My Career

I'm here at the reference desk. This has been a boring night. So very few people coming to me for my sage advice. I guess if you reframe this thought one might think of it this way, "I get paid close to $19.00 an hour to tell a few stray students where the bathrooms are."

Now I want you to realize I take my job seriously. In fact I don't merely tell them where the bathroom is; I make it sound like an adventure. If they want to stay on the main floor of the library they need to go out the gates, out the doors, and into the dark corner. Truly it is a dark corner. I personally gave up going to that bathroom because of the darkness. I'm sure you guys remember "Charlie in the woodwork". I know I've told some of you about Charlie. I digress.

When I ponder all the things I've done over the last 14 years as a librarian with a masters degree I'm amazed. I've learned that toothpaste is darn near impossible to get off mirrors. I've wiped poop off stools; watered plants that meant something to by supervisors; I've directed people to bathrooms; I've listened to genealogists tell me about their pedigrees feigning interest as not to anger them (believe me folks some of them are easily offended); cleaned up used condoms; dealt with disturbed people who thought there were people after them; I've been stalked; romanced; called profane names; dealt with bomb threats; tried evacuating a library when a light fixture was smoking. Who thought libraries were boring places? Of course I left off my all time favorite... about the dude who whipped out his little buddy for a nice massage. God how I wish could have thought of the following reply, "Why don't you put that thing away before it goes off?" Really I think that was perfect.

Now I'm an academic librarian and things aren't quite as interesting here. Although I seem to still get the large portion of weirdos. This week I got a call from some woman in Texas who wanted me to tell her how to get a card indicating her children have Native American blood. She told me this sad tell of woe. She's disabled and her computer is on the blink. And she really, really needs these cards by August 2008! Boy I really wanted to tell her that that probably wasn't going to happen. In fact I bet she'll be lucky to get them by August 2009. Of course as though I needed to round out the week some young man took a fancy to me. Due to the ear plugs I don't think he realized just how loud he was when he was trying to catch my attention everytime I walked past him. You gotta love being a librarian.