Chapter 14 Everything I Earned
The interview for the Records Supervisor position takes place on a Thursday afternoon in Rowena's office.
The panel consists of Rowena, City Manager David Whitfield, and Human Resources Director Janet Morrison.
They sit on one side of the conference table and I sit on the other with a folder of notes that I prepared over the past two weeks.
I'm nervous. I won't pretend otherwise. My hands are slightly unsteady under the table and my heart is beating faster than usual. But it's a productive kind of nervous. The kind that sharpens your focus instead of dulling it.
David Whitfield opens with the standard questions.
Tell us about your experience in the Records Department.
Describe your management philosophy. How would you handle staffing decisions and budget constraints.
I answer each one clearly and specifically.
I don't generalize. I don't ramble. I cite numbers and examples and outcomes that I've been tracking for years without realizing I was building a case for my own promotion.
When David asks about my management philosophy I tell him that I believe in leading by doing.
That I've never asked anyone on my team to do something I wouldn't do myself.
That records management requires both precision and patience and that the best way to develop those qualities in staff is to model them consistently.
When Janet asks about budget constraints I describe the cost analysis I did last year for new archival storage supplies.
How I identified a vendor that offered comparable quality at thirty percent lower cost and saved the department twelve hundred dollars.
How I reinvested that savings into acid-free folders and climate monitoring equipment.
When David asks about staffing I tell him that Roger Hanson is the best assistant I could ask for and that any future hires should be evaluated not just on their qualifications but on their genuine interest in the work.
Records management attracts a specific kind of person.
Someone who values accuracy and history and service.
You can train skills. You can't train character.
Janet Morrison asks about the preservation project. I tell her about the collaboration with the County Archives. The inventory system I created. The condition assessments. The church records project that Ross and I are working on together. She takes notes and nods.
Rowena asks the question that matters most. "Brook. Where do you see the Records Department in five years?"
I've thought about this. Not just for the interview. For myself. Because this is the department I've worked in for eight years and I care about its future the way you care about anything you've invested yourself in completely.
"In five years I want every record in our collection to be digitized and searchable online.
I want residents to be able to access historical documents from their homes instead of having to come to City Hall during business hours.
I want a preservation partnership with the County Archives that ensures our oldest documents survive for another hundred years.
And I want the Records Department to be recognized as a model for municipal records management in this region. "
Rowena writes something on her notepad. David Whitfield leans back in his chair and looks at Janet Morrison. Janet Morrison looks at Rowena.
"Thank you, Brook," David says. "We'll be in touch within the week."
I stand up and shake each of their hands and walk out of the office. In the hallway I let out a long slow breath. That went well. I don't know if it went well enough but it went well.
Amanda is waiting in the lobby pretending to organize a file cabinet that she already organized this morning.
"Well?" she says.
"I think it went okay."
"Just okay?"
"Maybe better than okay."
"That's the Brook Walker confidence I've been waiting for."
Roger asks about the interview when I get back to my desk.
I give him the same answer. He nods and tells me that if I don't get the job there's no justice in the world.
Then he reads me a passage from a 1969 council meeting about a proposed ban on feeding pigeons in the town square.
The proposal was defeated three to two. Councilman Leonard Mills called pigeons "winged rats with no civic value. " Roger disagrees.
"Pigeons have plenty of civic value," he says. "They're consistent. They show up every day. They don't ask for much. In many ways pigeons are the ideal public servants."
"Please don't put that in the interview notes."
"I would never. But I'm thinking about it."
The rest of the week passes slowly. I try not to think about the interview but I think about it constantly.
I go through every answer I gave and second-guess half of them.
I tell myself that I did my best and that whatever happens next is out of my hands.
I believe that about sixty percent of the time.
The other forty percent I spend refreshing my email.
Ross takes me to dinner on Friday night to distract me. We go to a small Italian place on Second Street that he's been wanting to try. Over pasta he tells me about a rare document that came into the archives this week. A hand-drawn map of the Wildhorse water system from 1908.
"It shows every well and every spring and every irrigation channel in the county," he says. "The detail is extraordinary. Whoever drew it must have walked every mile of the system personally."
"Who donated it?"
"A family in the east part of the county. They found it in their grandmother's attic. She was the daughter of the county water commissioner."
"That's a significant find."
"It is. I'm planning a small exhibit around it once the preservation work is done. Maybe tie it into the church records project and do a broader presentation on early community infrastructure. Would you want to help with that?"
"Absolutely."
He smiles across the table. "I was hoping you'd say that. Nobody knows the city's early records better than you. If we combine the county and city materials we could put together something really compelling."
We spend the rest of dinner planning the exhibit.
Ideas flow back and forth between us easily.
His expertise in preservation. My knowledge of the city's archives.
His connections at the county historical society.
My relationships at City Hall. We complement each other professionally in a way that strengthens both of us.
Walking back to the car after dinner I realize I haven't thought about the interview in two hours. Not because I've forgotten about it. Because I was doing something I care about with someone I care about and that was enough to fill the space that anxiety was trying to occupy.
On Monday morning Rowena calls me into her office. She's sitting at her desk with a single sheet of paper in front of her. She doesn't stand up. She doesn't shake my hand. She just looks at me and smiles.
"Congratulations, Brook. The position is yours."
I don't say anything for a moment. I just stand there in the doorway of her office and let the words settle over me. The position is yours.
"Thank you," I say. "Thank you, Rowena. I won't let you down."
"I know you won't. That's why we chose you. David Whitfield told me after the interview that your five-year vision was the most thoughtful departmental plan he's heard from any city employee in his tenure. His exact words were 'She knows what she's doing and she knows why it matters.' I agreed."
"When do I start?"
"Two weeks. We'll announce it to the department this afternoon. HR will process the paperwork this week. Your salary increase is effective immediately."
I walk out of Rowena's office and down the stairs to the Records Department. Roger is at his desk. He looks up and reads my face and his whole expression changes.
"You got it."
"I got it."
He stands up and extends his hand. We shake hands across the narrow aisle between our desks and he pumps my arm with a firmness that would be aggressive from anyone else but from Roger is pure enthusiasm.
"Records Supervisor Brook Walker. That has a very dignified sound to it. I approve."
"Thank you, Roger. You've been a wonderful colleague."
"Colleague and friend. Don't forget the friend part."
"I won't."
I call Amanda from the parking lot during my break. She screams into the phone. Then she cries. Then she screams again. Then she tells me she's organizing a celebration dinner and I have no say in the venue or the guest list.
"I'm inviting your mom," she says. "And Ross. And Roger if he wants to come. And Fiona Grant because that woman deserves free food for the rest of her life."
"Amanda. It's a promotion. Not a Nobel Prize."
"It's your promotion. And I've waited eight years for it. Let me have this."
I call Ross next. He answers on the second ring.
"I got it," I say. "Records Supervisor."
There's a pause. Then his voice comes through warm and steady. "I knew you would."
"You did not know that."
"I absolutely knew that. From the moment you told me about the position I knew you'd get it. You're the most competent person I've ever worked with and I don't say that lightly. That department is yours and everyone in that building knows it."
"Thank you, Ross."
"I'm proud of you, Brook. Really proud."
Those words land somewhere deep. Not because I need his pride to feel accomplished.
But because hearing it from someone who means it without conditions or caveats or hidden motives is a specific kind of good that I'm still getting used to.
Kirk never told me he was proud of me. Not once in nine years.
He told me I was being dramatic when I cried over a tough day at work.
He told me records management was a boring job that nobody cared about.
He told me to stop worrying about old documents and start thinking about our future together.
Our future. His favorite fiction.