Can you imagine anything worse?

They say one should not be too quick to judge, but when one is regularly surrounded by thousands and thousands of books such advice is untenable. My interest is piqued over some title at the library dozens upon dozens of times every day that I work. I can't sit down to an hour of careful consideration for each of these titles. I have to design careful analytical tools to discard or keep these books in as little time as possible. I have had to learn to be an extremely efficient judge of books.

I'm not going to go into my full panoply of techniques in this particular post. I just wanted to share with you my starting one:

One second buys two, and two seconds buys ten.

I used this method just this afternoon while shelving in non fiction. I was working with cookbooks and came across a nice looking one. It was called something like Homemade Foods to Make and Give. That was one second of interesting right there, and it bought two. So I randomly opened the book. There was a picture of something all wrapped up in crafty papers and a recipe title: Zucchini Mustard Tea Bread.

It did not buy ten more seconds.

A review of The Fireroast Cafe burrito

I was thinking about this burrito I had at The Fireroast Cafe late this morning with my wife. I was thinking it was a very bad burrito and that I would write a scathing review of it and put it on the Internet. There millions of people would read about the bad burrito, and I would be revenged upon Fireroast Cafe!

But then I thought:

What did The Fireroast Cafe ever do to me?

Except maybe serve me an $8 burrito that was not to my taste.

I don't want The Fireroast Cafe to suffer. I want them to thrive and prosper. I want to help them.

So I offer the recipe for how not to make a burrito:

How Not to Make a Burrito

1. Mix together cooked rice, black beans, corn, and peppers, possibly in a big pot. Cook until hot and soft.

2. Mix in a trace amount of cheese to disappear into the hot mass.

3. Dish out a generous glop onto a big flour tortilla and add absolutely no fresh ingredients of any kind. Especially don't add any avocado.

4. Roll it all up proper burrito fashion and cook it handsomely in a panini press until it has nice grill marks and parts of it are luke warm and parts are scalding hot.

5. Enjoy the not very good burrito somehow, if you can. Also burn your lip. 



"Well fine." You think, especially if you're the owner of The Fireroast Cafe checking your reviews on the Internet. "That's all perfectly condemnatory. But then tell me, smart guy, how should I make a burrito?!"


I don't know. Surprise me.

How to schedule

Where I work, at a largish library, we are scheduled throughout the day on an hourly basis. This is a ticklish business. Scheduling is too important and too big a job for anyone but a manager to do. It's practically a full time job, unless there's no manager around, in which case some random clerk will fix up the schedule, which usually takes a minute or two, but only because they drag it out to feel important.

I have never been in charge of the schedule. But I have patched it, and, more importantly I have spent decades being its victim and beneficiary. This has taught me a few things. Hopefully enough to teach you all our important rules on...

How To Schedule

version 7.28

1. If someone is really good at some job in particular make sure that they are never there more than anyone else as that would be undemocratic.

2. If someone has a hard time, for any reason, with any particular job, make sure to assign them there regularly to prove that you're on to their tricks.

3. Don't assign people who like each other together as they'll just natter on and get along and stuff.

4. Regularly schedule one person in two places at the same time. This will convince everyone that scheduling is a hard, complicated, and dicey procedure.

5. Give people an absolute minimum of time for their projects, unless they look busy and unhealthily obsessed with them, at which point you should assign them to it practically all the time.

6. Don't adjust staffing and job assignments according to workflow and how busy things are. You are already forced to spend way too much time on scheduling to micromanage at that level!

7. When a particularly difficult hole in the schedule comes up or is pointed out to you always plug yourself into the hole like you're a martyr saving the day. Then, instead of doing that job, let everyone cover for you while you go into your office to work on the schedule.

8. Remember: It's not a schedule, it's a reflection of how you feel about everyone.

9. Try not to sweat it too much. No matter what you do there's always going to be some disgruntled wiseacre posting a satirical list of your tiny scheduling shortcomings on the Internet.

Learning Italian

I am finally buckling down to learn Italian for my upcoming trip to Rome. My goals are modest; I merely want to be able to tell people in perfect and natural Italian that I can't really speak Italian. This will confuse them so much that they will speak to me in Italian, but at that point the onus will be on them!

"What onus?" You ask.

Good question!

Anyway, it's a fair bit of work to learn Italian even to this admittedly paltry level, partly because it requires a background knowledge of greetings and numbers and rhythms and the ability to apologize to people. You have to get enough sense of language and the confidence to be able to clearly tell people you don't understand anything, especially in the stressful hurly burly of Roman life.

So the way I am learning all this mastery of non Italian is through a language CD my wife and I keep on a flash drive in our car. Lately I listen to it all the time. It's a good CD, but there is one part I particularly love and cannot stop practicing. It's the emergency section.

With real alarm the Italian speaker cries out "Fuoco!"

This means "Fire!" All day at work I walk around yelling "Fire!" But I do it in Italian, so no one is particularly alarmed. After "Fuoco!" on the CD they yell "Aiuto!"

That means "Help!"

Then there's "Ladro!" Which means "Thief!" This goes really well with "Aiuto!" So whenever anyone sets off the alarm at the security gates of my library I get to cry out "Aiuto, ladro!" which would probably be offensive to a library patron who innocently has a book from another library system that's setting off our security, but only if they were Italian and they understood that what I was yelling at them was "Help, thief!"

Fortunately I have a solution for the off chance that an Italian might be visiting our library and I yelled "Thief!" at them, or screamed that there was a fire, or that someone should call a doctor ("Chiami un dottore!").

I will look reassuringly at them. "Mi dispiace," I will say. "Non parlo davvero Italiano."

Depending upon my delivery, they might understand.

Shall I explain soccer to you?

A co-worker of mine follows a few sports pretty closely. She saw something about Premier League Football on a sports show she was watching and decided she would like to know about soccer. She looked it up on the Internet, but it was seriously confusing. All the leagues and tournaments and presumption of previous knowledge can be bewildering for a neophyte soccer fan. But she was pretty sure I knew something about soccer. So she decided to ask me.

I said "Are you sure? I can kind of go on once I get started."

"No, no." She exclaimed. "I'm sure. I want to know."

But I suspected the limits of her interest. And after just three hours I could tell she was already regretting it.

Top ten super hidden gems of Rome

1. Ponte Rotto

It's a bridge, just off the south tip of Isola Tiberina, you know, in the river. You can't walk on it because it's broken. That flood in 1598 was such a drag! By the time Turner drew it it still had three arches, but after 2,100 years now, we're down to this one arch. So, like, hurry!


2. La Strega Nocciola

It's a gelateria in the Spanish Steps area. But I don't mean the whole gelateria, just the metal bin that contains the lavender flavor.


3. Brick number 27 near Via Monterone 26 (count 27 bricks from the wall vent)

It's just a really special brick, but I'll admit it looks a lot like all the other bricks.


4. The Pinturicchio Frescoes in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo

There are 487 better paintings in Rome. There are better paintings than these right in the same church! But, oh these are lovely. So so so lovely. I love them. So just for the hell of it ignore other completely bewildering and mind-blowing Caravaggios nearby, and head over here like you're a Pinturicchio scholar, which, compared to everyone else there, you already practically are!


5. The couch at the window of the cafe I've sworn not to tell anyone about.

Sorry. But you have to admit that's pretty super hidden. And yes, it's good, so good I've been sworn not to tell anyone.


6. Piazza Borghese

Sure, it's a comparatively unremarkable, but also perfectly nice and central, Roman Piazza. It also hosts a little prints and booksellers market regularly where we have sometimes bought vintage postcards. But of course the amazing thing is that this, yes, this is the very spot where the beloved classic movie When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel, was filmed! Partly. With a fake fountain. And when I say "Classic" I mean it got a 25 percent score on metacritic and was critically reviled.

But that doesn't mean it wasn't totally charming. And this is where it happened!


7. Feral art exhibit along the fence in front of the Augustus Mausoleum.

Is it still there? At the fence? On the wall? It's worth taking a chance. It's like a 3D cartoon of the Rome tourist experience.


8. Chiesa di San Rocco

You go in and to the left there is a nave decorated to look like a stone grotto. I just like it. And it's hidden. And it's my list. I don't expect you to like everything here, and besides, you'll be so high from seeing where they filmed the Kristen Bell fountain scenes that you'll barely notice the disappointment.


9. The Palazzo Barberini Cafe

I'll save you the trouble of your exhaustive Internet search and a lot of awkward questions with the Barberini Museum Staff. There is no cafe. I refer to the highly entertaining coin-op espresso machine in a vestibule (a large vestibule) at the Bernini Stairs.


10. I lost it!

This was the best one too! But it is so hidden that I misplaced it. I'm pretty sure it is somewhere sort of near the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Just spend a few fruitless hours poking about near there and it'll probably turn it up. Trust me.

Top ten super hidden gems of Rome, an introduction

My wife and I will soon be going to Rome. This will be our fourth trip. The last trip was only a year and a half ago, and it was for a month, so I'm pretty well acquainted with all the main sights of the city. And as an inveterate researcher and travel blogger I can tell you it doesn't add much to the discussion to say:

"You're going to Rome? You might want to check out the Pantheon."

You've got to dig deeper!

I have dug deeper!

I am going to tell you about the secret, hidden, off-the-beaten-path, little known treasures of Rome.

Now a neophyte traveler might wonder "Rome has over 200 epic, world class, live-up-to-the-hype tourist sights. Why would I need to seek out the obscure ones?"

Thank you for your question neophyte! You will find that even if you go to Rome for a month, and you tramp in and out of every famous place you possibly can, the only question anyone will ever ask when you return is if you went to the one place you didn't go. 

Like "Did you go to the Colosseum?"

There are, technically, three answers to this question:

1. Yes! (But, if this is your answer they won't be asking this question. They will instead be asking about some other place you couldn't get to because you got caught up in the lines at the Colosseum for longer than you expected).

2. No. (Mumbled ashamedly, like you somehow failed your $8,000 vacation to Italy).

or...

3. Pfft. The Colosseum is for amateurs! You do realize it's broken don't you? And that anyone can go and they all do? No, I spent that time poking around illegally in the Mausoleum of Augustus. I brought back what I think is part of his femur. (At which point just keep talking because if you take a single breath they will change the subject since people only pretend to want to hear all about your vacation). 


But it's not just about your superiority and being a more awesome traveler than everyone else, which, as you might gather from the above passage, no one but you will care about anyway, and probably not you very much either when it comes right down to it.

It's about fun. Enjoyment. Satisfaction.

I can't fault your desire to see the Sistine Ceiling, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, or the Colosseum (though you do realize that the Colosseum is broken and looted, don't you?). Depending on your taste one of these gloried sights might be the greatest experience of your entire 11 hours in Rome. But it also helps to have something a little personal too, something not in the guidebooks, with no pictures on the Internet, that is all yours. Something that is almost like a magical accident, which is the best part of travel, just with the slightest help on your way over to it. 

Which is what I will offer here tomorrow. But first you probably need to gather yourself, and go get a pen and paper for notes. But you're definitely going to want to tune in tomorrow for my top ten list of super hidden gems of Rome. So you might want to save this page for future reference traveler. I have found the best way to do that is to put a piece of tracing paper over this screen and copy everything in colored pencils.

But if there's a new-fangled technique you prefer don't let me stand in the way.

Ideas from the bottom up

Somewhere way back in the early part of Winter I put forth an idea in conversation with my bosses. They kind of liked it, and, getting that sinking feeling that all the things that made it such a good idea might erode away, I tried to emphasize its important features as much as possible. 

Then, resignedly, I let it go. 

Eventually I forgot about it.

But after four or five months it was suddenly unveiled: a new policy, a feature of our work lives. Sure enough most of the good parts were gone, washed away in time. 

I thought:

A good idea is a good idea, until it is taken under consideration.

But after an hour of extreme bitterness, and five or six of sadness, I am willing to become friends with it if I can, in honor of our old acquaintance.

Weather warnings

As I write, my County of Hennepin is under two weather alerts. All my little bookmarked weather sites are glowing with a cautionary orange. And I really like these warnings.

The first one shows that we are under a Fire Weather Watch. Apparently the weather and ground conditions are ripe for spreading even the tiniest spark into a raging fire. We are strongly advised to all stop burning garbage in the backyard, and to keep our magnifying glasses carefully in the shade, and that even a weekend barbecue is probably a bad idea.

And usually we would need to be respectful of this warning, and usually I would be. If only it weren't for the second warning. 

We are under a River Flood Warning too!

So go ahead and have a lovely patio bonfire to celebrate the dry and glorious Spring weather. And if it gets out of control, as there's a good chance it will, fear not. The river will be flooding through here momentarily to put it all out.

Another missing post

So I went out for another Thursday morning walk. I had some blog ideas to come up with. And nothing gets the blog ideas rolling like a bit of incandescent rage. Nothing quite stokes the old genius like the agony of human existence, the pain of being, the sweet burn of injustice. I just had to get that hate train rolling for some raw material, then pound it till it's stretchy and malleable, then shape it into something funny, put a hat on it, and gut it.

So it was just a matter of getting started when I was distracted. I can't remember what exactly it was; a cat walking across the street? The blueness of the sky? A recognition that it was a lovely day to have off? Something sweet my wife said to me, still ringing in my ears, before she went to work? Spring?

And I lost the string.

I had nothing. It was beautiful.

I could fix that printer if they'd just let me

We have one big public printer at my library for the 50 or 60 people in the downstairs computer area. For years this printer was a great source of trouble, breaking down all the time in dozens of malicious and irritating ways. Then, finally, we got a new printer and it always worked, I mean, outside of a rare, easy to fix jam or two. It was great.

But after a year or more of printer perfection today the printer went down. It was bad. It's still down now, many hours later. During my lunch break it was suggested that I might take a look at it when I could. I agreed. But before I got to it important people were involved; the fix-it-with-baling-wire-and-duct-tape manager, then the handheld devices specialist librarian, and finally the Automation Services staff person who was ultimately responsible for it. It was way beyond me at that point. I was usurped! So I just started saying "I'm telling you, mice got into the printer and chewed through the wires."

I'd see one of them fussing about and I'd mutter "Mark my words, it's mice. Mice chewing the wires."

This went on for awhile. "Mice" I'd say. "Remember these words when you find all the mice."

Finally the three of them were gathered around discussing what to do about this troubled printer. I joined them and waited for my opening. It finally came.

"Set a nice piece of cheese next to it, and it will draw the mice out."

And then I rode off into the sunset.

Peer pressure

Rarely does a day go by here at the library wherein one of my co-workers doesn't come up to me and say "Hey, want to go out to the parking lot and do some meth?"

I have heard meth can be unhealthy for you, so, though I'm glad they asked, I am compelled to say "No, thank you."

If only they would leave it at that. But there's always the "Oh, come on, it's fun and it makes you work faster."

So then I mumble "Sorry, but my body is a temple." Which I immediately regret as i watch them roll their eyes at me and walk away.

I was reading a bit of a nice book of poems here by Baudelaire when a co-worker came up behind me. "Oh, hey." They said. "I love that poem!"

"Me too!" I said, delighted one of my co-workers was also a Baudelaire fan.

"Can I have it?" Asked the co-worker.

"You want the book?"

"No, can I just have that poem?"

So I shrugged and started copying out the poem for this person.

"No, just tear out the page." My co-worker said impatiently.

"Oh." I responded. "I can't. It's a library book."

"Pff." The person said. "Like anyone will notice."

"Sorry, I can't." I mumbled. And my co-worker walked away disgusted with me. Later I saw them whispering with someone and pointing at me.

It's hard to find a friend around here.

Maybe I should have torn the page out. It just didn't seem right somehow.

Later that same day a group of us were at the front desk and one of my managers said in a grand invitiation "Who wants a coffee?"

"Me!" I cried out excitedly.

A couple of other people more reservedly expressed interest, and my boss opened up the cash register and took out a couple of twenties.

"Ka-ching." My boss said.

"Can you just take money from the library like that for coffee?" I asked.

"Oh, c'mon, who's gonna care?"

"No thanks." I mumbled embarassedly. "Don't get me one."

The manager shrugged and said "More for us." But I'm pretty sure one of my other co-workers muttered "killjoy" at me under their breath.

Then I had to jealously watch everyone drinking their super fancy coffee drinks while no one talked to me for the rest of the day.

Finally, at the end of the day, when a big group of us were leaving, someone loudly said "Who wants to go downtown, get drunk, and make fun of immigrants?"

Everyone cheered, but I said "Sorry, I can't." in a low voice. 

And someone said "Like we were even asking you." Then they all left together. 

I got in my car and listened to Keith Jarrett on my stereo and maybe cried a little.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm better, or more moral than anyone. I'm not saying I'm right and they're wrong.



I'm just different.

Why they come

It's a beautiful late April day, almost 70 degrees, sunny, and the last snow, which a mere week ago today (as I write) was a foot and a half on the ground, is outside melting down to bizarre, misshapen nubs. The trees, usually contemplative and wide thinkers, are obsessing about budding and nothing else. And the grass, well the grass, who gives a fuck about the grass.

And inside the library it is packed. Every seat, every stool, every comfy chair is spoken for. Row after row of people are quietly poking away raptly on a computer or device, whether their own or one of ours. And as I push my cart of books along for a little afternoon shelving my heart cries out:

"Go outside everyone. I have to be here all day, you don't!"

But my head wonders:

"Why do all these people come here just for a chair and a small slice of counter, to wile a day away on a computer?"

But as usual around here I barely pose the question before I make up an answer:


In America those with time have nowhere to go, and those with somewhere to go have no time.

The sweet karma

When I think about Karma I think of its punitive nature, like how I might angrily kick an innocent book that I dropped and then hurt my foot kicking it. But Karma is neutral. Karma is a law of equality, of getting out what one puts in. I was reminded of this today.

Over where we put things to be delivered to other library branches some of what we send are electric powered rising bins of books. These we plug in as they wait there so that the batteries that raise the bottom of the bin up will be charged when they get to the other branch. Last night I pushed a full bin over to this delivery area and plugged it in. But I noticed it was the last plug. As there are no deliveries on the weekend, the next person with a full bin would have to scrounge up another cord and awkwardly plug it in. Those plugs and cord aren't easy to get to.

So I sighed. I went and scrounged up another cord, squeezed around a couple of bins, and plugged it in. Then I carefully lay the cord on top of one of the bins to be readily available for the the next person who had to push over a bin for this branch.

Twenty-two hours later, this person, by pure chance, was me.

Sometimes I really like me.

I take a powder for the truth

Be careful. You are on the Internet. Everyone here is lying to you.

Your "friends" on facebook, The Guardian Online and the New York Times, the food bloggers with their sumptuous pictures, Reddit, the artists, the people selling and the people pretending not to sell. All lies.

And you keep your eye out for it. You think you're wise. Don't we all think we're wise? But as you keep your eyes on the lies they get you on the rebound: uncovering a lie you spotted with the help of a lie spotter is a lie itself. The opposite of a lie is not the truth. Art is not the truth. Skepticism is not seeing.

"So, what?" You cry out. "Do we believe nothing? Should I give up the Internet?"

Of course you should.





"Well what about you? What about this. Is this clerkmanifesto all lies then?" You ask.



"Hello?" You ask.






"Hello?"

To the victors go the spoils

The satire and spirituality employed here is beyond the ken of any Trump voter. And I say this not to gloat or to condemn, but merely as a flat fact to point out that there are no Donald Trump supporters reading this. It is possible that one or two could drift in from the Internet, but there is a difference between reading and looking at the words, a big difference I sometimes disquietingly encounter in my journeyman travels of the Internet and whenever I pick up a copy of Finnegan's Wake.

That said, as reprehensible, mentally ill, and disturbed as is the current President, we must offer credit where credit is due. And when a tiny ray of hope shines out of the Koreas,  even though we might hate to do it, it is only just and fair to say that somehow this is, at least partly, a triumph of Donald Trump, though it be nestled among so many of his failures.

Why am I sensitive to this? Why, against my inclinations, am I scrupulous in sounding this correction? It is because I fall prey to the very same device. I too am victimized in this approach. For whatever just complaints one might have about this blog, a negativity and dismissiveness haunts my success here, and robs me of the full credit clerkmanifesto deserves.

When you cut your finger, put a band-aid on it, then later read a post or two from clerkmanifesto and soon find your cut is healing up do you say to yourself "Wow, that blog healed me."?

You should.

When you find a dollar bill, when someone smiles at you, when you buy some fruit at the store and it is particularly good, I deserve some of the credit for that. After all, I have written about these and so much more. I write about all things and so don't I affect all things? I contribute to sunshine, the color of blooming flowers, the smell of autumn leaves, and the kindness of strangers. I am largely responsible for the quality of music, good luck, and the fact that your house didn't burn down. I'm pretty sure the taste of lavender is a product of my writing, at least partly, I mean, it stands to reason. I mentioned lavender, didn't I? I make clouds puffy and evocative. I make good dreams and the seasons change. Crescent moons are a result of what I write, admittedly only partially, but then what is a crescent moon other than part of a moon anyway? I assist water in flowing and I soften the edges of night. I prevent the end of the world and cheese shortages and a painful kidney ailment that you would have probably suffered had you not read this.

So thank goodness you read this!

And maybe, just a little, thank me. I mean, just as a suggestion.

And I'm not saying I'm wholly responsible for these things, but they happen, and here I am. Which is pretty conclusive. One must admit that it's hard not to see these connections. Nevertheless people turn their heads away. The newspapers refuse to site me over and over again. The Internet natters on incessantly about it's nonsense and rarely, almost never, turns your head towards me. And the President of the United States, in all his foolish self absorption, has never once said: 

"Not everything that is great about America is due to the writing of Feldenstein Calypso, but surely a lot of it is."

Which is unfair. 

So unfair.

How I write

In the back room here, on the computer work table used by the person working on the giant automated check in machine, there is, curiously, a little bin that fills with things like toys and playing cards and bookmarks. Currently, for some reason, there is also a ping pong ball in that bin. Every once in awhile I like to take the ping pong ball out and hold it. It's satisfying. And I walk up to one of my co-workers, hold up the ping pong ball, and I say "Do you want to play a quick game? We just need a table, a net, and two paddles."

My co-workers, as far as I can tell, are mildly amused by this because it is a joke. 

On the other hand, these are the same principals, more or less, by which I write the great majority of these blog posts.

You never really know what you'll get

The month of March passed here on clerkmanifesto and with it passed the five year anniversary of this blog. Five years! Five years of daily blog posts. I meant to note it but I was too busy blogging. Fortunately I have been able to take a moment out now, belatedly, from my busy blogging schedule, in order to stop blogging and properly celebrate here this auspicious occasion.

I am? Really? Blogging right now?

Oh boy! You're right! Look at my little typing fingers go!

Well, there in itself is a lesson for everyone. Blog every single day for five years and your typing speed goes from a modest 41 words a minute to a blazing 44 words a minute.


Once, shortly before the start of this blog, in the late 1980's, there was a popular book called Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow. My friends and I mocked it because, though we wished it was true, we were suspicious that it didn't apply to the likes of us. Confidently suspicious. Around this time a phrase from a movie "If you build it they will come" was also popular. A trifling 25 or so years later these phrases were shifting around optimistically in my mind as I began the profoundly dedicated undertaking that you see playing out here before your eyes. In my wildest dreams though I never imagined they would come true the way they did here, primarily concerning typing speed, with "A Slightly Faster Typing Speed" standing in for "the Money" (Do What You Love and A Slightly Faster Typing Speed Will Follow) and "a slightly faster typing speed" standing in for "they" ("If you build it a slightly faster typing speed will come").

I'm not complaining, exactly, with the added bonus that I can do it a little bit faster than I used to.

The hottest new literary genre

We think of literary genres as largely fixed and immutable: Mystery, Romance, Horror, Science Fiction, and so on. And largely they are. This makes it all the more exciting when one stumbles upon a whole new genre. This has just happened to me!

I have been reading a lot lately, hiding inside the house with my wife, on the couch, while a flowerless April hurled endless snow at us and cackled maniacally. Well cackle all you want, oh Deranged Spring, we have double paned windows, central heating, and very nice neighbors with a snowblower! We also have some bottles of wine.

Or, we did.

Anyway, the point is that I read a lot. And at one point in all this reading I read two wonderful books in a row. Do you know how often that happens?

Sadly, hardly ever.

But these two were great. One was a tiny bit of a cheat, since it was a re-read, but it was still great. And they were nothing like each other. One was a Juvy Fiction family story of surpassing charm and perfection, called The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. The other was a smart, supernatural secret agency thriller called The Rook that our library system already shamefully owns too few copies of.

So where, you ask, does this new genre come in.

Ah, good question. In both books the main characters own a pet rabbit!

"That's an interesting coincidence, but how does owning a rabbit constitute a genre?" You inquire.

Oh, it's hard to explain, but as soon as you read one you'll totally know.

Hate leaves its mark

It is amazing how much you can hate someone for shelving in your row.

There are a lot of rows to shelve in. Plus one can usually pick a cart in another section from where the other person is shelving. Plus if you go upstairs and it turns out you picked the wrong cart, and you refuse to go back downstairs and get a new cart, you can shelve out of order to keep clear of the person that was there first! 

In fact, the only really awful, truly hideous, mentally ill, vicious, blind, and ugly thing to do is to just go ahead and shelve right on the heels of the person who was there first.

This is what a person just did to me!

It is amazing how much you can hate someone for shelving in your row.

Plus he was shelving in non fiction instead of where he was assigned in fiction. I found this out after suspecting it and checking the schedule downstairs when I was done with my cart. This inflamed my righteous indignation.

Plus I had had too much coffee.

I was mad. I couldn't talk to him for minutes. Then I could.

And in a couple of hours I probably won't even be mad anymore.

But it's likely I'll never fully respect him ever again.