Characters

If you have been following clerkmanifesto for some goodly portion of our 1,750 blog posts you will have read a lot about the library I work at. And in all that reading you will have met many of the fascinating characters I both work with at the library and help out at the front desk.

Oh? You haven't met any fascinating characters I've written about at the library?

Hmm, I guess you're right. I mostly just write about myself.

First of all, I'm a lot of characters around here.

And secondly, you see, some of it comes down to protecting the anonymity of our patrons and, even more importantly, that of my co-workers.

Then thirdly there are those very few people who I feel entirely comfortable writing about by name, like Marcus, for instance. Marcus was, until a few seconds ago, the teen librarian here. But he's not really a character, he's more like a person. And frankly I don't have time to write about people! Do I look like a literary novelist!?

Really? Why, thank you.

But lately I have been noticing a lot of amusing little stories laying around about a co-worker of mine named Dan. And I thought "Hey, here's just the thing!"

So I went to Dan and I asked "Hey, Dan, can I write amusing true stories about you, by name, in my blog?"

Dan never reads my blog, but he well knows it exists. And here's the redeeming thing about Dan: He has deeply irritated most of his co-workers. He does a huge amount of shake your head at it kind of stuff, but if you ask him if you can write about him in your blog he asks "Is this going to be about all the crazy, ridiculous things I do around here?"

(And I say "Yes, pretty much.")

Then he says, just a little resignedly "Yeah, sure, whatever. Go ahead."

And though there may be better ones in the future, that's my first story about Dan.