Whadda week

I need a vent. This week...

• We lost power for about 5 hours on Tuesday morning at home. No biggie, except the power came on just before I had to go to work. We live "in the country" so we have a well...with an electric pump. So, no shower. I worked till 9. Yuck. I could not WAIT to get home and shower. At 9:30 p.m. Yurrgh.


• Last Friday, my boss gave her notice. This is, frankly, WONDERFUL news! However, it does leave us open to jumping from the frying pan into the fire, i.e., things could get worse in whoever takes the job next. Still, it's hard not to be ecstatic about her departure.


• I sliced open my left index finger on a jammed staple earlier this week. Right on the bendy part. Somehow, it's managing to heal up fairly well so far. However, it's never a good thing when you cut yourself, bleed like mad, but don't feel ANY PAIN for five full minutes.


• We had a Reference staff meeting this week. During lunch hour. So, yeah, I got a popsicle and cookies for lunch that day. One of the things we were to go over was a list of things to Know to Work the Reference Desk which includes things like "switching back and forth between Firefox/Explorer," "Word/Excel/Publisher and how to look up tasks you don't know" and "Flash drives: saving files." Why are these things on the list, you ask? Because...ONE of the staff doesn't know how to do this. Yes. Truly. {head-desk}


• One of my coworkers has had plans to fly to visit her son for months, departing today. The airline she was booked on has hubs in the airports at both ends of her trip. She printed her boarding passes yesterday morning. Five minutes after she did that, she got a call from the airline telling her the flight was cancelled. Wait. What? Why? "Mechanical difficulties." Wait. What? How do you know you're going to have a mechanical problem a day in advance? And...both airports are hubs--are you seriously telling me you don't have any extra planes at EITHER hub??


• We discovered that about 30% of our science fiction collection has mysteriously been deleted from the catalog. It's still on the shelf, but every time someone tries to check it out, it doesn't show up in the computer. So, we need to re-add it all. What a pain. Like, seriously, a huge time-suck.


• When I told the director about this, she literally could not figure out what I was talking about. "But, how is that possible? How would stuff get deleted? That can't happen." Uh, yeah, I delete stuff every month, stuff that we've weeded, things that have fallen apart that we can't fix, etc.


• According to public meeting laws, we are required to post library board meetings publicly (i.e., in the papers) no less than 48 hours prior to a meeting. The notice the DIRECTOR sent out at the beginning of the week contained the following information: .... [meeting will be held] on Thursday, July 25, 2008, at [the address for the (newish) parking lot across the street from the library]. To be clear, take a look at the day and date of this entry. So, she literally hit the trifecta of incorrect information which means if someone wanted to cause trouble, we could get nailed for breaking the law.


• OK, I know this is a lot of ragging on The Boss, but...she actually asked us to leave her notes, individually, on what qualities we want the Board to look for in the next director. I suggested we do a Google Doc so that the suggestions could be compiled in one place. Nope, gotta be slips of paper in a folder. She's such a dipshit: my answer is ANYONE WHO IS NOTHING LIKE YOU!


• And today, the kicker: our children's librarian is leaving. In a week. She is the second one we've lost in just over a year. In fact, in the past 16 months we've now lost four professional staff members, two of whom are really excellent children's librarians. Another librarian informed me this afternoon that she is actively looking for another job.

I feel like I've been kicked, hard, in the solar plexus. I spent the afternoon alternating between trying not to cry and trying not to throw up.