Just some stuff

Maybe it is not strictly Clerk or Library related, but she could never be considered a friend of either of these things and I am marking her passing with a link (yes, over there, on your right). It is worth it, I mean it, but you will need to be somewhere where you can watch video and listen to music. Consists of slightly sweary speech and a song. So click elvis if you will.

This anyway is my first link and first link list. I hope to be rolling out more in the weeks to come. Most will connect to my own family of blog pages. Eventually you will be able to meet all your entertainment needs from this portal directly and if my lobbying/bribe efforts come into full flower all computer devices will just hardwire you directly to this site. Wont that be convenient! No more fiddling and clicking, you'll just turn on your computer and you'll be here! I wish it was the future already.

I am not at work yet today, but I will try and let you know if there is any free food of note as soon as I can.

The Thin Line (Fka Clerking 12)

 

The Thin Line

(Clerking 12)

Even the most obtuse clerks, the craziest clerks, the most perfect clerks, the mean clerks, the carefree clerks, the obedient clerks, all of us really, know about the thin line. The thin line marks an infinity of different things for an endless variation of clerks, but the thin line is also the same for everyone, the same no matter what it demarcates, and that is the almost instantaneous transition from “I’m just a decent clerk trying to get through a day” to that sudden, smoky whiff of the smolder of trouble.

Now, I’m not focusing on trouble here, not per se. Real trouble is gossip worthy, rare, and explosive. It’s two clerks yelling at each other. It’s disciplinary actions. It’s hushed, tremulous meetings behind closed doors. It can be everything from almost all your co-workers momentarily hating you to getting fired. But that’s all further down a road than you may ever travel, well into the wilderness that lies beyond the thin line. You may see trouble once in a year, or once in a decade, but the thin line you will see every day.

Have you avoided the check in desk and its ceaseless piles of books for too long? Were you too mean to that patron? Have you called in sick and showed up perky the next day one too many times? Have you wandered off on a minor errand for an unreasonable length of time? Did you win a stalling match with a co-worker to get them to help the person at the registration desk twice in a row now? Have you been in this conversation too long? How loud is it? When, for perfectly sensible reasons, you handed off a chore you hate to someone who’s better at handling it than you did you catch a flash of menace in their eye? Anger? Annoyance? Wild hatred? Check yourself at the thin line.

I’m checking in books. We’re a little short staffed and I’m certainly doing my job if not a bit more. Business quiets down for a bit and a book on Groucho Marx falls into my hands. I quickly ascertain that his mother loved Chico more. It’s just a random paragraph of browsing, maybe thirty seconds tops. I am engrossed, but I smell smoke. I feel the heat of eyes. I look up. There are seven people there, waiting, just quietly standing. An eighth person is being helped by my flustered looking colleague. I know in a sudden shock of recognition that I have just in a flash hurtled past the thin line. I scurry and help the waiting people. Through diligence and efficiency perhaps I manage to chase back across to the safe side of the thin line. But however far I think I have run to safety the thin line is never far away. It waits.

The thin line leaves its subtle marks too. How irritated was my co-worker? Have I done this too often? I make a half joke, a half apology, but did it work? I think she’s okay. I don’t swear off reading, I mean, c’mon, but maybe I look up more for a while. I’m a little more paranoid. The thin line lurks and I keep an eye out.

This does not mean that we clerks are necessarily accurate about the thin line. We may go blundering wildly past a thin line, completely oblivious, while worrying we have transgressed with some trifle no one has ever faulted us for. The obtuse and irritating patron we took for a patsy may be on the phone to the library director now about us, while the touchy weirdo we worried we mortally offended might be so utterly besotted with us we’d be alarmed if we knew. I have seen clerks camped out at remote computer terminals with endless, almost entirely imaginary work, who have long since earned the deep enmity of all their co-workers forever, stepping quickly and with alarm back across the thin line to help me, to appease some wrath in me that is already so deep it is like second nature to me. It is a thin line that they think they see and one they fear they are in danger of momentarily slipping across, but one they have actually lived on the wrong side of for years. Nevertheless, I do sort of appreciate they’re strange, misguided effort. Sometimes we clerks, doing what fundamentally amounts to the exact same job in partnership, do it so differently. These dances with good behavior, these deranged commonalities like thin lines knit us together. I can’t quite endorse the thin line's hints of disaster, their paranoia and fear. It is not pleasant how it can sometimes haunt our steps, or leave us gaping at mirages. But I will grudgingly admit that I can use a little something to get me to look up and see that a line has formed and my co-worker could use a little help. I’m just a bit too inclined to wander off and read about Harpo until it’s time to close.   

Man Down In Bathroom

Initial report filters down to me that a man has fallen in the upstairs men's room. Will I investigate? Yes, I will investigate!

I go to the upstairs men's room and it is empty except for the handicapped stall. It is easy to see that under the partition a man is lying on his back. His head appears to be somewhere near the base of the toilet and he is moving around just enough to suggest life and consciousness.

I tap lightly on the door. "You okay in there?" I ask.

"I'm good." He answers.

He's good.

I report my experience around the library and to The People In Charge and check back after about 45 minutes. Whoever is in that stall now is sitting, which is more the usual and requires no knock.

Liars (Fka Clerking 11)

Liars
 

(Clerking 11)

“What do you do when a patron lies to you?” I am asked by a co-worker. It is a rhetorical question, a cry of despair rather than a consultation for action. By the time any clerk has the experience to understand they are being lied to they understand also that when it happens they are suddenly faced with thin and unsatisfying options. One of these options is decidedly not setting their hands on the counter, looking earnestly at the patron, and saying “Oh my god, you’re lying to me.” A clerk, surprisingly enough, is not in the business of frankness, and a lying patron is a bitter reminder.

But come over here with me and we’ll take a look.

Mr. Johannes (neither a particular liar nor a fan of western fiction, just a patron I thought it would be nice to immortalize by employing his name) has a book wildly overdue on his card. It is called Slocum, the Six-shooter, and the Harem Gal. I inform him of this.

“What?” he asks.

It is a complicated “What?” with many reasons behind it. Firstly, I am afraid to say, I use my library voice nearly all the time unless I am discussing politics or mocking someone who is standing unbeknownst behind me. While this may seem to be an appropriate voice for a person working at a library let me assure you that it is not. It cannot possibly compete with the heart-rending screams of small children which form the acoustical backdrop of the life of all busy public libraries. (Oddly this always plays out the same way for me; 1. child’s heart-rending screams, 2. me, to myself, with alarm “My god, some psychopath has dipped a small child up to its neck in a vat of undiluted hydrochloric acid!” 3. Some grandmotherly lady clucks bemusedly to the general air “Looks like someone needs a nap.”) This inaudibility leads into the second reason for the “What?” This is that western fiction books, which apparently all mysteriously start with the word “Slocum”, are checked out exclusively by men in their eighties and nineties. This is a group that is highly likely to suffer from hearing loss. But there is a third reason. The third reason is patron shock. They cannot believe what they are hearing.

“Slocum, the Six-shooter, and the Harem Gal” I repeat in a voice straining to be loud “Was due on your card two months ago.”

“It can’t be.” He says indignantly “I never checked that out. I don’t even read that sort of book. There must be some mistake!”

I look down at the three books I am currently checking out to Mr. Johannes. They are entitled

Slocum, His Dusty Saddle, and the Busty Cowgirl

Slocum, the Stallion, and the Dancehall Lady and

Slocum, the Golden Horseshoe, and Dangerous Lil

“But” I counter cleverly “Aren’t all of these Slocum books, just like the one overdue?”

He looks at me like I’ve perhaps scored a small point, but it is small, and we are not in an Encyclopedia Brown story where pointing out a little discrepancy can bring a petty criminal to his or her knees (“Ah, you’re right, frogs are amphibians! Darn, I’ll have to return Stinky’s lucky nickel!”).

“I know they’re all Slocum books.” He says pointedly “But I don’t like belly dancing and would never check out a book that might have some.”

Point to him. I must try a different gambit.

“Could someone else in your family have checked out the book on your card?”

He looks, is it suspiciously, at his unruffled, orange haired wife.

“Honey,” she says, rather nicely under the circumstances “Didn’t I see that Slocum book in a bag of Fritos yesterday?”

Ah! Big point to me. He’ll never recover!

“Well,” he says directly to me “I’ll take a look around for it at home, but I expect you’ve got the book somewhere here already.”

Never expect more than a truce.

What do you do when a patron lies to you?

They aren’t lying. They’re just conveniently deluded in their own favor.

And what are we, we clerks behind the desk? Like I said, we are not in the business of frankness. I can’t check the book out to you. I can’t waive your fine. I can’t get you a card. I can’t renew your book.

Well, I can. The policy is against it. I may have to override. But I can. And sometimes I do. But not for liars, so fly right. Have a little faith that your chances improve. Mercy is by no means assured, but most of us try to guard it from the self-deluded, who cannot be trusted with small and valuable things.

Clerking at large: The Real Deal

After repeatedly teasing the accounts of my clerk investigation about town I can finally set down the earth shattering account of my investigation of clerks at large in this city. To go ahead and spoil the overall experience for you I just want to say none of these people are paid anything more than barely adequately at best, and yet they seemed to range from the level of quite tolerable right on up to perfectly excellent. Feeling personally smugly superior as a master clerk went out the door pretty quick, and finding some things to rail against in customer service took some very dedicated searching, which was hard for me because I was also looking for clothes and espresso. I found a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, a long sleeved button down shirt, and an aversion to people saying goodbye to my back when I've already pretty much left their store.

Stop 1. Very busy independent art store.

I was immediately distracted by all the nifty little mini notebooks that I could buy to use for writing blog notes in, but, whoa, it was hard to avoid the fact that these clerks are total high water mark clerks. We know them from many visits and they are happy to see us and nicely jokey, but it's busy here and they do all the chatty friendly stuff informally yet without lingering too long on it. The clerks are social, efficient, knowledgeable, and project a show that goes out to the customer more than in to each other. They work in a very dense, European space, and their sense that they give or make of being slightly overstaffed feels like a luxury for me rather than for them.

Stop 2. Fairly quiet franchise hardware store.

My first encounter with the problem of how I didn't notice too much of what was going on because I was too busy writing notes about what was going on. Clerk left the desk to show us where what we were looking for was located.  This is always the right move when directions would take longer and be blurrier.

Stop 3. Mall store.

Greeted by tattooed lady. That's all I've got. I must have briefly glanced up for half a second from my notebook and registered: Tattooed Lady. I think it was a nice greeting but I'm not sure as I had to hurry and get it in my notebook.

Stop 4. Mall store.

Oh! This is the one one referenced in my opening paragraph! We were in the store for about a minute without any interaction (not that we wanted any) and as we were pretty much crossing out of the store we got a "Have a good day." tossed at our backs. Sort of "Stop! Wait! Goodbye."  I was excited about this one because it kind of bugged me, but have grown considerably less excited as it has become apparent that it does not actually make for a withering critique of retail Clerking and actually instead makes more for a minor critique of people going around with little notebooks.

Stop 5. Mall store (Eddie Bauer).

This was the first place we really got to stand in line and it was pretty exciting because it was for either/or clerks, meaning we got to watch two clerks and be helped by whoever finished first. Did you know that statistically speaking  that is a good situation because seven out of ten times the faster clerk will be the better clerk. It's sort of true, even if I did just make that up. I had a hard time at first settling on who I hoped would help us and ultimately settled on the perky guy. I was later able to see that this was the sound choice as he is who we got (see seven out of ten comment above), he did everything well, and he never shilled for the $15 with any purchase bags, which the other clerk always did. I am thinking the pitch for those bags was a corporate directive and he didn't shill because he felt he could get away with it, which was something he could do for himself and us at the same time. But maybe the other clerk was just overzealous. Either way I think we got the better of the two clerks.

Whew, this is getting long. I will continue with part 2 of this later so you can meditate on, spindle, or forget what we've discussed. But thanks for coming. Remember every comment wins you points! Oh, my lawyer is saying we don't have any points. Also I don't have a lawyer. Once again I am left with "Do as you will." Which is a bit thin, but it's all I've got. I really need to come up with some kind of point system!

Update on Clerking at Large!

If you look a post or two down from here you will see my plans to shop all day and post about my encounters with clerking at large in my city. Well, I have returned with 6 pages of notes, 6 pages! I have to admit they are pocket notebook sized pages, but I am about to tear the lid off of clerking in this town! Or, er, I would be tearing the lid off, except everyone was pretty nice, so you might not want to get too excited, just, you know, moderately excited. You could definitely get moderately excited. Meet me back here maybe later tonight, probably for part one (6 pages! I know what I said about pocket notebook, but 6 is a lot and I wrote small), if not tonight, certainly by tomorrow morning. But I'm not one of those blogger types to encourage you to now get fresh air. If you want to sit here for the next ten hours hitting the refresh button I'm good with that. As you wish.

Oh, and I'll write a bit more about this, but if you want to comment or communicate with me through comments I would be ridiculously delighted. If you don't want your comment posted publicly for any reason  just say "please don't post" or some such thing. I support shyness everywhere! I have to approve posts before they show up anyway to prevent shoe ads and unsolicited post-modern novels and that sort of thing from just appearing in the blog and taking us all off topic.

Clerking at Large!

Having a few days off in a row, which happens every couple of weeks for me, has caused me a bit of blogger's worry: how will I keep the entertaining flow of blog features coming out steadily to you, you who deserve so thoroughly to be entertained and informed. What can I do if I can't keep the sidebar updated on what free food there is in the breakroom and if I don't know if the guy who is always there in the periodicals section is there (he is, unless he is a figment of my imagination). There is a Library video I am working on that I am keen to link to for you, but we are waiting on our musical score to complete it. It is the one I mentioned in an earlier post- the talk show with my Lyndon B. Johnson like co-worker. Since my film making skills are, well, unsteady,  I am counting on the musical score to bring it all together! I proposed to the composer, who is a friend and co-worker (I know, weird!) that he relay information as to what free food there is in the breakroom so I can keep my site updated, but then had to say I was kidding because I think you can recognize that is slightly insane. Although my secret ideal is to have teams of agents streaming reports in on the most mundane and odd aspects of where I work I am guessing it is for the best that  this is not going to be happening.

Anyway, so, what clerking thing to post when I am not working? And an answer has come to me today. I am going shopping, at a quite large mall, and other places too, and guess what? There are tons of clerks there! And I am bringing my little notebook! I will take notes on the clerks I encounter and be back later! Wait right here!

Enlightenment (Fka Clerking 10)

A long one...

Clerking 10

Enlightenment

One of my colleagues, after reading my missives on the art of clerking, presented me with the idea that, while these writings occasionally amuse in a Seinfeldian way, they also, unfortunately, serve to justify, condone, and even aggrandize the petty grievances and bitterness of clerk life. Shouldn’t we, he posited, rise above these irritations. He has and is the happier for it. Who cares if someone brought him 18 DVD sleeves he had to get the DVDs for? One has to work anyway. Why resist whatever work comes your way, work that you will do whether you resent it or not.

I commended him for his wisdom. One need only look at a random example of clerking to see the superiority of his approach.

Let’s start with my approach. I am sitting peaceably at the checkout desk. Perhaps I am alphabetizing requests and peaceably wondering what kind of clerk Herman Melville was (difficult to tell as people tend to go on about his writing), or I am, in my quest to have important community information at the ready, tracking the progress of a slow moving but vicious thunderstorm that, though still about 4 hours west of us, I have already pinned my hopes of a quiet evening on, or, dare I even dream it, dare I even name the sacred name, a blackout. As I drift into a fantasy about a terrific bolt of lightning smashing through our skylight window high above the consumer information table, I am interrupted by an approaching patron. Curiously the patron is announcing in their loudest speaking voice “I am at the Library.” This seems obvious to me, and the child, squirming and being half-dragged behind this patron, is either clear on it already or not very interested.  The patron is holding their tiny phone to their ear with one hand and gripping the poor kid with the other so that the items they have are pinioned awkwardly between elbow, ribs and armpit. Awkwardly also describes how the books are dropped in front of me. They spill across the desk. No words are addressed to me but rather the patron continues to proclaim biblically into their little device.

“Maybe we should have chicken tonight”

I am at a complete loss as to what to do with all these items piled before me, so I greet the child.

“Tough day?” I ask.

 I do not get a response, just a wide, shocked stare. The parent/kidnapper holds out a library card to me. Ah, I know what to do with this. I put it under the laser to bring up the patron’s record. Fortunately there is something I can use there.

“It says here that your request for “Lethal Weapon 2” expired. Is it okay if I delete the note?” I ask directly into the patron’s talking.

“Hold on a minute.” The patron says to the not there person. “What?”

My first word addressed to me. I am very excited! “Four years ago you didn’t get in to pick up “Lethal Weapon 2” when it came in for you. Do you mind if I take the note regarding it off your record?”

“Uh, no, go ahead.”

Four more words!

“Yeah, I’m checking my books out now.” The patron lies to their remote intimate. I’m the one doing the checking out.  As the patron begins to return to the chicken possibilities I interrupt.

“You have a 30 cent late charge on your card.”

“What? Wait. I’ll see you in a few minutes. I better go.” The patron closes their cell phone.

We conclude our business.

Now let’s look at my colleague’s approach.

He is sitting peaceably at the checkout desk. He is alphabetizing requests. A noisy patron approaches and he contentedly checks out their items.

That’s it.

Even I, nursing my bitterness and irritations, am sort of moved by the beautiful simplicity of my co-workers method. This is not some lightweight fly by night approach. It is, in its way, the expression of an unassailable philosophy that traces a rich pedigree back into the bosom of Buddhism. We have several books on this, and though they don’t get checked out too much, perhaps people should try one or two along with their movies about people being dismembered. But it doesn’t stop there. This philosophy runs right through history up into modern best sellers like Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff that people actually do check out occasionally. That patrons can become quite contentious about one day late charges of 30 cents on Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff doesn’t refute the message. Nor does their curious interest that I not sweat the small stuff as in “It’s only 30 cents. Why won’t you just waive the charge?” No mere individual failing can touch on the philosophy in question. Indeed I only bring it up here because, well, I am doing it again. I can’t resist it; I luxuriate in bitterness, I hone endlessly on criticism, irritation fascinates me, yes, certainly, but, maybe, occasionally, hopefully, there is something else as well…

Humor.

As in, one day we’ll look back on this and laugh. As in, laughter is the best medicine. As in, laugh and the world laughs with you. Fear, bitterness, irritation laughed at is defused. If I can take my petty irritations, decorate them up into elaborate, puffy, intricate confections and then, while delivering them to a place of honor, drop them sprawling, isn’t it less aggrandizement than a cautionary tale, a little mudslinging at bitterness. Is the lesson of my story of the cell phone using patron really just, “My god, people are so infuriating!” Isn’t it also, “Don’t sweat the small stuff, but help yourself to the miniscule stuff.” Or “There’s nothing wrong with war as long as it’s fought with nerf items.” Or “To our great misfortune and relief, at the right distance, everything is funny.” Isn’t it, really, the same thing in the end as the Buddhist; don’t sweat the small stuff approach. Only instead of a zero step process, it’s a two step process. Here, I’ll illustrate:

Enlightenment

Or

Embittered irritation + Comic retelling = Enlightenment

Sure the centered detachment of enlightenment sounds beautiful. Who wouldn’t want peace? Some of us just happen to like more controlled doses of it allowing for carefully administered amounts: Irritation, observation, recognition, tomfoolery, and bliss. Repeat as you will. This second approach works best for me for several reasons. First, pure enlightenment is kind of overwhelming. Does one lose oneself or doesn’t one? Who am I if everything is equal to me?  I feel method two allows me to approach with cautious respect, yet still permits me to keep my preference for, say, cheesecake over liver. Second, as you will surely realize when you reflect on your experience and all the people you have ever encountered, enlightenment is an extremely rare and difficult state to get to. If I were to slip up and get irritated at a person who thrust a mess of items at me while chatting on a cell phone and torturing their child I might feel like I was a failure if I were going for scenario one. Under scenario two I would just think “Oooh, I should write one about cell phones!” and I’d be on my way. Finally, while the enlightened Siddhartha’s job of ferrying people across a river may be as mundane as my job, its elegance is suited to a lot of quiet attention and presence. My work requires more of a loud attention, and I feel strangely more present when I answer the phone with a clipped, cheerful, fake British accent than when I just pick up the phone and… listen.

Don’t get me wrong. I follow the way of the fool, but I’ll keep an open mind, and if my colleague’s enlightenment holds together and looks impressive enough, well, it’s never too late to just, let go.

Out Shelving In the Old Timey Library

I thought a lot about Live Blogging (see sidebar) from the fiction shelves but had to face it; it is, as usual, real quiet up here. I think it would be hard to thrill you with:

1:34:  The guy who's always sitting in that chair reading the newspaper is again sitting in that chair reading the newspaper.

People sometimes complain or ask where the old library is amid all the factory floor style open bins of DVDs, endless rows of computers, and children working concertedly on their ability to mimic the screeches of wild cats. But that old library is still around, right here, hanging on happily enough upstairs, just a ton of books, one ever so barely adequately paid government employee (That's me! Hi!) steadily restocking the shelves, and a few quiet individuals scanning slowly along for something decent to read. Last week was crack pipes in the garden, a nasty family tumble down the central staircase, and a man wildly enraged about his lost glasses case, and there will be more low thrill drama like that again this week too, but mostly it's just....this. A Library. It might as well be 1958 up here, except maybe for all the writhing bondage pictures on the book covers.

Two truly miscellaneous notes from the front desk, not for the faint of heart.

Under the category of random stories from the front desk, today, one with a bit of commentary, one not:

1. A man came to the front desk, to my co-worker. He had three small children and they had carefully chosen a few books each that they were quietly excited about. My co-worker asked for their Library Card. The man said he didn't have a card. My co-worker nicely explained how he needs to get a Library Card to check out. The man was stunned and perturbed by this, argued briefly against nothing, as acquiring a Library Card is both sensible and reasonably simple, and then, abruptly, the man left, his children's carefully chosen books just abandoned there on the desk.

My heart is warm to all the manner of troubled humanity that comes into the Library and I run a surprisingly high benefit of the doubt, which is surprising for one such as I so touched with cynicisms and cautious misanthropisms. But this man, with his little needless cruelty and carelessness to his children, this man I place beyond the pale and my heart is closed to him forever.

2. Another man, 40ish, about 4'10" tall came to my desk. I honestly had not noticed his height in any way. He said "How are you?" I said "Good, how are you doing?" He said "I'm still short."

Happy to be here (Fka Clerking 9)

Clerking 9

Happy To Be Here

Some things I only learn through a joke. This one came when I was standing at the check-in desk with one of my co-workers. We were making conversation because it was cocktail hour at the library. It is always cocktail hour when you work with other people in public service except there are no drinks or hors d’oeuvres and you have to constantly keep busy. So actually it's like being a host at a cocktail hour, a crowded one, with lots of demanding guests who you didn't get to choose. And though I said there are no drinks most people around you do seem a trifle plastered.

So there I am chatting with my co-worker and she says:

"I really don't want to be here today."

Not only is this an extraordinarily common comment for me or one of my co-workers to make, but, it struck me then, it was a comment I had heard with some regularity from this particular co-worker. What was unusual was that this person not only professed to love her job, but she had made some serious and, frankly, heroic efforts, through a series of personal trials, to be at this job. I responded with what I thought of as a joke.

"We're sort of like opposites," I said (I am less erudite when speaking) "You say you love working here, but you never like actually being here, whereas I say I despise coming to work here, but I am always delighted to be here."  Usually I am at least a little funnier than this and slightly nicer and while I was verbally trying to backpedal away from this ungainly statement, my mind, nearly of its own accord, was reeling. Am I actually, secretly, always delighted to be here?

I loathe the tedious, unending, mundane work. I watch the clock incessantly, trying to bring breaks and closing time into being through the sheer force of my longing. My co-workers can sometimes irritate me to the finest center of my being. Patrons won't leave me alone and are entitled not to. Management regularly befouls the place and batters at my dignity. It is terrible.

But, people are nice and funny and heartbreaking. I love being the little king of little rules, working my tiny, tiny corner of the world's justice. I love the deranged theater of it all. I love dodging work, complaining, working too hard in adverse circumstances, working to not work. I love knowing so many people but none too well.

So am I always delighted to be here?

No, ugh, don't be silly. Of course not. Absolutely not! But sometimes, in some failed joke of an observation, out of the corner of my eye, when the lights coming through just right, the answer is, god help me, Yes.

Because It's Breakroom Week!

Because it's  breakroom week I felt I better update you on the free food situation. I have eaten one of the tiny mangoes. I didn't mean to, but felt I had to after cutting it open to prove to a co-worker that it wasn't a tiny pear.

A simple Heads up.

New food in the breakroom today so check out that sidebar on what free food there is in the breakroom because it's pretty exotic. I may even dare to try the Litchi Gateau!

Greeting (Fka Clerking 8)

Clerking 8

Greetings Are Fun and Easy

I have begun to suspect that some of the regular patrons, ones who spend most of their days at the library I work at, like to leave and come back many times in a day because they enjoy the greeting ritual. These are the lonely people, mysteriously endowed to roam throughout the library with unidentifiable sheets of Xeroxed paper that they make more copies of every couple hours. I am never at anytime sure whether or not they are in the library unless they are borrowing white out or the scissors or some tape. Every hour or so they are leaving or entering.

“Hey!” I say, or “How’s it going?” or perhaps a formal “Hello.”

“Hey.” They reply smiling, their fix of human contact attained and satisfied for another small part of the day, maybe like a between meal snack; a soft pretzel for instance, or a biscotti. For all I know it could be the whole meal. One stocky, gruff, white-bearded regular likes to loudly salute me with “Hey Hippie!” (Do I look like a hippie? Maybe I am free-spirited, but most likely my hair was longish once about five years ago), and I reply “Hey Santa!” at which he grimaces inscrutably. We can enact this ritual four or five times a day, each of us feeling smart and a tad bit daring every time.

“Bye Hippie.”

“Bye Santa.” I say as he heads on out to his car. Is it for a visit, or because he lives there? Maybe he is heading out to pop over to some other institution where they know him just as well as I do, which is not very well at all. Either way he’ll be back soon enough. I’ll have a greeting ready for him. I’m happy to provide the service. It’s a nice three second respite from checking books in and kind of fun too, if I keep my standards low enough, which I usually do.

This Week From the Breakroom

I eat pretty well. I use a vast majority of organic ingredients. I shop at co-ops and cook a lot. Today the food I've brought to work includes homemade vegetable potstickers, homemade croutons, and a small bag of organic roasted cashews. I'll make a latte with organic coffee and organic milk on my own espresso machine that I keep in the breakroom. I eschew the weird processed foods and fast foods so many of my co-workers horrifyingly eat. I'm just saying that I have some real standards. And yet, when it comes to the free food that shows up mercurially in the breakroom my glorious foodie standards shatter like a Tiffany window with a brick thrown through it.




What is it about this free food? Is it the sheer distraction? Is it the ridiculously ready to go, stick-our-germy-hands-in-the-bowl availability of it all?



I guess so. And it is by no means just me. Free food in the breakroom sometimes shows up that I would never consider eating in the remotest recesses of my imagination (even if it's possible I might have brought it in!) and, bam, in 5 hours it is all gone. It's a miracle of human ravenousness!



So to help you share in all the glorious excitement of the free food in the breakroom I will begin a new side bar item (look right and probably up a bit). It may come and go depending on whether there actually is any free food. The uncertainty and occasional scarcity of free food only adds to its popularity. Be part of my Library life experience and check out "What Free Food Is There In The Breakroom Today?"



Also, in honor of this new feature, take the quiz (also a new feature!) on what free food you'd be most likely to eat. Sadly it's not the sort of quiz where you can win a prize or anything, but you do get the fun of asserting a meaningless choice among a ridiculously narrow range of choices. I've undersold it, haven't I?

A wee post about books

Hello to all my friends in China. I got a page view from China! It might have been some sort of weird, automated thing, but, if not, hello to all my friends in China! 你好, or, "Ni hao!"

Sorry, I'm pretty excited about my blog. But this is not a blog about blogging so I'll try to restrain myself here. What I came to discuss with you briefly are books. Actual books for reading, which are the same sort of things I shuffle around a fair bit during a workday. I wont go the book review route too much here mostly because my usual reading state is one where I'm having a hard time finding books I like enough to really recommend. The ones I do recommend are over on the sidebar to your right under 'what I'm reading' but which you should take to mean 'what I've read relatively recently that I really liked.' Anyway, I have been on a roll with reading lately, books I just think are terrific so I'll say a few words about them now and bring your attention to this fancy sidebar feature. It's the least I could do what with you're coming all the way to my blog from China! And though you might not quite have the same taste as me my following descriptions will be so thorough it will be as if you read these books, but without any of the fuss of time passage or any painful "not enjoying" them due to our variant tastes.

Actually, I won't say that much here, just, well, this, about these 3:

Drops of God is a graphic novel soap opera about wine tasting that was super popular in Japan. You know what else was super popular in Japan? Sushi. You like sushi don't you? Anyway, it actually manages to teach some about wine in a melodramatic, lovely funny soap opera kind of way that is a compelling treat in the way a fantastic tv show is, but this series will leave you multi cultured and palate attuned whereas a tv show will  merely leave you smelling of sulfur and ozone and wasted youth.

Bushman Lives is the best Daniel Pinkwater book in a long long time, pure fun and magic, and an absolute shoe in for the Newberry Award, or, um, it would be if those people ever got their act together. Want to know what it's about? It doesn't matter! I promise. It doesn't matter! Do you like enlightenment? Did I mention that Daniel Pinkwater once sent me a postcard!

Constellation Games I really loved, but I think it would help if you liked video games, anarchy, Ursula K Leguin, and books where the space aliens don't come to eat us. You should definitely like most of those things to try this book. But if you're four for four on that, you might want to hurry to your library, or you can buy it too! I think authors like that.

Okay, that's all from here. Surf with caution and creativity.

What's Going On At the Library Today!

There is nothing going on at the Library today. It is one of my regular days off, but also it is Easter which is a holiday about eggs and the Pope washing feet or something (it's not my religion so I get easily confused by the Internet!), so the Library is closed anyway. It doesn't count as a holiday for me or anything so I get no perks, instead I was just busier than usual at work yesterday and will be busier than usual tomorrow and Tuesday as the Patrons try to make up for their enforced Library separation with extra love, which, in my terms means more circulating items, more people, more phone calls, more jams on the machine. But am I complaining? Uh, yeah. Hello? I'm pretty sure it's part of my job description! My only co-workers who don't complain incessantly are the ones who are in a sort of deranged constant violation of their job description in ways they don't even understand, so it stands to reason. Nevertheless, because all this complaining is sort of awful I often vow that I will not complain for a bit. I might vow this on my way to work and feel full of clean and virtuous confidence, but then I get to work and my co-worker, y., launches in on tirade against people who cannot seem to put books in the transit boxes properly and, just to keep her company, I sort of lightly inveigh against the people who take the last transit slip and don't replace them. I try to see it from their perspective, but it leads to the people who don't put the dates on the bins and now I really mean it. This leads y. to how the circulation manager is the worst violator of inappropriate slip dispensing, which triggers a long tirade from me on Management in general, which is something, believe me, you don't want to get me started on or you will soon be looking desperately for an exit with a panicked expression in your eyes. I will see the panicked expression in your eyes but I wont be able to stop now as I am careening wildly downhill and I am pretty sure crashing to a halt will kill me.

So where were we? My co-worker and I eat the whole bag of potato chips is where. Woozy and nauseous I stumble to the front desk and there you are. And it is refreshing and grounding to see if we have a copy of that Exotic Marigold Hotel movie in for you.

Relenting (Fka Clerking 7)

Relenting

You have spent an hour carefully collecting an appealing stack of books and movies. I cannot let you check them out because the last item you returned to us was coated in a sticky fluorescent green sugar glaze. At least, "sugar" is what the note on your record says. I am alarmed to think of my co-workers tasting of the returns, especially when they've returned from their journeys with new textures, smells and colors. Also, the pages appeared to have been lightly toasted, like a gently roasted marshmallow. As this book is unsuitable for circulation you now owe us $10.95.  This exceeds our allowable limits. No, we don't take credit cards. There is a cash machine down the street. I'm sorry about your unemployment situation. No, it is unlikely you checked the book out like that as your date due slip is actually affixed to the book by an over coating of the green glaze. Oh really? I am terribly sorry about your gangrenous leg.

We regard each other for a moment, me implacable, and you with dimming light. You try to accept it all, but it's just too big. There is something almost like a weight, misty, plowing inexorably down on you. I watch the slump of your posture under it. It seems to thin you, crush, leach and crack. The tight grip you have on your items slackens like a great ocean liner sinking. Life is futile and darkness falls.

What you do not know, slouching in your private misery, is that, barring your turning out to be a complete monster, I, at the very start, decided to let you check out for today, whether you could pay or not. Why then do I let you suffer like this? What kind of person am I? I am a clerk, and as such I am only sort of a person. I am also my job. I am the institution. I am a teacher. I am a performer. Yes, I am a performer, and this is my performance. Here I play the cold bureaucrat, the institutional wall, the end of your hopes and dreams. I have to sell that first. But hidden here is mercy, the light of my humanity, your second chance. It is my secret treat whose value I carefully cultivate to its apogee. Mercy must be delayed here so that you understand it is not yours by right. I hope to make an impression so that you will take us seriously, pay your debts, care for your materials. And when I relent and exclaim "Oh, I'll just go ahead and check your stuff out for today!" as if I can no longer hold the door back on my irrepressible humanity, it is indeed a small light to shine. But in my job I do not have much light to give, and in the deeper darkness even the dimmest of lights can be seen from far away. Of course, this is also a way of saying that if I, at little cost to myself, do a favor for you, I will spare no effort to make sure you see it. I like to be noticed.

On Shelving (with internet friendly list)

In olden days library work was structured in such a way that I did not shelve at all. When shelving one or two hours a day became a part of my duties I felt at first it was a bit of a comedown. What's a class A clerk like me doing being reduced to mere shelving! Then 4 things became clear to me that made it all okay.

1. The difference between a class A clerk and a class C clerk is not very big and often people invert the two based on confused and irrelevant standards anyway. I could be one of those people!

2. There is not actually anything to "Comedown" from.

3. While "Shelving time" certainly isn't "Free time" it nevertheless offers more latitude than almost any other job I do. When people come up to me at the front desk, I need to help them, now! but when a book is waiting to be shelved it will not glare impatiently at me if I want to stare into space and think about making potstickers or blogposts.

4. In an informal analysis conducted over the past few months I have determined that the average amount of books my co-workers shelve in one hour of scheduled shelving is slightly less than one full cart. I can shelve one full cart in 14 minutes!

Your Clerk (fka Clerking 6)

Clerking 6

Your Clerk

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, when you come to me instead of the self check out machines saying that you prefer the personal touch, or that you want to protect my job, you have the best intentions. You aren’t just avoiding doing the work yourself. You aren’t afraid of failing to manage a machine that 5-year olds and the developmentally disabled handle with aplomb. You just care. Thank you. I honor your kindly attentions. I do. I bristle only at that which you could not possibly have known: that machine is my colleague.

Just like me you are free to dislike certain of my colleagues, bemoan them, and be endlessly irritated by them. But also like me you are not free to reject them out of hand. When I look on the schedule and see that I am to work my shift with a colorless, inefficient and oblivious clerk, that is my lot. When you wander up to the desk and that same clerk is the person available to help, that, I’m afraid, is your lot too. There are conditions under which you can and, sometimes, should, with firm insistence, move on to another clerk. But let me warn you, these conditions are surprisingly rare. Of my hundreds of co-workers over thirteen years I have never heard one swear or even seriously raise their voice non-simultaneously with the patron. Also, I have never seen one threaten a patron. These would be times to move on and when you do I will be completely on your side. Indeed, it will likely be a fascinating and exciting event for me, but, like I said, I’ve yet to see a good incident of it. Likewise you can move on if you reach an impasse with your clerk and you are in the right. You must give it a fair shot- that is fully argue your case a couple of times, and, most importantly, you must be right. That done you are truly entitled to move on and I will be very kind, solicitous, and helpful to you, and very unbristly (except, perhaps, to the clerk who wronged you). But, as I said, you must be right, and this will be true in only about five or ten percent of these cases. This is not because clerks are smarter than you (some are, some aren’t), rather it comes down to two simple issues. One, we are vastly better informed as to policy, and, two, most importantly, we clerks are, except in very small ways, quite disinterested. I know in detail exactly what you need to get a library card and, except for either not wanting to do the work of getting you a library card or, as a decent person, wanting you to be able to get that card, I really, really don’t care. You, on the other hand, don’t know the policy other than you think it should be whatever it needs to be so that you get a card. This will seem the height of reasonable to you because you want a card, which is the most reasonable thing in the world. It is human nature and applies so strongly to things like fines that you will quite nearly be able to create false memories of dates and trips to the library.

Anyway, those are the conditions under which you may get yourself a new clerk (or, I suppose, if you must, a manager). Everything else, I’m afraid, is not just cause. Is your clerk too smiley or not smiley enough, deranged looking, is their head covered in scabs, are they sullen, slow, a chatterer, sporting a confusing accent, insisting on telling you about their spleen problems? Do you know they’re an ex-con, or see that they’re tattooed to look like maggots are crawling out of their flesh? Do they smell bad, or, perhaps, refreshingly of gin, are they completely armless, maybe devoid of personality? Are they a machine? I’m sorry, but they are your clerk until they fail you. I’m over here if you need me.