Unflappable

Though he is by no means a favorite among my co-workers, I have, with long study, become fond of him. Yes, he's grumpy. His brief periods of extreme productivity invariably bring a self-cancelling chaos in their wake, and his ideas are unsound, but he takes criticism well. How many people do you know who take criticism well? Right, none. So that's something.

We were both shelving in fiction today. I had already briefly been at it when he arrived with half a cart. Ha ha ha, half a cart, that's like 25 books on one shelf. A pretty mild dose of work in fiction. That's like something I might do. He immediately parked his cart and went into the bathroom. I grabbed six books off his cart and shelved them as fast as possible.

He came out and started shelving. He uses the technique where one leaves the cart at the end of the row and brings a handful of books along to shelve. I used to use that. It's good for agility and being able to avoid people in one's row, but it's a bit slow, and it left me too far away from a good writing surface or a place to set my cappuccino. I always travel with a cart these days. His was just sitting there, temporarily abandoned. and of all the rows and books he could have been working on he was in the row I was set to work on. That's so him. So I put all my books for that row on his cart and moved to the next row.

I finished shelving. He was down a row shelving a hefty armload of books. These were the last books off his cart, so along with my empty cart I took his empty cart. Down the elevator I went with two empty carts. I wheeled into the circulation work room. Much comment was made about how I wielded two carts. I got a new nickname. Two Carts, they called me.

Five minutes later he came down. Had he noticed anything? The books on his cart growing and shrinking? His cart disappearing? Well, now that I mentioned it. And his missing cart? Did he notice that? Yes, he figured I took it because it's the sort of thing I'd do.

Sometimes my reputation is a curse.