Thursday Thirteen

(Link in meme-roll)
Reasons I Like My Job*

1. First and foremost, the people. I know it's easier to whine about the idiots, but there are way more interesting and fun people. I learn something from the patron almost every day. Some days it's behavioral, some days it's factual stuff.


2. Solving a weird question. Yesterday I found a request for a CD that someone else had worked on without success. It turns out the patron had the [Spanish] title slightly wrong, and the "band" name meant "recorded live" (more or less) in Spanish. I found two or three possible recordings that might be the right one and I left it for someone to catch the patron--he's in the library almost every day--and ask him what he actually wanted.


3. I get to help people who, in many cases, really need a kind and helpful person to get them through the day. Every librarian has stories about this. Yesterday, a woman came in to register for a rewards program for a local theater online. No computer skills. As it developed, that program requires an email address, which she didn't have. So we went to yahoo and signed her up as firstname.lastname @ yah00.c0m (i.e. jane.smith @ yah00.c0m). She had to get her ID out to enter the "last name" field correctly. I knew she'd never remember her email password so I wrote it on a slip of paper: "first.last @ yah00.c0m -- password" (not the actual one of course). When she went to fill out the theater form, she typed her email addy as "firstlast @ yah00.c0m" so I had to explain again that she needed to use HER first and last name with the dot. Of course, she'll be back and not know how to log in, so I told her to be sure to hang on to that piece of paper. She was really a nice person, just not very smart.


4. Most of the people I work with are wonderful. Almost all of them are dedicated to making the library better and helping people. We get along pretty well together generally and, having worked together for a long time, we understand each other's foibles and tics. Like Maniac's regular swings from hyperactivity to relative normalcy.


5. Kids. I get to see and talk to kids of all ages regularly. I like kids. A lot. But not in a creepy way. They just inspire the hell out of me without even trying at all. Like the dude who comes in often with his dad asking for books well above his age-level on various topics (dinosaurs, chemistry, rockets...) who has a trach tube and is occasionally hard to understand because his breathing is tricky.


6. I like books. A lot.


7. The hours are somewhat flexible. I get Wednesday mornings off, for instance. Then again, I work till 9 on Wednesdays, so there's that. But if I need time for a doctor's appointment or haircut, it's not (usually) a hassle.


8. It's comfortable. Indoor plumbing, HVAC that (mostly) works. Some light lifting and carrying, but not the sort of thing that is generally dangerous or difficult.


9. Every day is different. Right now I may be cleaning up vomit, but in ten minutes I may get to give a kid her first library card, and later on I may be having a good conversation about the local conservation area with someone who is thrilled to find out about it, and then talk to an older person about finding out where her grandfather's store was in town 80 years ago.


10. I get to be smart for pay. But I don't have to learn DEEP details about too many things, which is good because I find trivia far more fun than study. ;-) Like how a siphon works: I don't care about the reason it works, but I can find you information how water is moved from one side of a mountain range to another.


11. Cataloging, how I love thee! I love sorting out where to 'store' an item, how to make it findable in the catalog or the building, how to describe it so people can find it when they want/need it. I like the freedom within the rules that librarians have developed over time--and continue develop--even when I don't agree with them.


12. I love the technical, repetitive, somewhat boring but also rhythmic tempo of moving newly-purchased items from delivery box through preparing them for patrons to use. The minutiae, the process, the organization....all that stuff is like air and food to me.


13. I love the fact that at MPOW at least, we're fairly free in what we wear to work, what we can keep on and around our desks, and how we arrange the time we spend on projects. Of course, there's always the bigger schedule to keep in mind--who is at which service desk at what time--but in terms of overall time management, we get to decide if today is the day to order books or a day to cut buttons out for storytime or a day to create an Excel file for budgeting...or a day to post on Facebook (work-related stuff!!).

*I chose this topic because right now I'm so hacked off about work I actually took a sick day rather than plow through another day of being sick at work. There are some personality issues among the staff right now that I'm not enjoying. In fact, when I called the scheduling person to tell her I wouldn't be there today because of illness, she gave me a hard time. WhatEVer--that's WHY I'm not at work, because she's being a total bitch about stuff.