Page 39 of The Librarian and the Rock Star

Jack: I just love the way you talk.

Me: :)

Jack: You seem like a very cautious person.

Jack: You analyze everything.

Me: Yes.

Jack: I’m going to teach you how to let loose.

Me: What if I don’t want to change?

Jack: Don’t worry, I’ll start slowly.

Those dots must have hovered on his end while I forced myself to take a breath before replying.

Me: It’s not your place to change anyone. I’m just fine, thanks.

Jack: But you said that you’re ready for a life shake up. Let yourself shake! Trust me, it’s fun.

Me: We’ll see.

Jack: That means yes. Cool.

Me: That means we’ll see. I always say what I mean.

Jack: Or what you think you mean. Which might change later.

Jack: Change is inevitable.

Me: You are an odd duck.

I sent him a photo of the six-storey tall rubber duck that had floated through Toronto harbor last summer, and turned off my phone for a bit.

I disliked pushy people, but he was somehow so adorable about it that it caught me off guard. Just because he might be right didn’t make it less annoying.

– MONDAY –

21. Work Not Working

I wanted to be a librarian because research, organization, and helping people were all fascinating concepts to me. I had a deep desire to assist people in finding the information they needed, oftentimes more information than they expected, and from different areas. This seemed like a meaningful life goal.

The sneaky thing about life is that it is always chucking curveballs. The farther I went up the chain of command, the less I was helping patrons, and the more my days were filled with teaching my coworkers how to do their own jobs.

It’s a trendy thing to blame millennials for all sorts of bad behavior these days, but it was the older people as well. They didn’t know how to fix a photocopier, so instead of trying, or finding someone who knew how, or calling the big red phone number on the front of the machine for service, they’d go back to their desk and hang out for hours assuming that someone else would take care of the problem.

Even if they’d been told ten times that if the wifi in the building goes down, go switch the router off and on again, they were ‘afraid to touch it.’

They weren’t confused, they weren’t afraid, they were just lazy. I looked into the hist

ory of this strange little library, and it turned out that over ninety percent of the people who had been employed here over the years were related to the founder. Fifteen years of nepotism. Of high salaries for low work ethic. Years of lazy, privileged idiots who were related to a rich person and figured that makes them exempt from the real world, and real work.

I was fully aware of how bitchy and judgemental I was about the situation, but I’ve always been a hard worker. Watching people collect a salary without attempting to do their duties properly was maddening.

I’m not sure why I was hired, but I had a sneaking suspicion from the start that it was because I educated enough to be considered an expert, but didn’t have so much experience that I could demand a high salary. They low-balled me, but I was so excited to run this project, I took it anyway.

I was confused when I started, since it seemed overstaffed for the amount of work required. I didn’t understand until I realized nobody actually worked. The two other full-time members of staff were almost useless.

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