Let’s play a game. There are two persons. Person A: nice, smart, responsible, positive, hard-working, and all the other good stuff. Person B: just the opposite, dumb, laze, careless, negative, not reliable. Which one do you like? Which one do you want to be with?

Person A, right? But not always. Think about you are going to a job interview, and you have a competitor. Who do you want him/her to be like? Person B. At least for many people, including me. You smile to yourself when you see a B person here competing with you for your dream job.

That’s what I experience now. I work at a college library, part time. I am happy with this part time job, but it will be better to be a full time staff, for all the beautiful things come with full time position, higher salary, great benefit package, job security and great pension for a secured retirement life (this is big), sense of belonging (big too), sense of achievement (big again). The thing is full time position hiring doesn’t happen often. I’ve been working here for a year and half, and there hasn’t been one vacancy, because the vacancy only comes from retiring. People in libraries don’t leave till retire. And if there was a hiring, there would be about 20 of us part-timers competing for this one position. Scary, eh?

So you wish all your part-time colleagues are dumb ones, and one day if there is a full time position coming up, you would be the outstanding one and grab the opportunity. The smart ones, you want to get them out of your way. So the person As are your enemy here. It’s not really enjoyable working with B people, but you have to endure after weighing the cons and pros.

We have about 20 part-timers here. Most of them have been here longer than me, and quite a few have been working here for quite a few years, so I hope my employer doesn’t judge people by seniority when it comes to hiring. The fare way is by who is more competitive. For the older part-timers, if they are smarter too, I cannot say a word. I have to line up behind them waiting for my turn. The problem is with the new comers, the smarter ones, the A persons. I secretly wish the library won’t hire and hasn’t hired any more part-timers after me at all. We already have so many of us. Selfish, I know, but being selfish has been the key for human to survive.

I got my job here because I had my field placement here when I was a student, and I was incredibly lucky to get a full-time contract position right after I graduate. Considering my far-away-from-perfect English, my heavy accent and weird pronunciation, it’s kind of a surprise. I wouldn’t blame my senior part time colleagues if they gave me uneasy looks, but they didn’t. They were really nice. It’s just me feeling a little bit uneasy and a bit sorry for them, and feeling pretty good and perky the same time. I am a mean person.

The student placed here for placement right after me was a young local girl. A definite A person. I took an immediate mental calculation of my situation. Everyone here liked her. I didn’t like it. I waited till the time after her graduation to see if she would come back. You can see I really cannot let it go. She didn’t, and then I smiled. I don’t care if she got a super full time job elsewhere, just don’t come back here. The next placement student was a weird girl, a little mental. Even if she got the luck to get a part timer job here after graduation, she wouldn’t be able to work up to be my enemy, so I was safe. And the next student was a young local girl again. To make matter worse, she had library work experience already. I sensed the threat again. But very soon, my alarm was lifted, for she was negative and speaking ill of her current colleagues. She didn’t treat our customers, our students, respectfully either. You can tell our supervisor didn’t smile much to her, and which made me smile. One day, she jumped on a desk and ate her apple sitting on the desktop like nobody around. I knew she was done with this library. I won’t see her here again.

We got a few new comers around my time and after me. I don’t see them often, so they are still on-calls. So far, they are not troubles to me yet. I don’t like the fact that they keep coming. I cannot do anything about it, though I do secretly wish them all make big mistakes at work (oops, sorry). One day last week, a very pretty and young and smart-looking local girl appeared at work. She is a nice, hard working girl you can tell just but her look. I felt I stayed alert again. I would like to wish her make bigger mistakes (oops again), or just get a nice job elsewhere for the good of hers and my.

Sometimes I laugh at my being mean and selfish, but it doesn’t stop me being mean again. The workplace is great, and people here are great too, so I don’t show my mean and selfish side. I hide them, tightly, so people think I'm a nice person (laugh).