Woll Smoth; Or, The Library

Woll Smoth, circa Now AD.

Working as a page at a library is pretty chill. I'm doing this work here right now, not even on break -- cleaning DVDs and doing blog posts while I wait. The job consists primarily of putting books away and straightening them on the shelves, which would be boring if we didn't get to listen to music while we do it. But me, being the boss that I am, became something great through hard work and guts. Senior Page is a position to be envious of. I get first dibs on all the relaxing jobs, and whatever jobs I don't like (breaking down cardboard boxes, sharpening pencils for the computer cups) I get to force on my lessers. All's right with the world.

It wasn't always this way. I started out working in the children's area. The books were thin, so not only were the spine labels tiny and harder to read, I also had effectively 2-3 times the amount of work to put away one row that the adult pages (not adults, pages who worked in the adult section) had to do. Plus I had to deal with screaming kids and a cramped work space. By no means the worst job, but after a year I was starting to get a little fed up with it, and was actually talked to twice about my poor work habits. Only reason they didn't let me go was because I've known them since before I could talk. But after my first year, three of the four adult pages left for college, and I got bumped up to the adult section. Work has been running smoothly ever since.

My first year in the adult section was spent under Declan, the tall, long-haired (so was I at the time), soft-spoken yet charismatic U of R student on a full scholarship. He always intimidated me a little, especially given how short I was/am, but we had some similar tastes in music, so we could always talk about how new Testament was strangely better than old Testament, and giggle at the religious references. Pages hired alongside me included Chris, the energetic homeschooled hipster goofball, Patrick (who even had the same last initial as me; shit got confusing), the straight-A valedictorian who was chill to talk to even though we didn't have much in common, and Hannah, the super religious girl you wouldn't know was super religious from the way she acted. I had a year on these guys, so there was a slight feeling of authority, which made it easier for me to talk to them than the last group.

Two years pass, and Chris, Pat, and Hannah had to go, and were replaced by Ben, Claire, and S-----e. Ben is still here, and thank god for that, because he's a great guy with a good sense of humor and, most importantly, is the only person I know who keeps up with the current anime season -- if only our tastes were more in line (no, Ben, I do not think Deadman Wonderland was very good, try some of this Tiger & Bunny). Claire was my friend's sister who I helped get in. She was a bit of an elitist, but she was still pleasant to people she liked, and fun to talk to besides. S-----e, who is also still here, is mild-mannered, so much so that it was a shock when she had a child at 17. (There's the reason for the dashes.) At some point we also got Sarah, the daughter of a staff member, who was a gossip but pretty smart in spite of that.

It was shortly after these guys were hired that I became Senior Page. Declan left, and I became the second one, changing the position's title to Señor Page, and totally rocking it out. I've done a lot as a part of my duties, not all of it fun -- removing numbers from the system entries for all ~20,000 non-fiction books individually, then turning those into labels in Word and pressing Enter on all of them to put each part of the label on its own proper line was not the most stimulating work. But I'm in a position of authority now, the only time I'm truly comfortable being myself. And it comes with jobs like this, too, cleaning DVDs in the back room where nobody is, thus giving me time to give up on writing a reader-friendly blog entry and fall back on writing about my work life. Such is life in Moscow.

Bookending. Hohoho.