Ugh! UUGGGHH!!!!!
So, let's recap. On Saturday we tried to tour the Fox. The website had the incorrect time listed (11:30) and the tours actually ran at 10 and 11. After feeding the meters (25 cents for seven minutes!), we decided to hang around until the 11 tour. The entry to the Fox has this wide open lobby area just past the ticket booth. We milled around with about twenty other folks, and then I saw this group of three people. I thought for a second that it was the Devil, the director of my former job at Alzheimer's Hell, her husband and a guest. Literally, my heart started pounding a thousand beats a minute. I broke into a cold sweat and felt myself fill with a mixture of panic and pure rage. I stared at her--I wasnt wearing my glasses--to see if it actually WAS her or not. I sure this woman thought I was a pure lunatic with my expression. "Angie," I said, "If that's my former boss, we may have to leave." "What?" she replied. "Really?" I put on my glasses, took a few grudging steps forward and discovered, WHEW!, that it wasn't her. I can only imagine my look of relief. But then I just felt dirty and lame (like you do after you nearly miss a sudden car accident), that this stupid, awful, unethical, weak, conniving, fake, fifty year old woman could have this affect on me FOUR YEARS after I quit my job. Four fucking years and I flip out when I think I see her. It's such a shame how much Alzheimer's Hell traumatized me. I really do need a support group.
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On Monday, it marked the end of Spring break for my county. I was up at the library, and it was a busy day despite the kids being back in school. Right before I left, I heard a discussion between my boss and a co-worker. "Is there more graffiti?" I asked. (A few months ago, we'd had someone draw a picture of a penis on the girls bathroom door, with both "I LOVE SUCKING DICK" and some other lameness written nearby.) Nope. This time, a bunch of punk kids had removed strategic letters from our sign, reducing it to Gwnt Cunt Pubic Library. N-I-C-E. On my way out, I removed a couple more letters so it wouldn't seem so abrasive and my manager had to write the third incident report for the day. Gotta love the library.
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Today I had a really, really, really bad day. We are already short staffed, right? Well, three people have quit and HQ hasn't replaced a single one of them. We're getting a librarian on May first, but we've been limping along for months now. Everyone is so sick of shelving, so tired, me included. It's really caught up to me and physically I feel really sore and depleted. It's gotten to the point where the minute I step in the door, I think of any way possible for me to get the hell out of there. Can I take an hour of vacation time every day so I can leave an hour earlier? How long can I sit in the bathroom until someone notices? Can I wander the stacks, pretending to look for something just so I dont have to talk to anyone?
Well, today was particularly bad. A number of folks were gone, we have to do these useless surveys in addition to our normal duties, and by 3:30 all 25 carts were full of books. I was in the check-in room and I couldn't do my job because I didnt have an empty cart to put the books on. I tried to step back, to breathe, to remind myself that it's just books and it didnt matter. But apparently I wasn't doing a good job. Someone came up to me and asked if I was feeling okay because I didnt look quite right. What I wanted to say was, "No, Im not okay. Im gonna give someone a world of pain right now if I dont get the fuck out of here." Instead, I decided to take a break and get ready to go home.
As I sat in the back room by my locker, I heard the assistant and branch manager talking to each other. "Did you see the statistics this month?" "No, I havent seen them yet." (Each month, HQ tabulates the number of check-ins, check-outs and holds we process at each branch.) "CHL: 75,846 (or something ungodly high). The next highest: FFR at 51,682." That is insane. Totally fucking insane. In March, my branch processed over 75,000 books. Twelve full time staff members processed over 75,000 mother fucking books. No wonder why I'm so damned grumpy! When I heard that, I knew it was time to go home. I was supposed to go to this thing at DeVry tonight about getting a Masters of Library Science through long distance learning programs, but you know, the thought of doing a library thing after I leave the library makes me want to yank my hair out.
Perhaps I need to rethink this whole MLS thing altogether. Do I really want to bog myself down in debt studying something that makes me so unhappy on a daily basis? I'll tell you though, I've decided that Im not going to pursue my MLS until I leave this county. Honestly, there's no way I could face total library immersion--all day, all night, work and classes and homework at the same time. No way. I just wish I knew if all libraries were like this, or if our little county is an rarity. Maybe someday I'll get into a nice, quiet, stressfree library (like mine was before they fired all the shelvers in January), and then my employers can pay to send me to graduate school.
Well, I gotta find something to eat. Just so you don't think it's all my imagination, here's part of an email from a friend and fellow library worker at my county. It made me laugh hysterically when I read it. (Don't know if its funny to anyone besides us...)
"excuse me, m'am, where are your tax forms? you don't have them? well so and so told me they had 'em at the library. what am i supposed to do? download them? what does that mean? well i could just do that at home, right? 15 cents a page? well what if i need the booklet? where's the copier? why does it say 'set key card'? do i put my library card in this slot here that says print card? can i pay for these 2 pages with a credit card 'cause i don't have 30 cents. can i bother you and bother you and bother you and make you insane and make you age faster and make you think that the whole world is full of dumb-dumbs? why do i have a late fee? i turned those books in."