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May. 25th, 2021 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreBack in February, we got told that we no longer needed to wear gloves at work unless we were emptying the bookdrops and thus touching items that hadn't yet been through quarantine. A little while after that, we reduced our quarantine period for materials from 4 days to 24 hours. Last week, it was announced that, as of June 1st, we would no longer be quarantining materials at all. Cool, great. Quarantining is a hassle and, as far as I'm aware, it's pretty unnecessary - let's definitely stop doing that.
I had foolishly assumed that doing away with quarantine - and thus acknowledging that the items coming in are not a hazard worth worrying about - would mean that we would stop being required to wear gloves while taking items out of the bookdrops. Today I learned that, evidently, that's not the case. We're still supposed to wear gloves while emptying the bookdrops. But if we're not quarantining stuff, that means the person doing backroom circulation tasks - mostly me - takes things out of the bookdrop and checks them in pretty immediately upon their arrival, all day long. In practice, that would mean going back to wearing gloves all day.
Which is complete bullshit, since we're not required to wear gloves while shelving those same materials, as if scanning the barcode on the back magically removes any sort of contamination they might be carrying. It is rank cargo cult hygiene theater nonsense and I hate it.
I'm not wearing the fucking gloves until someone gives me a non-magic reason that I should.
ETA - Apparently, enough staff all over the system complained to their managers about this being stupid today that the glove requirement got changed by the time I went home. Thank the gods.
I had foolishly assumed that doing away with quarantine - and thus acknowledging that the items coming in are not a hazard worth worrying about - would mean that we would stop being required to wear gloves while taking items out of the bookdrops. Today I learned that, evidently, that's not the case. We're still supposed to wear gloves while emptying the bookdrops. But if we're not quarantining stuff, that means the person doing backroom circulation tasks - mostly me - takes things out of the bookdrop and checks them in pretty immediately upon their arrival, all day long. In practice, that would mean going back to wearing gloves all day.
Which is complete bullshit, since we're not required to wear gloves while shelving those same materials, as if scanning the barcode on the back magically removes any sort of contamination they might be carrying. It is rank cargo cult hygiene theater nonsense and I hate it.
I'm not wearing the fucking gloves until someone gives me a non-magic reason that I should.
ETA - Apparently, enough staff all over the system complained to their managers about this being stupid today that the glove requirement got changed by the time I went home. Thank the gods.
