I'm usually a "go with the flow" kind of person, especially at work, where I've generally always done what was expected of me without creating too many waves. However, lately I've felt myself changing in this regard. Maybe I'm less compliant because I'm getting old, cantankerous and rebellious. Ha! Perhaps it's because the people in charge are either my age or younger than me and I feel more comfortable questioning some of their rules and procedures. Or, since I'm getting closer to retirement time, possibly it's because I feel that I have less to lose. More than likely, it's a combination of all three reasons.
At any rate, we were recently given the go-ahead to hire a new librarian at work, which was considered a fairly big deal due to the hiring freeze the university has been experiencing lately. Everyone in the library is expected to participate in an extensive hiring process. It used to be that each staff member (there are 30 in the library) spent about 3 to 4 hours on the selection process to fill one open position. So that's about 90-120 man-hours of time spent--sounds a little excessive to me, but it was considered the "standard procedure" when I was hired, so OK, I went with the flow.
Recently the hiring process has been touted as "new and improved" and it's been expanded so that 5-1/2 to 7-1/2 hours per staff member is now required to fill one open position. That adds up to 165-225 man-hours of time. I personally think they've gone way overboard and decided that I was drawing the line. I've been swamped with work lately and the last thing I needed to do was to spend the better part of a day on the hiring process for a position that has nothing to do with my own job.
So we had two candidates interviewing last week for the open librarian position. I deliberately chose to attend only the morning sessions for each candidate, skipping the afternoon sessions. And I filled out a detailed form about my impressions of each candidate, but I skipped the round-table discussion. Even so, I still spent about 2-1/2 hours of my time on the selection process... plenty, in my personal opinion. I found out later that part of the round-table discussion included a critique of how each of the candidates dressed, and the fact that one seemed to be wearing a jacket that was too small for her. And by the way, the critique was lead by a male librarian who never seems to run a comb through his hair, always wears white socks, and usually has his shirt half tucked in and half out. I'm just sayin'... I'm happy to have missed the whole discussion, in spite of the entertainment value. I definitely couldn't have contained myself at that point!
My boss did ask later why I wasn't in attendance for all the sessions. I didn't get the impression that she was upset, just that she was puzzled and inquisitive. I answered honestly that I thought the expanded hiring process was excessive and that I felt the 2-1/2 hours I spent was more than adequate when I had a lot of work that I really needed to be doing. I asked why the format had been changed for the selection process. She told me that she'd find out the reasons and get back to me; I haven't heard anything yet. So, that was my own form of standing up and protesting a procedure that I felt had gotten out of control. A small thing in the big scheme of life... but I felt better for doing it.
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