Your bonus post

For three years or so I have written and posted a new essay every single day. And yet I have never before written a post on February 29. It's like a puzzle. How could that even be true? It's just the sort of thing Encyclopedia Brown could figure out, but I'd have to flip to the back of the book for the answer. Which I would then read, muttering "I knew that". And I did know, I was just too impatient to think it for myself. 

The important thing is that we bring Bugs Meany to justice.

So what then do we have for you today?

Please keep in mind that as this is February 29, this is all bonus material.

Today at the library we were staffed with, wall to wall, extremely pleasant people. This is by no means always true. Our natural front desk mix includes incompetents, churlish people, fake friendly people, time vampires, crabby people, the very tired, and one highly efficient wiseacre. We don't currently have a total asshole on staff, but it's not like we never have. But it just so happens that today we had a very grounded and friendly sub who knows what she's doing, and all of our collection of long time regular staff who are bubbly, or friendly, or kindly, but not too bubbly, friendly or kindly. And there they were, paired up together at the front desk, one after the other, smiling, gracious, competent, warm, and professional. Man we looked good.

There was a slight issue with the schedule and, partly by chance, one of the very pleasant people, myself, and two of my managers were gathered round to sort it out. I believe the solution to said scheduling problem involved putting another pleasant person out at the front desk. I saw my opportunity and spoke:

"I hate to be critical," I said to our scheduling manager "But if you keep putting all these pleasant people out at the front desk, the patrons are going to get soft."