more library adventures
Oct. 5th, 2011 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Vignette from last week: I am putting away DVDs (again). Two little girls are off to the side somewhere. One of them says to the other, "That lady looks like a vampire!" Their mom instantly shushes them. It didn't occur to me until some hours later: were they talking about me? I was wearing mostly black, but it had little flowers on it...
Vignette and retrospective analysis from today--
Context: I am continuing the weeks-long project of goosing the entire nonfiction section down the shelves to space things out between what had formerly been widely scattered empty/overcrowded shelves. This involves brute-force transfer of every single book at least once, depending on how much tweaking I do at the shelf cutoffs for Dewey logistics. A bank of computers is nearby.
Incident: Out of the blue, a little old lady turns around in her computer chair and sputters "Goddamit!" at me. I glance up, mildly surprised. She turns away again, logs off, and storms out, snapping, "Thank you for the noise." I mumble a rote apology, but she is already gone.
Oookay then.
Moving shelves and shelves of hardbacks is not a lightweight job. When I started the project, my arms and hands ached for a day or two after each afternoon of this. I've got the hang of it now, but the books are still slippery beasts and tend to fall over in the few seconds I'm moving from one shelf to the next, sometimes even when they've got a metal bookend foot parked underneath them. If anything, the falling-bookend tympani make things worse.
Now, she may have a point in that I could have tried harder to keep things quiet instead of blithely thumping books around. However, she could have perhaps taken the preliminary step of stating that she found the noise distracting and could I keep it down please.
Also, when I glanced up, I caught a glimpse of her computer screen.
I could understand her explosion if she'd been working on some document or spreadsheet that was so important and complex that it demanded absolute concentration. Or if she was trying to access a website that perhaps her home ISP was too slow to load. Or she was using licensed software such as Word or Excel which perhaps she couldn't afford to buy. Or really, anything at all that required the use of a computer if she didn't have one at home.
But no. She'd come to the library and logged onto one of the internet terminal computers so she could play solitaire.
My repentance is sadly minimal for my having the temerity to make noise by shelf-transferring books in the library, interrupting her enjoyment of something which she could theoretically do at home (alone, where it's nice and quiet) with a pack of cards.
Man, it's a good thing I'm a volunteer, or I'd probably get fired for Bad Attitude. I did interview once for a paid library-aide position, years ago before I started volunteering-- I aced the preliminary standardized test, but utterly washed out on the customer-service interview.
On the other hand, the actual librarians may have the polite desk/phone courtesy reflexes down pat, but boy do they snark it up in the back room.
Vignette and retrospective analysis from today--
Context: I am continuing the weeks-long project of goosing the entire nonfiction section down the shelves to space things out between what had formerly been widely scattered empty/overcrowded shelves. This involves brute-force transfer of every single book at least once, depending on how much tweaking I do at the shelf cutoffs for Dewey logistics. A bank of computers is nearby.
Incident: Out of the blue, a little old lady turns around in her computer chair and sputters "Goddamit!" at me. I glance up, mildly surprised. She turns away again, logs off, and storms out, snapping, "Thank you for the noise." I mumble a rote apology, but she is already gone.
Oookay then.
Moving shelves and shelves of hardbacks is not a lightweight job. When I started the project, my arms and hands ached for a day or two after each afternoon of this. I've got the hang of it now, but the books are still slippery beasts and tend to fall over in the few seconds I'm moving from one shelf to the next, sometimes even when they've got a metal bookend foot parked underneath them. If anything, the falling-bookend tympani make things worse.
Now, she may have a point in that I could have tried harder to keep things quiet instead of blithely thumping books around. However, she could have perhaps taken the preliminary step of stating that she found the noise distracting and could I keep it down please.
Also, when I glanced up, I caught a glimpse of her computer screen.
I could understand her explosion if she'd been working on some document or spreadsheet that was so important and complex that it demanded absolute concentration. Or if she was trying to access a website that perhaps her home ISP was too slow to load. Or she was using licensed software such as Word or Excel which perhaps she couldn't afford to buy. Or really, anything at all that required the use of a computer if she didn't have one at home.
But no. She'd come to the library and logged onto one of the internet terminal computers so she could play solitaire.
My repentance is sadly minimal for my having the temerity to make noise by shelf-transferring books in the library, interrupting her enjoyment of something which she could theoretically do at home (alone, where it's nice and quiet) with a pack of cards.
Man, it's a good thing I'm a volunteer, or I'd probably get fired for Bad Attitude. I did interview once for a paid library-aide position, years ago before I started volunteering-- I aced the preliminary standardized test, but utterly washed out on the customer-service interview.
On the other hand, the actual librarians may have the polite desk/phone courtesy reflexes down pat, but boy do they snark it up in the back room.