Five years ago today, on a sweltering hot day (Wunderground reports it was 112 degrees that day; sounds about like a normal day), I turned up at HR and posed for a picture that would go onto my Emergency Worker ID. I was given a huge binder of information, and my direct deposit sign-up form, and I was sternly warned to check under my desk for scorpions, black widows, and rattlesnakes. (For a moment, I found myself wondering if I had taken a job in Southern California, circa 1870.) And then I was sent on to the Library for an entire day packed with information upon more information. I was shown my cubicle, the staff lounge, the processing area. I was introduced to the staff, but it would be weeks before I'd remember all of their names.
I was 27 years old, and I got hired just a year before the American economy experienced its most recent "shit meets fan" event.
I had been out of grad school for one year by then. I was dressed up in some lovely little professional outfit (emphasis on "little"--my body has since expanded, I like to think in conjunction with my skill set), although for the life of me, I cannot place which one it was. I thought I was the shiz, going to work at the Best Library in California.
I must have been an insufferable little twit.
Five years have passed. Some of my colleagues have come and gone. A good many are still there. I'm still there. Together we've weathered earthquakes and leaks and collapsing ceiling tiles and fires and hackers and car break-ins and deaths and back-stabbings and incredible support. Within my first year, I had acquired several of my first silver hairs, as well as a love for black coffee and red wine. And in every year since then, I have learned valuable lessons about public service and disservice, loyalty and treachery, bureaucracy and flexibility and inventiveness and government and responsibility. I've learned plenty about books and publishing and technology and humanity. And I suppose that all of these, summed up, is librarianship.
These have been lucky, happy years. And I hope there are many more like them to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment