Monday, January 08, 2007

Did I make you mad, or did I hurt your feelings?

Actually, I don't care, as long as it means you will stop asking me questions that you should already know the answer to.

Sundays are usually pretty odd/hectic here. We are short staffed on the weekends, but Sundays especially. There are only three of us who have chosen this as our regularly scheduled workday.

Problems arise when one of us has a scheduled vacation day, or calls in sick. Well yesterday fell into this category. One of us had a vacation day. This meant that we had more part-time temporary as needed librarians on the schedule.

Well......I worked with one in particular for two hours. 1/2 hour into our second hour together, I was tired of her lazy mess. I began answering her questions without even looking in her direction or away from the computer terminal.

After the patron left, she sauntered over to my side of the desk and said, "You know us T.E.A.N.'s have a hard time"

The sentence is incomplete because I stopped her right there and said, "Yeah well, you know that isn't going to fly with me because I did what you do!"

She then asked, " Oh, you were a PTAN?"

My answer, "Yes, for 3 years and I worked in the branches. 23 of the 27(now 28,) to be exact.

Her next question, " And, you remembered everything?"

My response, "Yes, everything!"

She went back to her side of the desk and didn't ask me another question.

(I used two different terms for the part-time librarian because they were called PTAN's during the time that I was one and now they are called T.E.A.N.'s.)

The woman mentioned in this post has worked here part-time for more that 10 years and she is in this department at least three times per week. She does the same thing to everyone, I just got feed up yesterday and said something. Hopefully, she will remember not to ask me anymore questions.

2 comments:

M.Dot. said...

Dude.

Whats worse than a lazy librarian.

You in Frisco, Berkely or Oakland? Actually, you prolly don't wanna answer that...w/ stalkers and all.

Any who...how do you feel about kids reading them "hood" books?

~hb

Nexgrl said...

@Humingbyrd A lazy librarian works my last nerve.

No, I can't answer the location question. I reveal too much about what goes on in this system and about my co-workers.

Kids/Teens reading the "hood" books is a catch 22 thing. On one hand they're reading and showing an interest in books and coming into the library for something besides the internet. On the other hand, the ones who enjoy that type of content the most are more in need of a study of the classics. We won't even get into grammar and sentence/paragraph structure.
Some of the inner city schools have begun to place "hood" books on reading list because that's what the students are interested in.