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Flame » in reply to Didn't even click the link, did you?

No, I didn't.
Mary Anne — (archived)

Today I have had to call 25 people to cancel a toddler story time because we are in day 6 of a server crash for our entire library system, which means that we haven't been able to check anything in since last Wednesday and it's looking like the Collier Brothers' living room at the Circ Desk. Also, no reserves, no requests from other libraries, no new cards, and no wireless internet. The boss decided to open late in the hopes of good news from our tech department, so I had to call my little clients' parents.

We had 29 kids in (including the teenaged director and her assistants) to start the theater workshop, which means casting 21 speaking roles. The workshop is 5 days at 3 hours/day, except the last day, which is 4 hours. I finished writing the play at 2 this morning, thus explaining the timestamps for some of those posts.

We screened a teen movie in the lower level this evening; A/V setup is my responsibility.

I'm working with the director of another library to nail the butt of a thief to the wall -- he claims to have returned 2 X-Box games. Suffice it to say, the way in which they turned up indicates that the only method that wouldn't have flagged the missing innards at one of 3 checkpoints is for him to have brought the empty cases back to this building in his pocket and put them back on the shelf himself. He has gone so far as to insinuate that the other library stole the contents of both boxes. That's another excruciatingly thorough email in which I explain why he's full of it without actually saying so. He is not financially needy -- not that we would treat him different if he were, because theft is theft -- but he certainly suffers from moral poverty.

I booked the meeting rooms for six separate events. That's walking people through the application, drawing up the contract, writing the room specifications for the team book and the maintenance man, and making the entries into the ornery online calendar (working, thank God). And I processed a handful of passport applications (a fundraiser for us because the Feds require us to collect $30.00 per app), including one in which the lady argued with me over the overnight mail fees. Sorry, not my rules...

And, because the server is down, we have no online catalog, so I've been teaching how to use several other online resources, including the PA Dept of Ed database, to stand in for it. Oh, and I've been the walking, talking catalog for this building.

We had a kid in here who had to use our computers to apply for financial aid -- the kind you only get if your income is really small. I thought about "equal opportunity", and how we, and the public schools (now closed for 3 months), were the closest he came to that in his life. That goes for the other poor kids in the area.

So no, I wasn't interested enough in the defense of privilege to click the link. Perhaps I did you an injustice, and if I have, I'm sorry. I've had a long day trying to provide equal opportunity for people who will only inherit debt.

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