frank r. hewitt writes ”
Generally, mornings are pretty quiet. Especially on days like today when the weather is nasty, it’s quite pleasant to enjoy the library’s tranquil ambience undisturbed by patrons. But, like all good things, it usually comes to an end as noon approaches.
Our first patron of the day was Mrs. P, one the many senior hypochondriacs that keep the medical publishers’ bottom line in the black.
frank r. hewitt writes ”
Generally, mornings are pretty quiet. Especially on days like today when the weather is nasty, it’s quite pleasant to enjoy the library’s tranquil ambience undisturbed by patrons. But, like all good things, it usually comes to an end as noon approaches.
Our first patron of the day was Mrs. P, one the many senior hypochondriacs that keep the medical publishers’ bottom line in the black.Wearing some hideous flowered thing, she totters through the front door, a (barely) walking advertisement for calcium supplements. She should know the medical section by heart as much as she uses it, but, my luck, she’s heading for the reference desk. Fortunately, the unsteady progress of Mrs. P’s doddering gait gives me plenty of time to buzz the clerk at the circ desk and ask her to buzz me back with a fake phone call should Mrs. P start rambling on too long. The fake phone ruse proves unnecessary today, though. She just wants to know if we have any new books on arthritis. I scribble the call number on a piece of scrap paper and point her to the 610s. I’d recently shifted the arthritis books to the bottom shelf in the hope of discouraging some of the geezers and geezettes, but so far it doesn’t seem to have helped much.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t dislike all old people – just the ones that come into the library and pester me instead of doing something productive, like working at Wal-Mart or McDonalds. In fact, one of my assistants is a senior citizen, and I don’t know how I’d get through the day without him. His name is Old Grand-Dad, and his office is in the bottom drawer of my desk. Old Grand-Dad has an even more helpful colleague named Panama Red, but I’ve had to cut back since I can’t afford Panama’s services much anymore. The local kids are charging so much for an ounce nowadays that even forgiving library fines or distracting the security guard so they can steal a few DVDs doesn’t knock much off the price. Not to mention that the union completely caved in on drug testing, so the prospect of enjoying a mellow workday is getting riskier.
By this time I’m ready for a break, so I tell our new MLS librarian that I have a doctor’s appointment (actually, just a leisurely lunch and postprandial visit with Old Grand-Dad), and she eagerly agrees to come out and cover the reference desk so I can go to lunch early. Although her enthusiasm can be annoying, Susie Sunshine (our new grad) is so eager to please (and easy to take advantage of) that I’d rather have her around than a more experienced (i.e. jaded) colleague who’d be tougher to get over on.
After lunch, I have some off-desk time. I quickly discard a memo from the administration reminding us that “work should be fun,” that we “choose our own attitude,” and suchlike crapola. Our management fad-loving director is most recently enamored of something called the “FISH philosophy.” Apparently, corporate America (along with the irritatingly influential “library should be run like a business” crowd) is now taking management cues from some fishmonger whose book was moronic enough to get it on the best-seller list. The “innovation” behind this latest fad is that the mindless, minimum-wage dronework of fishmonging was made more enjoyable (and more importantly, more profitable) if you let the workers throw fish at each other. Any fad that suggests that cheesy slogans (rather than decent pay and benefits) can make your company more profitable and reduce turnover will understandably be popular with the few US employers who haven’t yet moved their operations to third-world sweatshops. An example of the FISH philosopy in action: instead of providing health insurance, when one of your workers has a heart attack you throw a salmon at him (salmon being rich in some sort of heart-healthy fatty acids).
Anyway, despite my natural distaste for the piscine ideology, I suppose there might be some merit to the “work should be fun” idea. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I decide to test the theory by spending the rest of my off-desk time nursing an Old Grand-Dad and shooting pool on Yahoo Games. Buzz-enhanced online eight-ball does turn out to be more fun than tediously poring over book reviews, so I guess there’s something to be said for being open to new ideas.
Returning to the reference desk, the library’s a lot noisier than I left it this morning. School’s out for the day, and I have to dispatch a crew of annoying little twerps down to the children’s department (fate worse than death = job as a children’s librarian). I’ve barely settled down to enjoy the newly kid-free environment, when I see Mrs. K coming towards the desk. Her husband’s a city alderman, something she’ll be sure to let you know within five minutes of meeting her. I usually try to avoid her, but I don’t have time to escape and the fake phone call won’t do because no telephone reference question could possibly be as important as serving Her Majesty.
Mrs. K wants a copy of “Seabiscuit,” a biography of a racehorse. She says that she’s fascinated by horse racing and drops a few names by way of intimating that she travels in some pretty stratospheric social circles. Her husband owns a wholesale meat business, so I’m doubtful of her claims to that social set, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he has some *commercial* relationships with the racing industry.
Frankly, I find the notion of a racehorse’s biography pretty absurd. Racehorses eat, sleep, and run around in circles. If they run fast, they’re put out to stud; if they run slow, then they’re glue. How the hell do you get a 400-page book out of that material? Of course, given today’s debased cultural climate, padding the page count with a lurid account of Seabiscuit’s love life might enhance marketability to the (Jerry) Springer-philic segment of the reading public, but I haven’t seen that mentioned in any reviews. Guess we’ll have to wait for the unauthorized biography to get that angle.
But then, I have a hard time understanding the appeal of many best-selling books. For example, folks seem to have an insatiable appetite for diet books and get-rich-quick real estate books. How many of these do they have to read before they figure out that it ain’t gonna happen?? I recently saw one of those rah-rah articles on lisnews.com that described libraries as “Temples of Wisdom.” or some such boosterish nonsense. Sometimes I think “Warehouses of Folly” would be a better description, but hey, whatever keeps the paychecks coming is OK with me.
frh
“
[Originally posted to newlib-l, where Michael McGrorty’s musings have inspired me to try my hand at a little “life at the library” narrative.]
Recent Comments