February 23, 2006

Short-Timers Syndrome

It really hasn't been a week since I posted last. No, I posted two entries last Saturday only to have them get sucked into the Blogger Black Hole after they did appear on my blog for a few hours. So I was going to give it a few days and post earlier this week - only to have work get hairy.

Both of my librarians decided to take sick days this week. A week that finds us coming off a holiday weekend (President's Day here in the US). For those of you who don't work in libraries, let me tell you how sucky it is coming back to work the day after a holiday weekend. The kids rush in needing stuff for school. The Internet weirdos come out looking for their fix. At one point I had a waiting list for the computers that was 8 people deep and was answering (literally) four reference questions at once.

My brain has been mush for the better part of this week.

On top of that, I start the new job next Friday, March 3. There is a down side to this. My patience is teetering on the edge of a very steep cliff. I came close to snapping at three crazy people yesterday because all I could think about was: "I'm getting out of here, I'm getting out of here, I'm getting out of here."

For the record they were:
  • The autistic guy (think Rain Man but more high strung) who comes in every day and monopolizes my staff's time.
  • The 700 year old coot who wants to get a job at FEMA but can't even work a computer.
The straw came in the form of a phone call from a woman who was ticked off with another library. Not even MY library - but one several miles away. So she called me to complain about them.

Um, exactly what can I do about that? Nothing! Contrary to popular belief, I have no control over other libraries. I keep wanting my employer to grant me the title of Queen Librarian Of The Universe - but so far, no dice. So I "fixed" her problem to the best of my ability and referred her to the people who can actually do something about her complaints. Geez.

1 comment:

Sam H said...

Sounds like your library had a week like ours. Monday was a floating holiday for us, but I think a lot of people just assumed we were closed because we had almost nobody come in that day. The next was very busy and we had a lot of what we call "high maintenance patrons" come in-and we were also short-handed.