In tribute

 

Yesterday I meant to post this as a sort of tribute, but my introduction to it turned into an elegy that instead I let stand on its own.

But it started from watching a bit of Messi magic, and thinking curiously that it would be nice to post the oldest Messi discussion from clerkmanifesto that I could find. And though my wee essay was a little bit more about me, and about clerkmanifesto, than it was about Messi (though it was about us both), I thought it would be nice to share it nevertheless. 

It is more than ten years old, and though it feels like it might not be my very oldest about Messi, it marked the point where I created a subject tag for him, which was perhaps my way of getting serious.

In as much as I get serious.

Which is only kinda.

This is from March of 2016 and was called:

Mellow like Messi

"Just" You ask "What kind of Library Clerk are you?"

"What's that?" I reply. "Have you read my blog clerkmanifesto? Roughly ten percent of my posts are all about what kind of library clerk am I. Twelve hundred posts, ten percent, so that's 120 essays on the sort of Library Clerk I am."

"Yes, I've read them." You say. "What fun! Tell me again please?"

"Okay."




The greatest soccer player who ever lived is Lionel Messi. The teen librarian Marcus, who among the one billion fervent soccer fans in the World is the only one I actually know, might say "How can you really say who is the greatest player of all time?"

To which I might reply "Like this: Messi is the greatest player of all time." But only because, well, sometimes I can get a little like that, which you might have noticed.

And here's how the great Messi plays soccer: 

Economically.

There he is, jogging easily up the side. There he is, studying the game, pacing himself, laying back, only doing just what is needed, a spectator, enjoying the Spanish sun, quietly stalking the game, resting up.

And then he is needed. He is called on. He is essential, and he rises up fluidly from a kind of snooze mode to perform absolute miracles and magic. Practice, training, time on the pitch, and two full games every week, but as for pure, heart stopping soccer, greatest of all time soccer, we get about 15 minutes of it every week.

That's just exactly how I clerk!

I hope that doesn't sound self-aggrandizing. If you think about it at all you will likely come to the shrewd conclusion that it isn't, really, self-aggrandizing at all. After all, clerking is not soccer.

"So," You wonder. "Is that how you write clerkmanifesto as well?"

Oh no. For that I run flat out until I collapse, panting and vomiting in the grass.

Library card aversion

 

I don't particularly like making library cards for people. There's certainly nothing terrible about it all that I can point to. When I'm doing it it's not like I'm screaming in my head "This is agony!" But the whole thing is procedural, repetitive and consumes an above average amount of time for any desk interaction at my library. So I don't like it. In fact, if someone were to come up to me at the desk right now, interrupting my beautiful essay writing, I probably would scream in my head: "This is agony!" But I would only do that at the moment of interruption, at the dawning realization. Once we were on to the registering I might go on to have a perfectly nice time making the library card for our hopeful new library user. Maybe it's like that scene in the beautiful movie "About Time" where the main character brings his (future) wife to his parents' enchanting home on a cliff over a beach. In preparation for the day he tells his future wife not to agree to tea, but then his mom offers the inevitable tea and his future wife agrees, and our main character says something like "Christ, there's the whole day then."

At which point this bunch of delightful people all sit around on the beach all afternoon having tea and crumpets.

Like what else were you planning to do?

But now I may have gone too far here having analogized my getting a library card for a library patron to having tea and crumpets on a gorgeous private beach with lovely people.

I have become reasonably convinced that everyone in my professional position dislikes getting people library cards as well. It's the little signs that give it away: when people happen to walk away from the desk to take care of something else, or the stories patrons tell me about why someone wouldn't get them a library card somewhere else. There are always tells about the jobs that people don't like in a work environment like mine; things that mysteriously don't get done at every possible opportunity.

Because I don't like creating library cards I have become acutely sensitive to reading whether a person is coming to the desk to ask to get a library card. Often I can spot these people clear across the library, reading subtle tells of their body language. Most people don't even need to speak to me for me to know that they are going to want a library card. But people are strange, and sometimes I let down my guard.

For instance earlier today someone came to me at the desk and said "I just have a super quick question."

I love super quick questions!

I am phenomenal at super quick questions!

"Can I get a library card?" He asked.

Arrrrrggghhhhhhhhh! Agony!

 

How we work

 

As with a fair share of truths I have stumbled upon in my workplace, this one came about while joking with a couple of my library co-workers, but it does go a fair way to explaining how we work around here.

To briefly set the stage, all of the printing that people do here at my library works on the honor system. It costs 20 cents per page of printing or copying, and to pay for it, one just drops what one owes in a metal lock box located near any printer or copier. This system does manage, by all accounts, and despite being a tens of thousands of dollars operation, to pay for itself, despite not being monitored or policed in any way.

My colleagues were discussing a former co-worker who was breathtakingly bad. This led to the discussion of other bad co-workers and how one's behavior has to be so bad that it is literally criminal to result in being fired from my library. At which point it dawned on me:

Work at my library operates on the honor system. People are assigned places throughout the day, and they either do work or don't. Some people don't really do anything and some do a lot. Whatever frustrations, or injustice there may be in it, in the end, it is exactly like the printing: 

It all averages out to where it gets done.

Work

 

I cannot tell you if this is cynical or full of hope:

In my long experience of a workplace, the library in particular, on the whole, all the working people are compelled to do what is best for them over what is best for the library. This is always true, whatever we tell ourselves. We are driven by our implacable visions. The institution is a vague dream.

But sometimes, by weird chance, they match up.

One rule to be a good library clerk

 

Now that my vast career slowly winds to an end, let me lay it out for you: 

How to be a good library clerk.

To be a good library clerk takes only one thing: 

Correct more mistakes than you make.

Ah, the young one asks: But how does one know if they are correcting more mistakes than one is making, for if we knew the mistakes we made wouldn't we not make them?

Alas that I have an answer, and it is dark!

If you are not in a state that oscillates between irritation at all the mistakes you are always correcting, and sheer horror at how regularly your co-workers seem to make those mistakes, then you are making more mistakes than you solve.

 

The ol' soft shoe

 

I believe in breaking rules for patrons at the library. Indeed in our fine-free, licentious era there are few gifts, subversions, and exceptions I won't make for people. And I support my colleagues in doing the same at their own discretion. But I do believe in one thing: 

It always must come with a little soft shoe.

I will provide a simple example. A library patron comes to my front desk with five books. "Can I return these here?" They ask.

No.

No, they can't return them here. We have a million-dollar machine that I'm quite fond of, and that has a little feeder door they walked right past, for whatever varied reason, to give me their books. If people all returned their books to us, personally, at the desk, my library's circulation department would grind to a halt, or maybe it would simply return to how it was before we got the big check in machine (that I'm quite fond of), at which point, eschewing as we are all the fine advances of civilization, we might as well skip the whole library thing and live around campfires in the snow telling each other stories and chewing on dried buffalo.

Which is fine, as a solution. But as far as I'm concerned, it's all one or the other. 

One, or the other.

And so, since we have libraries I say:

"No, sorry, all our returns go in the slot in the lobby, to the right," And then, as they are crushed, defeated, and their whole day is ruined because they have to walk back 15 feet the way they just came, I relent. "But just for you today, I'll take them here and throw them on the machine in the back."

The patron is suffused in relief.

An exception is made.

But the ol' soft shoe strikes again. The desired result for the patron has occurred, but I have danced my little dance upon it, and their act has been marked.

And everything will run beautifully in the future. 

At least until we can hunt the buffalo again.

Musical chairs

 

My ideal workgroup at my library is a lean, self-sufficient, and harmonious collection of mildly committed co-workers who like libraries. I have had this on occasion. And maybe I will one day again. But right now at my library it's a lot more like a bunch of random people of vastly different capabilities shoveled into a giant pile with the hopes that it will all... work out.

As the command structure of my library (always anathema to me by its very definition), has become even more layered, removed, and bureaucratic, the staffing has gotten increasingly disorderly. While there has always been a tendency towards this here, it has never been a more strongly held approach that if one just sort of shoves enough random workers at the library job it's bound to get done. 

We currently have a collection of old timers who tend to be very bad or very good at the job. We have some middle timers who tend to think they're better than they are, but who I will concede are generally... fine. And lastly we have new people, lots and lots of new people. We have people sent here from other county agencies that closed down, but who can't be let go (and rightly so), and whose skills and inclinations have nothing to do with library work. We have a whole group of people that have been sent here from one of our library branches that reduced to a skeleton staff during a year long refurbishment of their closed building, and we have a couple more people who I'm not sure where they came from or what their names are, but they seem to be around a lot and occasionally show up on the schedule. None of these people are particularly good at this job, or the alphabet. Also these people tend to not be such good co-workers, missing cues and lacking social understanding. They kind of clog up the hallways.

But despite all this we are a team. So nevertheless we must set all of this negativity aside. Yes we are a mass, an unruly undulated horde of labor, but in the end we are all here united in one common goal:

To find an available chair to sit in.

On the weighing of souls

Because of my long background in clerking I am sometimes asked to fill in working the registration desk in the afterlife.

My desk isn't the first place people come after they die, that would be kind of intense. They go first, as I understand it, to a neutral, pleasant place in order to adjust to being dead. This can be very quick or very slow depending, as everything does everywhere, on the person. But once they've accepted, in some basic way, that they're dead, they come to me, where I enter them in the system.

Sometimes we sit in chairs and I write their information in a large and beautifully bound ledger. Sometimes the information is absorbed into air screens, which is a technology most of us won't live long enough to see in the world. Sometimes I type it into my computer. But whatever the method, we are always in what looks like a library.

I ask them questions, but not always the same ones, which makes the whole thing way more enjoyable for me. I might ask one person how they liked the cheese on earth, and another for their email address. I can ask how someone did financially or I can ask about their first kiss, if they had one.

Not everyone has.

They have questions too. I can't answer most of them even if I try. A lot people ask me about God. What I usually say to a question like "Is there a God?" is "Yes. I'm sort of him for the time being." Just because a person is dead doesn't make the correct answers to spiritual questions any less ephemeral. Nevertheless there's plenty of good information in my answer, even if hardly anyone makes use of it, another common quality of spiritual wisdom.

I love when people are more generally curious. Like I'm always happy to turn my screen, or open my book to show footage of what dinosaurs really looked like, or a street scene in ancient Egypt. And if it's a slow night I don't mind letting the intake process get derailed like this for hours.

But eventually I always have what I need. I get their pin number, or social security number, or favorite color, and send them on their way to one of two doors.

In the end it's all very traditional.

Fishing for miscreants

 

There have always been patrons who abuse and misuse the services of libraries.

And there always will be patrons who abuse and misuse the services of libraries.

Stopping them is my job. 

I am a fisherman. 

A fisherman for miscreants!

That sounded better in my head.

But all is not lost. The key to this analogy working is in the "fishing".

People keep books late. They damage books. They even steal books. People leave garbage behind, are too loud, steal from our honor pay boxes, and pee on the furniture. There are people who harass other patrons, ask for too much help, and take up too much space.

The trick for any library is how to stop them. And the other trick is in how to keep those very rules, designed to stop a minority of miscreants, from adversely affecting the rest of the more wholesome library population.

The answer, for good or ill, is in the fishing.

The more restrictive the rules are the more the fish that you don't want are caught up in the nets. The looser the rules are the more the fish that you want to catch will slip away with everyone else.

The easiest example for all of this is the late charge, which has only recently undergone a massive reexamination in the public libraries. Traditionally a very fine net was used. To prevent chronic, willful abuse of due dates a strict late penalty system existed in pretty much every library in the country. Every little fish was swept up in the nets. Everything in the sea paid a price for every transgression. One could even say the fear of the late fine was a price in tension that came inherently with library use. At best we fishermen at the library threw back an occasional fish as we saw fit; Family emergency, financial difficulty, illness, maybe even an expensive one time mistake, and we would forgive a fine. We caught everything and only threw back what we had to. Our line was strict. Chronic abusers were driven out of library use, or paid a steep price for their transgressions, but every other library fish paid some kind of price as well.

Now we are on the other end of this extreme. We charge no late charges for anything. Our measly tools to catch people include their own sense of responsibility and the books aging to lost because they are so extremely late. This is a very particular kind of line fishing. Nothing is ever caught up accidentally, but there is also very little to stop the abusers of the system from their rampage across our due dates. And while rampaging across due dates doesn't sound terrible, when you are waiting endlessly for the item you so want to come back it can take on a different level of importance.

At this point you may be wondering:

"Yes, but what is your point?"

Oh.

I don't know.

I was just really keen on the analogy.

And I had some fish pictures.

Manipulating clocks

"Is it still five days you have to pick up a hold before it's gone?" A library patron asks.


"Actually it's longer than five days, but we just tell you it's five days in the same way they used to say masks didn't really help with the coronavirus so that they could keep the limited supply available for health workers."


"Oh."

The desk again

Lately I have been out at the front entry desk of the library for an hour every early evening. I have been telling you all about it here in this very blog, I mean whenever I'm not invading the personal space of butterflies or astounding you with pictures of...

chickens.

I sit here at this desk and wave people into the library. When they leave with a book I say to them:

"Come back when you've read all the words in that one!"

It invariably grows quiet and I watch the flag blow around in the wind outside. Sometimes it rains. Once it rained and I told you all about it.

Sometimes I get real quiet and calm here. Then I see crows screwing around on the antenna of the tall building across the street and I get kind of...

happy.

I've gotta admit, I'm just killing it at this job. They could pay me a fortune to do it and I'd still be worth it.

But the thing is...

I'd even do this job for just what they pay me right now.

Library lobby greeter

Sometimes under our current set-up at my library we library workers are scheduled to staff an entry desk in the lobby. There we act as a sort of greeter/explainer/traffic control. We don't have a computer out there, and we're fairly remote from everything else in the library, and it can get pretty quiet on that distant desk at times.

I love it to pieces.

However some of my colleagues have complained about it being boring.

I want to help my co-workers be as happy as me, so I suggest they do what I do when I'm stationed in the lobby: 



1. Think up hilarious jokes for the library patrons when they arrive at our totally empty library, like:

     A. I'm sorry but we're at our full capacity of zero so you'll have to wait until someone leaves before you can go in.

Or

     B. Are you here to pick up a hold or are you here for our Chinese Buffet?


2. Draw bug hearts and self portraits all over our promotional literature.

I'd be delighted to show anyone how to draw a bug heart, but no one has ever asked.


3. Explain everything to everyone with lots of detail.

That's what I'm doing right now and look how much fun we're having!


4. Gather wool.

I'm pretty happy just gathering, but taking up knitting is always an option.

The answer to everything

Here it the answer to all your problems.

I was out at front desk of the library with a youngish colleague, one who is somewhat new and more or less temporary. We were handling the relentless barrage of calls for our curbside pickup routine. She was having problems because her phone was so loud and the people blaring into her ear were driving her crazy. She wanted to know how to turn down the volume on the phone.

"You can do what I did." I said helpfully.

"What's that?"

"Just wait 25 years and your hearing will start to go."







She said something else to that, but I didn't quite catch it.

How to run curbside pickup

The key to running a quality curbside pickup routine at your library comes down to using a clear, concise, and minimalist script. When library patrons call on the phone they may have experienced your curbside pickup dozens of times or be encountering it for the first, bewildering time. Walking them through the process in an understandable and quick manner without wasting time re-informing previous users of things they already know is essential, especially if your curbside pickup is anywhere near as busy as it is at my own enormously popular library.

My library runs close to 300 curbside pickups a day on our busiest days. Peak hours have seen close to a pickup a minute. This is why we have refined and perfected our dialogue with our patrons. Each word is selected for maximum impact and clarity. And every step of our discussion is designed to lead the curbside pickup process along as quickly and uncomplicatedly as possible.

For those of you who are just thinking of designing a new curbside pickup program, or to those of you who merely need a few improvements to the one you are already running, please study our minutely crafted dialogue below. Not every one of our steps or layout will be the same as yours, but as you adapt our script remember to change as little as possible, and when you do always remember: each word should both instruct and move the interaction forward. If it doesn't, like we have, scrap it. Curbside pickup is too labor intensive to allow for the niceties of pre pandemic library work. And patrons tend to be appreciative in this environment of the very fact of curbside delivery, so don't be afraid to move it along.

Below is our curbside delivery script. Study it. Follow it. And stick to it. If you do I guarantee your curbside pickup will run smoothly for as long as it takes: until a vaccine, until millions are dead in this country, or both. 

Probably both.




Staff:  Good afternoon, Happytown Library.

Patron:  Hello Happytown Library. How are you?

Staff: I'm about a seven, but I decline to say out of how many. How may I help you?

Patron:  I would like to pickup some books.

Staff: Great. Are these already being held for you or do you want ones off the shelf?

Patron: Yes.

Staff: They're on hold for you?

Patron: Yes. They're on the shelf.

Staff:  So you'd like someone to pull books off the shelf for you?

Patron:  Yes. I have some books on hold for me on the shelf. Can I come get them today?

Staff:  Yes. I just need your barcode number off your library card so I can check them out to you and prepare them for pickup.

Patron: Yes. I've done this several times already. I understand how it works.

Staff:  Great. So if you'll just read me your library card number...

Patron:  Is this in my computer?

Staff:  No. It is a secured number so generally it will be only on your card.

Patron: I don't have it with me and I'm driving. Is there anything else you can use.

Staff: Unfortunately due to account protection I'll need your card number to check out to you.

Patron:  I don't have that with me. This is most inconvenient!

Staff:  If you call back later when you have it we can set your curbside pickup for you right away.

Patron:  Wait. Let me get it out of my wallet. 

(Extended period of ambient noises)

Patron:  You'd like the number?

Staff:  Yes, please. Go ahead.

Patron:  Are you ready?

Staff:  Yes.

Patron:  (Haltingly reads a 12 digit number)

Staff:  There would be two more digits to that.

Patron:  (Tries again)

Staff:  There would still be two more digits to that.

Patron:  Drat. I thought I had it memorized. I'm so used to typing it in. It's hard when you have to say it instead. I better get my card out of my wallet.

Staff:  Great.

(Extended period of ambient noises)

Patron:  Okay, I've got it. Are you ready?

Staff:  Go ahead.

Patron:  (Reads a 14 digit number).

Staff:  Great. Thank you. But it doesn't look like you have any books on hold for you on your account.

Patron:  That's odd. They called and told me I had books in and that I should call to arrange pickup.

Staff:  That is odd. (Explores record for a bit). It looks like you have had some items checked out to you today. Did you call earlier?

Patron:  Yes I did. They told me to call again when I was here to pick up my books.

Staff:  Ah. So are you here?

Patron:  I wanted to let you know I was on my way. I'll be there in about half an hour.

Staff:  You don't need to do that. Just call us when you're actually here at the blue umbrella pickup spot and tell us your books are already checked out to you. We'll run them outside for you to grab.

Patron: Got it. Understood. I've done this tons of times already. I know how it works.

Staff:  Splendid. See you soon.

Patron:  Can I just say that I so appreciate this. None of this is easy for anyone and it means so much to me to be able to still get books. You people are real heroes. I swear this is saving my life still having the library to use. Thank you! 

Staff:  You're very welcome.

Patron:  Can I see about getting two more things?

Staff:  I'll transfer you to reference. Hold on.

Patron:  Thanks, I was hoping to...

(Transfer kicks in. End of interaction)

Will all of your interactions go as perfectly as this? No, of course not. But if you aim for this and stick with it I guarantee your curbside pickup will only grow quicker and more productive.

Good luck.

Two experienced library workers

Oh man, there's no telling what two experienced library workers can do!

Under the right conditions, that is. The conditions have to be perfect.

The conditions were perfect!

There were six carts of requests to shelve, plus the curbside pickup routine we're running here at our pandemic closed library. But by 6:30 in the evening the curbside pickup dies to nearly nothing. So those six carts of requests were all that stood between us and having nothing to do a little later.

Nothing to do. Aye, the promised land. 

Neither of us likes working in particular, but we occasionally see the rightness in working, sometimes, especially if it can be done efficiently. So we are both capable of working as hard and efficiently as possible. And we do it all in the hopes that we can make it all be over as soon as possible. Or sometimes to prove a point, though I'm never quite sure what point, but we tend to have a lot of points to prove.

So we shelved, splitting along rough halves of the alphabet, handling the phones, which were still ringing, on the fly.

Total concentration.

Tireless dedication.

No movement wasted.

Mastery of the alphabet.

You think you know the alphabet?

Well, no offense, but you are not a professional. I mean you are probably very good with the alphabet and do a fine job with the layman's 26 letters. I mean no disrespect.

We were using the professional 112 letter standard alphabet.

No, I can't explain it.

Plus we were fueling our shelving not just on a desire to be finished shelving, and with the dream of nothing to do, but we were also fueling on anger. The phone kept ringing and interrupting us. People would call and tell us the wrong things. They would misspell their names. They would say they were here to pick up books that weren't here for them to pick up. Our back up person disappeared and we had to take care of everything, just the two of us. The table out our front door needed to be dried from an afternoon snow storm. Someone had put a book for pick up on a cart under the patron's first name!

And we had only our shelving to take out our anger on. 

So we did.

We shelved like madmen! Pages flew into the air. Empty carts crashed ferociously together. Minutes passed in a fever of wild activity.

And then before you know it, we were done.

It took like 20 minutes or something.

And now we have about three hours to just sit here.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Eh, I'm not complaining.

No lessons, just history

Gather around my friends and I will tell you another grim library tale from way back in the dark days of the 2020 pandemic.

Oh, it's still the dark days of the 2020 pandemic?

But I wrote this post five whole days ahead of time. Are you sure?

Well it's almost over isn't it?

Really?

Okay stop, that's enough, I don't want to know anything more about the future! It's horrible!

My library tale? Oh, now it just seems so trifling compared to what you all are dealing with in the future. 

But if you insist...



My sad tale begins on the gray first day that my stupid library began its inadvisable curbside pickup program. I arrived to a disorganized scene of unsafe chaos as the processes were worked out. Calls were coming in. Elaborate explanations were made. Double call protocols and multiple people hand-offs were instituted. Many pointless things were printed out. As many people, phone calls, and individual book touches as possible were involved. We still haven't entirely recovered from it and need 16 employees to check out a few dozen books to 20 or 30 people over the course of a full day.

Not that there's anything else to do.

Except stay home.

So you might guess that I had a bad attitude about it. You might even imagine that I complained about it just a tiny bit.

I did.

I was on the phone with a patron who had resolved not to just stay home, even though all the buses and billboards and Internet memes had begged them to. And I was hunting down their requested item that was not where it was supposed to be because even still our byzantine system goes mildly wrong half the time and it was much worse back then, and I was complaining about the Governor and the County Manager and the Library Director and the President and the Union and Capitalism and Communicable Diseases and MANAGERS, when one of my colleagues, sitting at a desk with nothing at all to do, offered me some advice.

"Why don't you just decide that everything is for the best and that we are helping people?" She asked.

I shrugged and replied "Why don't you just decide I am the best person you have ever met and can do no wrong?"

Alas, neither of us learned our lesson.

What it's like working in a closed library

I risked my life for this.

Yours too.

I came in to work at my closed library as required.

For three hours I chatted with my co-workers. Eventually, to my gratification, everyone was calling the County Manager "Hairdo".

Every once in awhile I answered a phone call as well.

At about ten after four I realized it was my dinner break hour! so I took a cart of genre fiction upstairs to shelve. I mean really, what's the difference?

Time is just whatever happens in between washing our hands.

Choosing the right club to belong to

The Orienteering Club is meeting at the library tonight. Two of the club members came up to me at the front desk. "Where is The Orienteering Club meeting?" They asked.

The Orienteering Club is meeting in The Board Room, which is located behind me and over my head and requires a few simple directions, most of them having to do with turning left all the time. "You go left, left, left and left." I said. They thanked me and headed off to the stairs. At the top of them they wandered uncertainly to the right. I can see them right now, wandering confusedly in circles on the wrong side of the library.

I'm tempted to just dash up the stairs and give them some help, but what if finding the room itself is a prerequisite?

Quiet night

Here I am at the front desk of the library. Maybe I can help someone. Anyone.

Anyone?

Around eight, in the start of March, it can get a little quiet around here, just in spots.

I took $2.50 from a polite man. "Sharp jacket." He said to me. I am wearing an iridescent blue tuxedo jacket that makes me look like I might be sitting in on a jazz session later, or showing people to their tables. I wish I had one of these jackets in red and green too. I thanked him for his compliment and for his money too. His fine is now down to three dollars.

Then it was quiet again. I thought for a while about a lot of things.

Maybe one day I'll tell you about them.

My co-worker showed me pictures of Thailand. They were mostly pictures of fruit. They have a lot of interesting fruits that I've never heard of in Thailand. 

Now I have heard quite a bit about a lot of fruits in Thailand!

It got a little busier. I found a video game disc involving dancing for a library patron. I was very proud to have found it because it was in the wrong place and I had to sleuth to find it. Then I got into a situation where I was loaning out office equipment for awhile, scissors, tape, highlighter, scissors again, a black pen. Then it got quiet again and I tried to write. Then I had to do some math for someone. And before I knew it the night was over.

Now I am home. 

I sat here listening to the night through our windows. I thought about a lot of things.

Maybe one day I'll tell you about them.

The secret gears

Yes, it may be a conceit. I might be mythologizing. But there is at least some truth to it. I only like to work hard under the cover of darkness. You know, like a superhero, with a mask. I want the library to be magical. I want to keep it running secretly. There are times I will knock myself out with hard work at the library, and it's not that I mind people knowing about it, I just don't like them seeing it happen. They might misunderstand. They might think I'm doing my job.

You might wonder why I would dislike being seen as doing my job. I'm not sure if I have a complete answer for you. It's even more uncomfortable to be seen as not doing my job. But there's something I don't really like about people doing their job. I don't like the trade of time for money. I don't like the sense of self-importance that can go with it. The officiousness bothers me. There can be a lot of marketing in people doing their job. I'm looking for some kind of grace. I'm looking for some kind of joy in the world. Deep down I believe in Anarchy.

I was training one of our new employees at the front desk. This person is pretty well trained in and mostly autonomous at this point. I'm a finishing school in that context. I came back from some errand in the children's room. "You walk really fast." The person said, maybe with slight surprise.

Uh-oh. No one is supposed to see that. I meander. I am at a cocktail party. I am the person who asks "Why did the chicken cross the playground?"

To get to the other slide.

And then:

I appear from out the shadows spontaneously with the book you wanted, and I disappear back into the night.