Thursday, March 30, 2006

I have been busy/stressed.

Tuesday, I find out that I have a meeting on Wednesday. I thought the meeting was today(Thursday) and I planned to prepare for it on Wednesday. It was something my boss agreed that I would attend. She also volunteered me to bring new Early Childhood books from our branch. The date was changed and she failed to inform me.

So Tuesday at 3:45 p.m., I began to organize the items needed for the meeting. I had to give a presentation also. I needed a list of the new books in-house and on order. I needed copies of the new brochures. I did a lot of searching to gather this information. We closed at 6:00 p.m., I was the only librarian at work and I had to squeeze my search in between reference questions in person and via telephone. As you all know, it is hard enough trying to remember what you are doing without distractions.

In the middle of all of that, a performer calls that I have been trying to get in touch with regarding a summer performance. He's been out of the country and we have been doing the e-mail thing. I wanted to know what his performance fee would be. We had agreed on a date and time. I had begun the paperwork for the flyers, his check, and input the information in the online calendar. So I get the long awaited telephone call. He said that he would charge $575 and that is his reduced rate. He said that he usually charges $875. I told him that I would get back to him, I had to check and see if I would be able to get extra funding. Of course, the answer was no.

This means that I am back to scrambling to find a performer for July 18th. Prior to that conversation, I had booked all dates and was waiting for the performers to give me their tax information so that I could request the checks. I am trying to get all of the performers booked for the summer before my departure. Extremely nice and thoughtful of me, I know. I realize that if it were my boss leaving, I would be left high and dry!

I would like to be able to organize everything so that the part-timers and temporary librarians only have to fill in the blanks.

Tuesday we were informed that the dynamic duo had struck again. They stole the wallet of the part-time Teen Librarian at the branch one neighborhood over from this one. She didn't know their names. We got the information second hand. I called the librarian/victim, and gave her a description of the perps. She was surprised and asked me how I knew who they were. I explained to her that the same two boys had committed a similar crime at this branch.

She asked if I felt she should make a police report. I told her that she should because this was the second incident in two weeks at a branch library, involving the same perps. She said that she was scared to make a report. In the same breath, she informed me that they had spent her $400 Nordstrom's Gift Card. If you are going to work in the ghetto, you need to develope a serious backbone.

No comments: