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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I guess I'm the "Bookmark Guy"...

Like any work environment, people like to talk about other coworkers, myself included.  I can only assume it's much more pervasive in the library because we're dealing with people who work with "information."

Recently, my cool young female supervisor was replaced with an equally cool young male from another branch.  He already knew a lot about me before he started because I used to work with one of his coworkers.  She was one of the YS librarians at our old branch and I always called her "Friend."  She was one of the first Info people I befriended at that branch.  I also get along really well with my current branch's YS librarian and she's older than my parents and we really don't have much in common.  Now that I think about it, I really get along well with YS librarians in general, even the YS Librarian that doesn't play nicely with other librarians.  I think I have a thing for YS librarians, holy crap, this is some Freudian type ish right here...  Is this why I got my MLIS??

The People's Cubicle
Anyways, he mentioned one time, "So-so said you used to have a 'Bookmark Shrine' at your old branch."  Yeah, you could call it that.  I really don't know how it started, but working circ, you come across a lot of ... crap that patrons return in their books.  I guess one day I decided to hang a few on my drag cubicle walls.  My cubicle was off of Main Street so EVERYONE would see it and ask if I was collecting bookmarks, to which I just shrugged and said, "Sure."  Soon, every time I would come into work there would be a couple of bookmarks left by my coworkers.  It really did not take long to fill all of the walls but unfortunately I never took picture of it, this is all I have left, a crappy pic taken with my old Blackberry ::tear::

Okay, to be honest, I really kept it up because I knew it bugged the oppressive management there.  They love to micromanage every single aspect of the branch, even the way your cubicle is.  They hate when your desk has "clutter" aka anything that isn't: a keyboard, monitor, mouse, barcode scanner, stapler, tape, writing utensils, pad of paper, and Post-It notes.  I think all of my coworkers contributed to my bookmark collection as their way of "sticking it to the man."  A few have told me, "I can't believe they didn't tell you to take it down."  They couldn't because I had the people behind me and it would have just made everyone hate them just a little bit more.

6 comments:

  1. LOL. Bookmark shrine. I wonder how they would describe my desk with all the stickers and toys all over it.

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    1. What kind of toys do you have??? I used to have a collection of mismatched Lego pieces and Matchbox cars.

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  2. That is way awesome! Our library used to have a photo wall/window with all the photos left in books and photos of the librarians children and an occasional pet. And then one day the boss came and tore it all down for no apparent reason.

    Now that window space is getting filled with passive agreesive someecards...

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    Replies
    1. Did we work at the same branch??? That sounds like something management would have done. But I never kept the pictures, I didn't like having these people staring at me. I did have one whole cubicle wall dedicated to just postcards though.

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    2. We may have! :) Silly management. The postcard wall sounds super awesome! Such a great idea. Did anyone ever come claim their bookmarks..or was your cubicle not visible to patrons?

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    3. My coworkers did reunite some lost bookmarks with their owners. Our whole backroom is sealed off from the public pretty much.

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