Bread and butter

 

I have recently resolved to occasionally share old clerkmanifesto posts from the past with you once again. This is not a punishment for your not sufficiently having studied my posts. No, mon ami, it is a reward for your years of service, reminding you of happy times in your past.

These posts from yesteryear are specifically not a best of, but rather a marker of time, always harkening back to a specific anniversary, exactly on the same date but in a different year. When a blog grows as massive as clerkmanifesto has, getting a fresh look at a randomly chosen post, places us more deeply in ourselves. And so in this spirit, I chose randomly to go back just to 2022. And there I found what I would describe as a bread and butter post. Library centered, this post is neither odd nor far afield. One might say it is kind of the spine upon which clerkmanifesto is built. Not flashy, not adventurous, not hilarious, nor daring, it is just a mildly amusing account of library life.

Whet your appetite, have I?

Well, you're already here, so you're used to this kind of thing.

Before we start I would like to note, and this will only make sense to you later, that this post slightly surprised and amused me in its accuracy, for we have but one tape measure at my library, and I think of us as having always had just one.

Measuring Tape

The branch manager of my library asked me if I could order him a 25 foot measuring tape. As I am in charge of supply ordering for our library branch, I said "Yes."

I looked on Amazon.

For less than eight dollars Amazon carried a 25 foot measuring tape that received an average of 4.8 stars.

That is an incredible deal! 

I would like to get measuring tapes for everyone! I would like to get a measuring tape for you, and you, and you, and you!

If only I could!

An aside:

I am in no way being remunerated by any measuring tape company or lobby.

All of this simply comes from my heart, or possibly from my sense of how much I think a tape measure should cost. Maybe more the second of these? Shouldn't it cost more like 12 dollars for a good quality 25 foot tape measure? I mean, is this a wildly good deal or do I have an inflated view of the value of tape measures?

So I ordered two tape measures for us at the library. This is one more than is strictly necessary. But I have found that for any tool at a library, a stapler, or scissors, or even a tape measure, one must have a minimum of two. There will always be one of them that is missing, and one that never is.