Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Sort of One of Them Shaggy Dog in Non Fiction Stories

I am very leery of bringing this blog down with too many complaining posts. I am trying to keep that balance of analysis and comedy, folly and wonder, against my deep down clerk predilection for joyless criticism and raw despair. So it is only with great trepidation that I bring this short tale to you from my recent sojourn in the non fiction section.

There I am, merrily shelving along, composing super fun and happy little blog posts in my head when I come across Careers for Perfectionists and Other Meticulous Types by Blythe Camenson YA 331.702 C18C 2007 just strewn onto a shelf in the 500s. This is not a book that was pulled out of the stacks, looked at, and reasonably set down in a near location to its proper order. No, this book is sitting there crookedly, rows away from its Dewey Decimal location. I must set my cart very carefully aside and out of the way in order to head all the way back to the 300s. There, where Careers for Perfectionists and Other Meticulous Types by Blythe Camenson YA 331.702 C18C belongs, two other books sit, out of order! These must be put in order and, really, the whole shelf these are all on is just sloppy. It is not out of order anymore, but books are pushed back and not lined up at all with the front edge of the shelf as they should be. Not only must I fix that, but this shelf is also packed full while the one below it is less than half full! After shifting some of the end books from shelf one to the start of shelf two I can finally head back to the shelving I was working on. Unbelievably though, when I get back to my cart I find that it has been moved! Not a lot, just an inch or two, but I left the perfect amount of passage. There was absolutely no reason to move my cart at all!

I eye a patron down the row who looks extremely suspicious. This maybe causes them to set down the book they are reading, rather furtively I think, and move quickly on. I straighten my cart carefully and head down to collect the book Stop being your symptoms and start being yourself : the 6-week mind-body program to ease your chronic symptoms by Arthur J. Barsky and Emily C. Deans. It's a 600s book! I am telling you, it is too much. Sometimes it is just too much!

1 comment:

  1. Moved the cart 2 inches? Yesterday I was shelving in the picture book section of a library, not the one where you work. I use a wheeled stool when I do this, as I am old, and tall, and my knees complain otherwise. Suddenly the cart I'm working from is about 2 feet from me. I looked up at a large guy, and I probably said something clever, like "Huh?" "Oh," he asked, "were you using this?" Well, yeah.

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