavery, through the deliberate exploitation and control of people. And that sort of goes along with why employers will say no to really cheap and easy accommodations if it gives the employee more autonomy in the workplace or more control or reduces the idea that the employer and the manager have full control over what the employee does at work. And for some jobs at home and their personal lives and their social media activities,

it's all the logic of control, compliance, and exploitation. And I don't know, to me, that's just like a clear, like, as soon as I read that book, I was like, oh, yes, this is exactly why cheap accommodations. like flexible working hours when it wouldn't disrupt anybody else, why it's not allowed? Because if you feel like you've got too much power in the workplace, you'll start asking for more, or at least that's the fear. Yeah, you made a point that physical adaptation,

physical accommodation of the workspace is more likely to be granted rather than social accommodations. You want to go into that? So physical accommodations, they still visibly signal that there's an abnormality. The person who gets the physical accommodation often is visibly disabled in a way that's clearly legible and marks them as abnormal, but also marks them as abnormal as a minority status, not as our whole idea of what normal is should be questioned.

and also the physical accommodations, the way that they are granted is based on individual need, and again, not based on recognizing that we need to reconsider who it is, who should be considered for employment, and how employment should work. So it doesn't really change the logic behind things. It does, however, occasionally act as kind of a release valve or a challenge. like, oh, things seem so horrible. We can see over there, this one person is getting the accommodation they need. So we can point to that as our one example of a person who is disabled, who is here and is successful,

and that means that we're good. We as employers, we're good. Often that one person will be white, that one person will be cisgender, that one person, quite likely will be married to someone who is read as a heterosexual partner. And it fits all those other norms. You can have just a real narrow, narrow variation on what's considered normal, even in this like, hey, look, we're being inclusive for a press release.

That doesn't change anything, but makes it so that we can pretend that we're being generous. like you're allowed one deviation and that's it if you have any more than that. Yeah. I guess I checked in my card with being like an outtrans person and I got fucked for everything else, I guess. And that's actually something that came in through the interviews because we, Wendy and I, my goodness cat, Wendy and I are both white middle class working at academic libraries. So we deliberately tried to get some people who had different life experiences than our own to provide some insight within the book. And yeah, that's a thing that came up, especially in the interviews with the queer people of color that they could be public about one, maybe two things. But once you start getting at three, queer person of color and disabled, no, you just lose all legitimacy.

in the eyes of the power system maintainers. I don't, it's hard to like use language to describe people at the system-wide level as, but yeah, there's a, the sense that you're no longer a trustworthy authority on your own experiences once you deviate too much. You mentioned like the difference between informal culture and policy and that there's a lot of problems when there's too much disparity between the way people are operating their informal culture and then the way that they're actually trying to do their policies. So if you have policy around accommodations or you don't have those, if there's a

misalignment there, it creates a lot of tension. Yes. I remember that section. Let me remember what was in that section. What I remember from that section was that when you have policies are inconsistently applied. Again, the people that they tend to favor tend to be the people in dominant groups, which reproduces the patterns of discrimination that I think we're all pretty aware of within librarianship. It also is, say, you have a policy that says people can request accommodations for the specific thing with a certain documentation. That might be a written policy, and you might have a supervisor who says, all right, well, you need to jump through this hoop.

You've done that? All right, now you need to jump through this hoop. Oh, I don't trust this paperwork. You need to see a different doctor. Oh, no, I don't trust this doctor either. You need to do this. Oh, now you're suing me. Okay.

Oh, now you've won. One of the very few cases of, like, most people lose these disability discrimination suits. But even if you win, and JJ Pionke shares his experience with that, in an article that we cite, but he goes much more in depth. And I cannot remember the title off the top of my head. But we can put that in the notes section, because I am a walking book list, apparently.

But JJ shares his experience of going through the process being denied and disbelieved and having people share his personal medical information inappropriately. And so he sues and the court says, okay, yeah, this is, you need to provide this accommodation. And then the university where he works doesn't. So then he needs to sue again to have it upheld. And it's like what is written is not being implemented. Also is incredibly burdensome on people.

But also when people don't have the policies documented so they don't even know where to start, it also creates a whole different set of burdens. Like ideally, ideally in a world where we accept that the less than ideal, ADA is there and continues to be there. That's a whole different conversation. But ideally, if people are going to follow what is stated in the ADA, they will publicly disclose policies and implement it with belief in people that they are supervising who are requesting accommodation. That's sort of the ideal scenario where you have a discussion between people following clearly agreed parameters that are set up in public beforehand.

nobody should be surprised by the process and nobody should be automatically disbelieved or labeled a faker or labeled a troublemaker or told that they don't fit. I don't know if that answered your question. Okay. Yeah. No, I think we saw a lot of this going back to the social accommodation being less likely to be implemented. We saw this a lot as the back-to-office pushback started, which started almost immediately, really, but that this could not be an ADA. accommodation. It just category could not be because that would be too many people could work from home even though their jobs are email. Their job is email. Sometimes your job is Excel too,

but your job is mostly email. Your job is beep poop. And you can do beep boop at home. But if you do beep boop at home, I can't surveil you as easily and I can't control you as easily. Even if you're in an office by yourself and no one interacts with you while you're on campus doing the beat boots. Still. Yep. Your butt is in that seat and that's what matters. Yes, apparently.

Yeah, so it could never be an ADA accommodation because that would immediately spiral into, well, out of the control of the whole organization, not just like the library, but your whole city government, your whole university system would immediately lose all control to be like, oh, we could reimagine the workspace. We're not going to, but we could do it. And that possibility was just too. much. And I'm sure people have said, and I can't think of anybody to cite offhand for this, but I think that's why a lot of the way the CDC has documented what COVID does and does not

do, has been done deliberately to make it harder for people to get accommodations. Like, fear of COVID if you are at risk, well, that's not really an accommodation need. Fear is not something that we accommodate because of course the pandemic is over so you're unreasonable to have that fear so no accommodations for you and by the way you can't bring in your your own air filter because that's an OSHA violation and also like I remember at a certain point I'm not sure where this stands right now but whether long COVID would be considered a medical diagnosis that would be covered under the ADA well that's it's political that's another political decision. The testing or not testing. I mean, I don't know if, Sadie, did you have to do

public host COVID testing in the public library where you worked? Are you asking if I had to test? Yeah, because I know some public libraries were mandated by their cities or other bodies to be the COVID testing center for their communities. I'm not sure if that. we, the library was working at during 2020 and 2021, we gave out test kits, but we were not the place to come to have tests done or reported or anything like that. And that was a pretty strong push from the library workers in general. There were a lot of concerns about, you know, even just handing out, you know, here you can have this many,

home tests, you know, it's like, well, what if people try to bring them back or what if people think they need to report it here? And, you know, and thankfully, I feel like the library I was working at at the time, I can't really speak to the one I'm working at now because I wasn't here for it, but was actually handled COVID and the whole pandemic thing so much better than I saw a lot of other libraries do or heard, you know, from horror stories from, you know, people across the country. but there still was a lot of people who were generally concerned with how things were going to turn out. So it was like some of it was logistical, like even if we could purchase masks for everybody as we started to open back up, like all of your staff, like there just wasn't any available to purchase. So, you know, it was like you have to go talk to somebody, you know, ask somebody in HR and they'll be able to give you a couple of masks.

But you had to go ask for it kind of thing. and that means you have to be on the premise to go get it. And, you know, so even, even though they, I think they handled it to the absolute best, like the administration handled it to the absolute best of their ability. And library workers, the library workers advocated for themselves pretty heavily. There's still that sort of, like sort of impossibility just because of other factors about the pandemic, like supply chain, that threw us back on so many major projects, which then caused, more money, which means we have less money for, you know, and all of that kind of thing.

So it was just, even under ideal circumstances, it still wasn't great for everybody in the long term. And it was a very small county that didn't have as big of a wave as our surrounding areas did, especially during the beginning of the pandemic. I'm in Western Washington, and it hit Seattle and the area I'm in now very hard, very fast. and the place I was living was much more rural and quite frankly was a great place to write out a pandemic because it just didn't get out there very fast. So did that answer your question? Was that kind of where you were? Yeah.

Yeah, I was just kind of curious because I know the burden of responding to the pandemic fell in some weird areas. Probably it still continues to fall in some weird areas. Yeah, going back to accommodations and particularly disclosure, you bring up various types of disclosure and various times of disclosure and various strategies for disclosing, how much to disclose and when to disclose it. All things that disabled people will figure out on their own, like, what their level is. So, for instance, I recently interviewed for a job and said, look, I have a disability, but I'm not going to do accommodations because I don't see any world in which that can only ever be used against me. It could never be used in a positive way. Like, Justin did great because he's accommodations in his yearly evaluation. Like, no, Justin didn't do his accommodations right.

So it can only ever be used against me. Jay knows because it's exactly what happened to him. And that's why I will never do accommodations, basically. is there's no way it could ever be seen as a positive for me. It can only ever be used to discipline me. And so I said, I just want a flexible work schedule. And they're like, well, we do a three, two for everybody. I'm like, well, I want a flexible work schedule.

I'm negotiating here. You haven't hired me yet. Like, are you going to give me a flexible work schedule? And I just got like, no, we do a three, we do a three, two. I'm like, but I want a flexible work schedule. So I wasn't taking the job interview super seriously because I, it, was just one I needed experience interviewing at this level. I didn't really want that job in particular, but I needed experience doing that.

So I really got, you know, confident about it because I kind of knew I wasn't going to get the job. So it was good experience to see how someone would respond to me asserting that. Yeah, like I literally have not had to do, like even think about doing anything with ADA at my new position because of how flexible. my workplaces around me like maybe needing to like work from home at the very last minute because I woke up and had the agonies and the ailments right

like I have I have said that in front of my supervisor in HR before like I have not had to do accommodations because of you actually treating me like a human being and being understanding it's that fucking simple people it really is

yeah that's kind of been my experience too with the job that I just started about six months ago. It was like right out of the gate. I've never asked for accommodations for the ADHD because like I've been able to be flexible enough and had other various things where I haven't had to. And in the new position, it was like, I was being asked how do I work? Like, how was it phrased? How to best work with me was the phrasing? And I thought that was a really good way. I actually pretty much used it as a, these are the accommodations I'll be taking for myself.

Like, you know, I will occasionally need to get up and walk around the building away from my desk because I can't sit still for very long. I do have, like, I tend to fidget so or doodle. So I'm not actually not paying attention during meetings. I promise this actually helps me. Same thing with wearing headphones and listening to music. And, you know, and I found it's like, especially with things like ADHD, it's like, it's if you take, if you manage to take. out the pathologic element of it and just state the need. People are like, oh yeah, I know people who do that all the time. Like, well, you know, they probably have ADHD and just haven't told you

because they don't trust you. And, you know, and then even being able to know what you need is kind of a privilege to begin with because you have to be able to be in a situation where you can control your circumstances to be able to figure out what you need. So, yeah, pretty much the same, I really love my new job. And a lot of that is just because everybody is really flexible and really great about that kind of thing without actually having to be like, I have to talk to HR about this and get this in line. Yeah, like I knew I was in a good place when my supervisor told me that he had problems with executive dysfunction. So I was like, oh, you get it, my dude. Okay.

I can be open with you. I'm going to try saying I have the agonies to my boss. one of these days. The agonies and the ailments. That's my new thing now, is the agonies and the ailments. Yeah, I think for me, so I'm on the older side of things, possibly,

I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion that my first public library job, somebody tried to have me fired because I was diabetic. And the ADA had passed, but the ADA did not explicitly protect, people with diabetes from discrimination. It was like, that was the overt, that was like the literal, like, thing this person said. Jessica has diabetes.

I don't think it's a good place for working. So, it wasn't until 2008, about 10 years after I started library school. I'd been in the field for almost a decade at that point, and that's when the ADA explicitly protected. People with diabetes prior to that court decisions had basically said that, like, if you are a diabetic and you are on insulin and that is keeping you alive, you are no longer disabled. So you don't get accommodations because you're no longer disabled, which, yeah, for anybody listening, Jay's face is telling a whole story right now. It's like a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. So for me, for accommodations, it was

Like, I wouldn't have, well, I didn't pursue them, so I'm not sure, but I probably would not have been eligible for any of them because of the way that the courts had limited how the ADA was to be implemented until the 2008 Amendments Act, which may have gone into effect in 2009, the years sometimes for those things confused my brain. And so it wasn't really even a factor of should I disclose. It's like, no. There's literally no benefit to disclosing at any point. And so for me to do it now, it's because of like post-COVID, things are becoming a little more restrictive in ways than, like, more restrictive than they were before COVID, which is an interesting thing. And in my organization, I work in a unionized environment. And the librarians that I work with made a departmental policy saying, like, if you do not need to be on campus to provide an on-campus related function, you can do your work elsewhere. It is fine.

That is part of our departmental guidelines. and that sort of, and Justin I noticed you had double loop learning on the question sheet, and that's sort of an example of a double loop learning, where a single loop would be like, we're going to make it possible for one person to do this thing one by one by one, but instead a double loop learning is you're not just like making something more accessible for somebody, you're also changing the culture of the workplace. and this decision to document.

And it works with our employment contract too. So it was not our boss's favorite thing, but also there was, you pick your battles. And this would have been a hard battle for either one of us to win, I think. So we're not fighting a battle, and I'm really happy about that. There's enough hard stuff going on. But we were able to document as part of how our department works. That only covers people in my bargaining unit, though. so there are others in my library who have different unions who are covered by different rules,

and I've got to say that sucks in different ways. Yeah, I don't even know what to say about that other than it really sucks that because I'm a librarian and hired in a librarian role, I have more autonomy than library staff do, even if library staff also are working on their excels from home. They should be able to do that. and yet they cannot because of union restrictions. Yeah, in my position, because I have a relatively small team, it's sort of I have never asked, so I haven't been told no in terms of like letting

my graduate assistants work from home and letting interns work from home. Because I was never told they couldn't. And they don't have a contract for me to point to. We all serve at the pleasure of the university president or whatever the language is. I don't have any contract at all. I mean, even my last job was not unionized. I at least had a contract to point two. Now I've got basically an acceptance letter I got four years ago, and that's it.

And so, you know, they don't tell me what I can and can't do. Then I'll just do what I think is fine. But I do know that, you know, as much as I'm allowed to be flexible, I do know that my boss is reducing the work at home flexibility for another department because he's worried about their performance. and hasn't been able to really get an effective manager in there. And it's like, well, I think it's probably a different way than just making them all come on campus all the time. I think you don't have the time to manage them effectively.

And I think that's also probably part of the whole fear of working remotely as people in academia in general, I think, are sort of a conflict diverse. They don't want to be like, okay, I've got expectations. You've got to meet them. This is the part of your job. You don't have to be on campus to do it. But like, I've got to confront you because you're like not getting anything done or whatever, that sort of thing. But that can happen on campus or off campus. It's not really a problem.

And most of the time, it's something like simple. Like I had a student worker who wasn't getting a whole lot done. I said, hey, what's going on? They're like, oh, I just can't focus on these trans. Like, they were working on like transcribing something. And they're like, I've never done this before. And for some reason, it's not clicking. I'm like, okay, we'll just do another project.

We'll just skip to another project. And so you can get some other stuff done. This is not the biggest end of the world thing. We'll just have you work on something else. And someone else on the team will take over the transcripting thing because it's like, you weren't hired to do transcripts all day. So it's not like a deal breaker. That's kind of the thing. Whenever someone's hitting a brick wall, I'm like, hey, why don't we just try shifting it up for a minute?

So for my student workers, I've always got them, I've always got them doing two projects at a time at least so that if they hit a wall on one, they go to the other. If they're hitting a wall on both, okay, we're going to talk and see like what's going on. And I'm going to try some other stuff with like sprint methodology in the spring to like, wrap things up. And basically it's sort of what I've always done. I learned this, I had my first intern, like, volunteer thing. I was, I was interning with one of the, the archivist at my undergrad, who was a nun. And so Sister Dorothy, and she just every beginning of the day would start, I would go in, we would talk in her office. And that's basically like a stand-up meeting. So we would talk, here's what I'm going to work on for the day,

go work on it for the day. Worked great. And I've done that extremely effectively in lots of situations to onboard people. Like the first three weeks or so, we're just going to meet every day. And it's just, you know, as short as it needs to be, could be five minutes, could be 30 minutes, depends on what you need. But with that double loop learning, you were saying there's also an opportunity to have the organization teach people about disability more. Have you seen that, like, effectively done where professional development kind of gets wrapped into changing the culture?

like how did that whole process start? Did it start from the bottom? Was there already sympathetic people at the top? Because I'm a little pessimistic about, could I push that stone up the hill and not have it roll back down on me if I wanted to do something like that? So I would say, so I will only talk about my institution because that's what I know best.

I'm trying to remember timelines here. So one thing is, that I really, really appreciate about my current library is that the people there, like, I cannot think of a single exception of people who are currently employed at my library, who, like, everybody is really focused on service, has a real strong service mentality. And that's why they were higher. So, you know, it's not too surprising. But serving students and helping students learn, grow, and be successful,

that's really the binding force at my institution. And so going back to our talk of like what is manipulation and what isn't, like, that has been a real good hook for me for working with people. It's like you want us to be excellent service providers to everybody who comes in the door or comes through the online interface. Well, then that means that we really need to be thinking about how we, do that? How do we serve everyone with all of their different needs? And people have been really receptive. Like I said, everybody who currently is working there is really receptive to it. My perception

is that there has been a cultural change in that, but that also came from like several years of hiring people with a strong service mentality. Like that was a deliberate hiring practice. In addition, was that last year or the year before. I have no sense of time, by the way. It's a struggle for me to remember what happened in what decade. I think it was two years ago. All right, so this is horrible beginning leading to positive change. A few years ago on our campus, a student in one of the dorms was not evacuated during the fire drill because she is in a wheelchair.

She was basically left in the escape place where she was supposed to go, where she had worked out with my university that this is where she goes. And she calls security and this is how people are going to respond. I am not speaking officially for my university when I say this. In my opinion, the university did not do what they should have done. And she was left feeling abandoned during a fire drill in her dorm. And she tried to get people to care, and they did what university administrators do. Leave that to your imagination. I'm sure you're all guessing correctly.

And so she went to the media. And the university doesn't like when people go to the media. They were hurt and surprised. Yes. And we would do this. And these accusations are groundless. Yes. But they are also, like, extremely embarrassed.

I'm just a little birthday boy. Yeah. No, it's like the university was very embarrassed and it helps that the student was like really well regarded by their instructors and had all sorts of in the student government. When the student, when Bell went to student government, student government was like, excuse you university administrators, this is not okay. And so my current boss kind of became my current boss in that environment, which meant disability stuff and accessibility was suddenly like less bottom of the priority list moved up a little bit in taking it seriously. And so that was sort of my hook to get. And I had also done some other work like working on putting together some getting started process of, of, documenting what we would need to do an accessibility audit, which is, you know, for anybody listening who's not very familiar, it's a great 101 disability 101 kind of a tool to get you

started thinking about providing accessibility through a real practical lens. Don't stop there, but it's a really great place to start. So we've started working on that, documenting things, talking about who should be responsible for different things. I also last year did a research project investigating student needs with study spaces coming from a disability justice lens and was able to work with a student researcher, someone from IT, someone from accessibility services,

to find out a little bit more about what students want in their study spaces, what is helping them be successful and what keeps them away. So having the sort of really localized evidence to show, like, these are things our students want. This is how we've become more successful at making things accessible, working with our library planning committee, working closely with my boss on a project to just sort of talk about why this is important. And just sort of, I deliberately, again, it's like that whole, like, is there manipulation when you're

being honest with people in terms of making it better, even though you're doing it in a really deliberate and intentional way. I don't know. My Catholic parents might say it was, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. So we're just sort of, I would say, continuing to be in a process of critical reflection and deliberately planning for inclusivity. The last time I the last time my library had meetings with architects to talk about a new, it's a whole different story there that I'm not going to get into, but to talk about some new remodeling ideas, I was invited to talk about accessibility stuff.

My boss said, hey, Jess, do you have anything you want to share to show that like it's serious? When I said, yeah, we know that you all are going to be familiar with ADA requirements in terms of designing for what the ADA requires for accessibility. But we want you to go beyond that. That's just the minimum. And we want to make sure that anybody who comes through our front doors, no matter what shape, size movements they have, they will be able to use our services effectively.

And everybody, all of my library colleagues who were there, were like, yes, this is what we want. Would this have happened 10 or 15 years ago? doubt it. Was it really easy to get it started? No, it felt like pushing a rock uphill the whole time, even with that strong service mentality, just because it requires us to be honest, like, we did this thing and we thought it was good, but it's not working out. You have to be really, what I said to students that I used to work with when stuff like this would come up, It's like if someone is bringing you a complaint that they're unhappy about how something is working,

they're giving you a gift. They are trusting that you care about them and care about what's going on and want to make things better. If they didn't care, if they didn't trust you, they wouldn't talk to you. They just never come back. So treat it as a gift and that I have known for myself that helps me work through my own defensiveness. So I'm a human. I get defensive. Not infrequently, honestly, but just taking that like, people are complaining to you because they want things to be better and they trust that you will listen to them and take them seriously.

That's a gift. And so just going from that spirit and I think working with my colleagues as we all like collaboratively develop that spirit, that's really made probably more positive changes than any single professional development thing. Although we do those two. Very similarly, I found that working in IT, there tends to be, you know, like the IT priorities, and then there's the user priorities, and those often conflict. As soon as I got it into my thinking and my approach that for every user who complains about one thing, there are probably three others who didn't bother to report it. And, you know, so maybe, yes, you're dealing with this one squeaky wheel, but there's going to be a whole

ripple effect of people who then reap the benefit of whatever it is. And, you know, sometimes we get really involved in projects or whatever. And I'll see what should be a relatively easy and quick, like, helped us to get sitting for a while. And I'm like, why is nobody picking this up? Why is nobody addressing this? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like a big deal to us. But when I stop and remember things from having worked public service for seven years, I'm like, that's actually quite a job stopper, sort of like it's a workflow stoppage. And I've had people be like, well, no, it's not because they have a workaround. And I'm like, the workaround sucks, right? It's a workaround for a reason. It's not like the best thing for workflow. And yeah, I feel like it's,

that's pretty similar to the like you're being given the gift of trust. Like, I don't feel extra smart working in IT. Like, I feel like a lot of people, like a lot of people think IT people do or IP people actually do because it's just another expertise that I have that other people don't and vice versa. So working with librarians, it's like there's a lot of overlap in sort of the skill sets that we need in terms of research and implementation and that sort of thing. But it's like when it comes to people, you know, there's that look down on, well, you deal with people and I deal with things. But it's like you're good with working with people. And that's what I'm not doing. So I have to, you know, respect that you're good at that. And you're also working with the things for the people. Exactly. You know, there becomes that disconnect. Like in the end, it all becomes about, you know, user design and, you know, usability and what the users. You create things for people to use. If you're creating things just to use or because you like creating things,

that's a different ballpark than what you're doing. So, yeah, like respecting that people have their expertise, too, and that includes the users or the patrons, you know, they know. And yeah, so much of it just comes back to autonomy when I think about it. Like, you know, I just have to trust people to know what they want and to take them to say what they want and believe them. It shouldn't be too hard, but all sorts of issues that arise around that somehow. For me, when I think about accommodations and disability,

I always think about the idea that, you know, you, an accommodation or something like that often has that sort of ripple effect where it turns out to be good for everybody. You know, like the classic example is the cutaways and sidewalks. like it works for you, you know, wheelchair users, but then also people with strollers or luggage or, you know, whatever. There's there's no reason not to do it when you know that it's actually going to benefit beyond the very specific subset that you're imagining for. So it seems like a lack of imagination in so many ways on the part of administration and politics and that kind of thing.

It's like, who else benefits from this? Do you care about them? Do you care about them? Do it them then if that's what it takes to get it done, even though it tends to be kind of, you know, a shitty framework, I guess. So we always try and close on something action-oriented. There's a lot of good practical advice in your book, but is there anything in particular you always tell people to, that they can do? I think most disabled people are going to know more or less what they're doing. So maybe something the temporarily able-bodied can, or that's a construction, obviously, but anything they can do. One of my favorite things in the world is counter stories or counter narratives, which are stories.

This is a concept that comes out of critical race theory, but it's stories that challenge dominant thinking about ideas. And so I would say for people who are able, disabled, fall in one of those weird categories where it's like some things apply and some things don't. Anybody really find stories about disability written or spoken or performed by disabled people. Just any. Just find one and then find a few more. Because there's like just disability just, it's a number of term that covers like most of human diversity, honestly.

So it shouldn't take you too long to find one. But just find one. Find somebody who's different from you and listen or watch or read, depending on what your preferred modality is. Just learn something, listen with an open heart and trust that somebody is describing their own experience. even if it's really different from yours. Yeah, I think it's a really good thing. I've always found social media is pretty useful for that, is you can find a group of people who they're following, who they're reblogging.

You just jump in and you sit and you wait. Don't jump in and start arguing with people. You jump in and just watch. And you'll pick up so much because, like, that's kind of the great thing about centralized social media is you can just see this subgroup having a conversation among itself. And you just get to be there. And it's really low effort, quite honestly.

It's, it's, you just have to intentionally go find a couple people, find out who they talk to. If you want to do the podcasts, look up their guests, go to their guests, shows. You know, we all invite each other on each other shows. And the disability visibility project has a huge array of spoken and written options. Great. And is there anything you want people to? keep a look up for coming out from you or your social media or anything else. Social media is so hard right now.

I guess if you want to contact me, I'll have my link tree in the notes. Would that be okay, Justin? And then just feel free to reach out. And I do have a few things in the works, but not that I'm ready to publicly share yet because I did not think to talk with co-authors first. So not yet. But feel free to reach out if you just want to chat or hear me talk more or share your ideas. It's all cool. Great.

And good night.