The Aviary

We had a windstorm yesterday, which knocked out the power in a lot of places, as well as leaving debris all over. So I got to the library this morning a half-hour before opening, to find that the computers are all funny because of the outage, there's debris everywhere outside, our clock that's supposed to reset itself for DST hasn't, neither have the automatic locks on the doors, and my coworker is out sick. So it's just me and my manager, who's busy doing managerial things.

Okay, cool, so I'm running around trying to get all the opening stuff done that usually has two of us to do it, plus all the extra stuff due to the power outage and DST. And I get all of the inside stuff done, we open okay, and I run out to get the newspapers, because if we don't have the Wall Street Journal in its place first thing in the morning, the cranky guy who reads it every day will be the first person through the door and he'll crab at us.

While I'm digging through the bookdrop for the newspapers, a patron walks past me. So I put on my customer service smile and cheerily wish her a good morning. And what do I get in return?

"You need to sweep that stuff up."

Gosh, I am glad that I came out to open the library so you could get your books today, ma'am, instead of staying home to drink tea and reread The Gunslinger. It's awfully nice to know that people are so kind and appreciative.

Today, work is stressful. We are short staffed - one of my coworker's mother died late last week, so she's out all this week for obvious reasons and we're scrambling to cover her shifts. There were extra people here this morning, doing inventory before our move to our new building and trying to fix the furnace in this building because the room next door (which serves as an emergency shelter for the community during inclement weather) isn't getting any heat. We have mice in the office. And the internet went out system-wide for several hours this afternoon, which also knocked out the phones and with them all our usual avenues of communication. And later this week, on Thursday, I have a meeting in a library I've never been to before that only has street parking (I hate street parking) and then I get to come back to my library and run a program.

So that's cool.

I really want to take a mental health day, but we're short staffed as it is, so I would feel terribly guilty doing so. (And if I did, my mom would decide that we should "do something fun together!", which would rather defeat the purpose. Not that Mom isn't fun, but it is not a proper mental health day if it includes time where I have to worry if other people are enjoying themselves. Which I would do.) It is a problem.

I have a jury summons for next week and let me tell you, it is probably some kind of warning sign when you start fantasizing about being called for jury duty because it would be a day off. But I am absolutely doing that - ideally, I would get called in on Tuesday and then not actually get put on a jury but not have that decided till the end of the day. Because then I could spend the majority of the day sitting quietly and reading while I wait for things to be decided around me. Doesn't that sound lovely?

With my luck, I will get called for Monday and put on a jury for a trial that lasts for days so that I'll have to call into work every day (which I hate doing) and then feel guilty for adding extra stress to my coworkers' lives.

Maybe I will go live on the moon instead.

Back from the film festival and back to work!

So, this is my tenth year of working at the library. Which is pretty cool - I like working at the library and it's nice to think that I've been there that long and still enjoy it.

When you get to 10 years at the library, they give you a pin. I got mine today. I got one at five years, too.

I don't know, you guys, maybe I am just really cynical but what is the point of that? I assume there are people who value things like that and I envy them, but it always puts me in mind of those awards ceremonies we'd have at the end of the year in middle school, where everyone got a certificate for something. Just these weird mass-produced pieces of paper with a facsimile of the principal's signature, saying that you'd had perfect attendance* or whatever you were being "recognized" for. Ours had pictures of tigers on them, despite the fact that our school mascot was the jaguar, and we told at least one of our teachers that every year. (Once I had a teacher try to argue with me about that, as if I didn't know/couldn't tell the difference between tigers and jaguars. I invite you to imagine my adolescent scorn.) That level of attention to detail should give you an idea of how valuable these certificates were, yet they were given out every year of my school life as though we ought to treasure them.

That's what the pin feels like. It's a random mass-produced anonymous piece of useless nonsense. I guess I've never really understood the point of trophies, either. Either you won a competition, in which case you won, or it's an achievement you reached on your own bettering yourself. In either case, you have what you achieved. Having a weird useless cup as well seems silly to me.

The uselessness bothers me too. At 15 years working at the library, you're given a plaque. What do you even do with that? I mean, obviously, you hang it on your wall except no, I'm not going to do that. I didn't even hang my college diploma on my wall, and I put actual work into earning that, rather than simply clearing the lowest bar possible by showing up to work every day. You want to reward me for clearing that bar? Then at least give me something I can use.

I can never tell if being weirdly annoyed about this kind of thing is just me being overly cynical or if a lot of people don't really get trophies and certificates and we've all sort of silently agreed that it's not done to talk about it. Maybe there are a lot of people who really like this kind of thing. (If so, I hope that you'll accept that I mean no insult to you.)

I don't know, guys. Anyay. Now I have a pin.





*Awards for perfect attendance are especially bullshit, because a) don't come to school when you're sick, that's a terrible decision and you'll infect everyone else, and b) a child has basically no control over deciding whether or not to go school. It's like getting an award for not being struck by lightning - you put no effort into achieving it, it happens whether you want it to or not.

Oh, library drama!

So, we are a small library with a small Friends of the Library group and as such, our Friends only put on something like four booksales a year. Far and away the most popular, best attended, most lucrative sale is the summer sale, which is always held at the Kingston Farmer's Market. And is scheduled for this Saturday.

Except the Friends can't get enough people already in the group to schlep the books down to the market and run the sale, and don't have enough time to find and recruit new (younger) people to do so. So they told my manager today, that they're cancelling it. Two days before the sale.

Not only that, but just now, we got a call from the person in charge of the Farmer's Market, who needed some clarification as to the date of the sale (he had two dates listed on his calendar), so I got to be the person to tell him that the whole deal was off.

Now, I'm sympathetic to the Friends' problems but a) it is your job to let the Market guy know, and b) OMG, could you not have realized this last week?

After a lovely (if dentistry-dominated) four-day weekend wherein I did not have to work at my un-air conditioned library, I am now back. Everything is dreadful.

Here's the story: we have a portable air conditioning unit. It's one of the ones you can wheel around and has a hose that goes out the window*. We just hired a new head of Facilities for the library system, who recently came to tour all the branches and find out what we'd particularly want from him. We impressed upon him very strongly the fact that our branch is unacceptably hot, to the point that we've sometimes had to close early. He said he would look into a solution for us, and at least try to get us a second air conditioner. Which he did last Friday.

It doesn't work.

Or, rather, we can't use it. Because using both of them at the same time overloads the circuits in our building, shutting off all our lights and computers. Probably, we should have looked into that before trying to get a second unit. But we didn't, and we had such high hopes, which are now all dashed.

My manager is considering changing our open hours, so we open earlier in the day and close earlier in the afternoon. I am still voting for hibernating till October.







*We also have a variety of arguments about said airconditioning unit. I think we should close all the windows and doors when we have it on, in hopes that it will cool all the air without us trying to aircondition all of Kitsap. My manager thinks we should leave windows or doors open, "so the hot air has somewhere to go". And the coworker I work with the most is slightly claustrophobic and says she can't work without at least a little airflow. So.

- Today, I had to get up early and go to a consultation appointment for oral surgery. Yippee.

- Also, I got to unclog the toilet, which was super thrilling, let me tell you.

- Tomorrow, I have to get up early and go to a meeting, then go straight to work, where we will be short-staffed and I have a program to run.

- Friday, at least, is normal.

- And I work on Saturday, in the branch with no air conditioning, and it's supposed to be something like 90 degrees.

Possibly, instead, I will choose to hibernate till October.

Dear library patron,

Please do not call me "dear girl". You are not my grandmother - you are, in fact, only 9 years older than me. 9 years. Also, you do not know me and thus have even less license to call me condescending names. I don't care if you think it's cute. It's belittling and overly familiar and is therefore rude. Cut it out.

I am too old for Archie Goodwin to date, ma'am. I am no one's "dear girl".

Oh god, the ebola guy from this post returned the movie Outbreak today. And wanted to put it back on hold because his daughter is coming from Christmas. Fortunately, he latched onto my coworker today and not me but he did tell her, "And I think your helper there needs to see it."

1) Fuck you, sir, do you think you could have found a more dismissive and condescending way of referring to me? I am an intelligent adult woman who works here in her own right - I'm nobody's "helper".

2) When I told him that I didn't think I'd be watching it, he said, "Oh, so you're squeamish," in this very contemptuous way. Y'know what? Yes, I am. I am aware of my limits as to media consumption and I know that stories about realistic disease outbreaks make me very uncomfortable, so if I don't need to be exposed to them, I choose not to be. I also, if I can help it, don't watch realistic surgery, possession horror, or things that contain repeated rhythmic electronic sounds. Because I get to choose the fictional media I consume. This isn't a real-life news issue that I'm choosing not to watch - it's a frelling fictionalized disaster-thriller created to be entertainment. You don't get to shame me because I don't want to watch it.

I know my coworkers think he's an amusingly cranky curmudgeon, but he is really starting to get on my nerves.

Alas, I am having a day where all of the people I come in contact with at the library are annoying me. It is mostly not their fault - I'm having one of those days where I just don't want to talk to people - but there are a few where I feel my annoyance is justifiable:

- The lady who came in and told me not to come close to her because she has the flu but still has dvds she wants to hand me.

- The elderly rightwing gentlemen who really really wanted to have a long monologue at me about how the protests in New York and Ferguson are unjustified. Sir, I am working so I can't tell you to take your nonsense elsewhere but you really need to. Also, I do not want to talk to you about ebola, biochemical warfare, or your thoughts on The Russians.

- The person who called and told me she was from the ILL department and asked me if we had a certain title ready to go back to them without mentioning that what she was looking for was a bookgroup kit and not an ILL at all, and then proceeded to get snippy with me for not magically knowing what she wanted.

I feel like I've had my quota of irritating people today, y'know?

I have decided that my least favorite question ever is: "Why do you know that?"

A coworker has a first aid class coming up soon, so I told her about L'Inconnue de la Seine. Because that is totally fascinating - who would not want to know about that? And my coworker just looked at me and said, "Why do you know that?" You know the tone. Like knowing things is strange and off-putting in itself, like knowledge is suspicious.

I hate that. I hate when I give someone a plot description of a book I love or an old horror film and their response is "I just don't know how you keep all that in your head." I hate when my dad laughs at me because I've chosen to use a word that might be unusual but is more precise as to the meaning I want to convey. I bet they have things they know that I don't, special areas of interest and expertise. Why the hell are my areas of interest and expertise less worthy of respect?

Why do you know that? It is a legitimately interesting piece of knowledge - why the hell don't you?

I am having a frustrating day.

So, a few months ago, I was asked if I would like to swap my Friday hours at Bainbridge for Friday hours at Kingston. Since I make more money at Kingston and also like working there better, I said yes.

At the time, I was under the impression that it would be a one-to-one swap - five hours in one place for five in another. Then I was told that I would have to give up one hour at Kingston, on Thursday, to make this work, which was irritating, but I'd be making more money while working less, so okay. But also, it took a very long time for anything to get officially confirmed, and all of this information trickled down a chain - admin to my manager to my supervisor to me - with me always the last to know anything about it, and often being given confused information by my immediate supervisor, who assured me that my manager would talk to me and make sure all the details were hashed out. That never happened.

Finally, they told me that my new schedule would go into effect on September 1st. So I came in this morning, as I always do. My supervisor appeared about 10 minutes later, said hello, and then said, "I don't think you're supposed to be here for another hour."

Turns out, I have lost an hour on Tuesday too, and no one told me. Admittedly, part of this is my fault for not checking my email last Friday, when the schedules were sent out. But also, I kinda feel like maybe, at some point, someone should have sat down with me and told me what the plan was, what exactly my new schedule would be, why they were working it the way they were. I feel like I've been left out of the loop on a matter than vitally concerns me, because everyone who should have been telling me what was going on has been assuming someone else was doing it. The whole thing has felt weirdly shady, since not being told information like this feels like someone is keeping things secret. And now I just feel stupid and pissed off about it, because it's not that they were keeping secrets - it's that none of them were organized or communicative enough to get the thing done properly.

I mean, I'm still okay with the arrangement, mostly. I don't like that I'm losing those hours, but I've pretty much made my peace with it. But I think I should have been told about the damned schedule change before the morning it started.

(Also, I hate being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It sets off my anxiety something fierce - I have multiple calendars wherever I am so that I can check that I'm where I'm supposed to be when I'm supposed to be there. Changing my schedule without discussing it with me upsets me a great deal, which is compounded my frustration at not being informed about what was going on with my job. So I am angry about that, and the anxiety kinda makes me want to cry, which is really not what I wanted for today.)

Things:

- So I started rereading Carmilla instead. I say "rereading", because I have technically read it before, but I was about 9 years old and missed pretty much everything important and don't really remember it at all. But hey, 22 years later, it's pretty great.

- The last 15 minutes the library was open tonight, we had no patrons. So it was just me and the other nerdy person who works there, standing around talking about stuff. And I discovered something inexplicable - I knew that he had watched at least some Farscape, because he understood a reference I made to it some months ago. But tonight it came out that he has only watched the first season and isn't really sure that he liked it and I'm pretty sure I just sort of sputtered at him incoherently for a minute because Farscape! ::flaily hands:: I mean, intellectually I understand that there must be people who don't like Farscape but I don't really grok the idea, y'know?

- There are children outside my window, chasing one of the local wild rabbits with a fishing net. (Okay, it may be a feral rabbit, as it is piebald.) I viciously hope it will bite them.