SKOKIE, Illinois. Madeline Grebs is a long-time records manager at Modern Moosehead Indemnity, an insurance company in this suburb of Chicago. “Don’t call me a file clerk” she says to this reporter, and it is plain that she takes pride in her work. “There aren’t many things in life that are worse than a lost file,” she says. “Maybe losing your arm because you stuck it out your car window and got sideswiped, but even that’s not so bad if you already had a prosthetic device.”
File-a-Palooza
But Madeline despairs for the future of her profession, which attracts many young applicants just out of college only to lose them in a few years when they move on to other jobs or go back to graduate school. “I don’t know what it is,” she says. “America’s best and brightest are going into dicey professions like medicine and accounting.”
Madeline Grebs
Madeline’s concern is shared by others in the records management business, who formed a consortium in 2006 to address the “greying” of America’s file clerks and attract and retain young blood. “Being a file clerk isn’t all about stuffing papers into manila folders, then putting them on metal shelves,” says Lionel Dotson, a former freight railroad records supervisor. “There’s also putting colorful labels on tabs.”
“Do you file a crowd surfer under ‘C’ or ‘S’?”
What the group came up with was “File-a-Palooza,” a festival of rock music to entice young people to view their specialty as hip, even edgy. “We lose too many young people for all the wrong reasons, like money and professional excitement,” says Jim Salley, who designs records management systems for dentists. “I ask these kids ‘What is so bad about a job that makes you fall asleep at your desk? That’s a good thing!’”
“File” and “Fun” both start with an “F”!
The festival, which will run for three days this weekend, advertises that it will feature bands such as Plain White T’s, Fall Out Boy, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. A few early arrivals check in at the reception area of the National Association of Records Managers, and are directed down a long hall to a windowless office lined with banks of movable files.
“I can hear the music from here!”
“Are we in the right place?” asks a 22-year-old named Angela, who looks around for the bands and the crowds. “Sure, you’re just a little early,” says Earl Masciarini, who has been maintaining the trade group’s own files since the late 1970′s. “Let me just turn on my radio back here and we’ll see what kinda reception we get.”
