Responsibilities

A new Fed Ex man comes to one of my colleagues at the front service desk of the library. He sets down three large boxes. He then takes a long walk through our entry hall and out to the curb in the snow to retrieve three more boxes from his truck and trek them in. As he piles this second set up at the service desk my colleague tells him that he needs to deliver these boxes to the back entrance of the library.

Indeed, that is where we normally take our deliveries. But we have quite a few wheeled conveyances at our library, and it is a mere twenty feet of easy travel behind my colleague to get the boxes where they need to go. She nevertheless has him take the six boxes, in two trips, 150 feet out to his truck, where he has to load them up again, drive the truck in a circuitous route around to the north side of the library, where he unloads them once more, and brings them in to me, in the back room, working not far behind where he just was with my colleague.

He is not happy.

I apologize. "I'm sorry about that. There is really no excuse for her. She's honestly just... crazy. I don't know. I'm sorry."

And I am. Later I tell the story of her appalling deed several times to various of my other co-workers. But oddly none of my co-workers seem particularly horrified. She's been around here a long time, doing baffling things like this, seemingly without rancor, but frequently to great inconvenience to a wide assortment of people, unimpeded for years. At this point it is hard to even know how much of the fault even lies with her anymore. I'm not sure she's all that responsible for herself anymore. The blame now must almost entirely lie with my managers, locked into bizarre ideas about equality and industriousness, who obtusely continue to put her at the front desk of our library, all done with a shrug of their shoulders, a look the other way, and another day at the office.