Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: endless lists of dead people, dead subject headings, dead links...it's all death today (including three emails regarding wills and Power of Attorney and closing bank accounts I've sent this morning).

Two people on vacation this week and I'd picked up 3 hours on-desk. Now the Children's Librarian is sick with strep/tonsillitis, so I'm up to 4. And my bloody eye won't stop twitching!!

9:00 a.m. [in the children's room]

• Mom & son arrive; son is probably 6ish and being a total butt to his super-patient mom who finally gets him online, then wanders out of the room...wth...holy shit, this kid needs a lengthy time-out (but they're gone now)
• It's nearly 10 and I've seen two or three other women walk through to collect things for kids and two three staff members doing random work-related stuff (fillings holds, feeding fish, checking for roof leaks)

10:00 a.m. [in the children's room]

• Volunteers arrive. Librarian C is trying to find things for them to do since Librarian MR isn't here to make a list for them.
• There are a couple of people ensconced for 15 minutes now in the AV section...both adults. Not sure what's going on there.
• Librarian M, who is covering for Librarian MR, is searching for the nametags she sorted out for today's 10:30 baby program; aha, they were on her desk (where all things end up)

2:00 p.m.  [in the children's room]

• I'm dying in here. There've been people wandering in and out, including our Fish Tank Person, but no one stopping to chat. I can barely keep my eyes open...

5:00 p.m.  [in the children's room]

• No clue. Somehow I didn't fall asleep permamently

Friday

What I'm doing between questions: marking items that have won awards in our catalog, currently the ICBAs from 2009 and going backwards

11:00 in the children's room

• Stuffed animal meeting in the comfy chairs! And they came by train, which is waiting there...and no one puts any of it away when they leave
• Mom with baby and toddler arrive looking for Splat the Cat books [got 'em]; toddler hits the iPad station, of course, while Mom does some printing with a slightly crabby baby and needs help printing [not enough hands with the carrier with her]
• Chat with shelver about my son's newest tragedy [bedbugs], which is on point because he and the toddler have the same name [though mine has 20+ years on this fellow]
• I have over an hour to go and I'm starving....sigh

12:00 in the children's room

• Yawnsville. I'm not even sure the phone rang (main desk calls ring here too)

2:00 in the children's room

• Lengthy discussion of weird patrons and our local criminal justice system that spirals wildly, with Librarian C

3:00 in the children's room

• Cleaning dude comes through to do bathrooms and needs to tell me his Jimmy Buffet story from a decade ago. ...
• There's literally been two mom/daughter combos here in 90 minutes, plus the cleaning guy and a (different) shelver
• As soon as I leave to use the restroom, someone comes in. Natch. And needs the train set to play with.

4:00 [Closing hour is usually hectic at the main reference desk, and I didn't have time to do this at work, so I'm back-filling while a kill a few minutes at home.]

• Librarian C is maniacally trying to get stuff finished before she goes on vacation next week; running back and forth past the desk multiple times
• Librarian AB comes through with her ESL conversation group to see our Peeps display
• Aaaand, Librarian KT comes to check in about the young adult section because she's leaving at 4:30
• Someone comes and takes nearly half of the neatly cut stack of scratch paper that I just put out; says not one word
• Tech is working on getting some of the dead internet stations back up again before he leaves at 4:30
• Quick survey of the area via cameras and then eyeballs shows that people have been moving furniture (and not putting it back) again, so I go take care of that and do a census
• Closing announcement
• Mom(?) and son(?) arrive; she is clearly very ill but they wave away my offer of help
• 4:47 Zooey walks in. The computers are supposed to shut down automatically at 10 till closing. She's got her usual pile of bags, is disorganized, has to scan something, and THEN realizes her card won't work logging her into the internet because it's expired. Now it's 4:53 and I tell her that she's out of luck online anyway. "But it's my timesheet!" [dear God....but the computers are OFF, Zooey!]
• Meanwhile, most people have filtered out. I grab today's newspapers and put them away
• Help the sick-looking mom place a hold on a book we don't own
• Shoo out the people in the study room
• One more circuit, turn off the scan/fax/etc machine and time to leave!

Sunday

What I'm doing between questions: in the children's room I was ordering our Next Month's Bestsellers orders (Books and AV) and doing a pass-through on the next Audiobook order I'll need to place. Once I get to the adult area, I'm busy enough that I start looking at reviews but don't get far.

1:00 [in the children's room]

• Close/Lock children's bathroom doors as we open.
• Talk to Librarian C about splitting the desk hours, and then put out all of today's newspapers, dropping one with patron RR who will collect a list of books from the reviews sections and give them to me later
• Smile [the copy on the shelf isn't there, so I go get one of the SIX (!) in storage]
• On the way to and from storage, I direct one person to the second copier in the back of the building, and help another person with the first copier
• Sort out transactions tally sheet for the day
• Random semi-homeless woman is wandering through for some reason....go away! [somehow my unspoken command works!!]
• Two tweener girls come in look around and then head to the YA area
• Family of 5 kids + Mom arrive; the older kids immediately sign on to play Roblox while Mom and toddler ask for the train set and go play, analog-style
• My Many-Colored Days and I Am Not Going to Get Up Today [all our shelved copies are out, or MIA, so I send her to Circ for them to check storage for either/both]

2:00 [in the children's room till 2:30, then adult]

• [phone] "Car crash. I'm fine. Books I had in the car are long gone with the car, though. What do I do?" [I transfer her back to Circ since I'm not sure what our policy is on sad stories like this--I mean, obviously, she has fines and overdues, but are we going to charge for the books? I don't know...]
• Changing of the Guard: nothing of major import to exchange info about
• "How many books can I check out?" [not really a limit] "Even if my card is from [next town over]?" [Yep, all good--load up the truck!]
• Oldie patron, who's been coming here forever, needs a local train schedule ... and then a guest pass because the trains are on Sunday schedule (i.e. there are fewer) so she has time to kill
• Another regular patron stops to say bye: she looks more depressed every time I see her...kinda worried about her
• [phone] Multiple new title reserves from one of my absolutely favorite patrons
• Hours and phone number for local antiques place; PLUS compliment about how these out-of-towners like our library

3:00

• Card number [she has a fine, and nothing but a debit card, so she has to lug her infant back up front to pay so she can get online; I feel bad]
• Mom comes over to print, tweener-ish (?) kid meets her and lingers by the desk long enough to whisper to me, "You're an awesome librarian!" [Pull it together woman: open weeping is frowned upon at the Reference Desk!]
• Turn on cameras to survey the array of actual study-ers...in prep for closing
• Favorite book illustrator walks past on his way out [he's turning gray, but still hot]
• I go share the compliment from the kid with Librarian C since I didn't actually do anything to earn it, and maybe she did [nope, but we're splitting it]
• Pen? [Have mine]
• Trade quarter for another quarter; printer kiosk didn't like his
• [Next Town Over] Woman has collected four shopping baskets of materials on a table; I hope to hell she actually takes them all and hasn't just organized them for us to reshelve....
• Three specific books on cutting; his card's expired, so I fill out the requests and send him up front to renew his card so I can attach the requests to his online record afterwards
• White-out? [not today--it's not something we keep around, but we should]
• Chat with one of our regulars
• Cutting dude is back, looking for Rosetta Stone for Italian [I show him our new Transparent Language database and he says he'll try it out
• "I left a thumb-drive in the public computer yesterday..." [got it, and no, I don't have the cover to it because THAT wasn't in the slot, Ding-Dong]
• Closing announcement
• Shopping baskets are headed to the circ desk, one by one...how the heck is she planning to carry all this to her car??

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: checking our catalog against Booklist's Editors' Choice list to see what we need to buy.

7:00

• It is quiet tonight, unexpectedly. I can see 6 people--no, 7--only one of whom is likely to be homeless (it's sleep-in-our-town-tonight night, so we often have people here who are turned away because of alcohol or drug use)
• Circ person brings me three books to order for her
• People sign in for study room use
• I place holds on things that were left behind earlier and then go eat cake and talk at the circ desk. It's really really dead, except for the Board Meeting going on upstairs

8:00

• Chat with one of our regulars about how I "never" get sick despite all the germy people [I've been doing this job for almost 30 years: I've pretty much had ALL the regular stuff and my immune system is on high alert]
• Check the cameras: meeting in public room, meeting in staff room, two study rooms in use, one person on her laptop, and the above regular....yawn!!
• Study room sign out
• Directions to the Children's Books area
• ...time for a pre-closing walk-through
• And everyone's gone, so I finish the last of the closing chores and head out.