Interlude: All done at MLW

I've never left a job before; when I moved from Student Page to Adult Page I stayed at the same place with the same people, only my duties changed. My last day had an air of what-are-they-going-to-do-fire-me? to it, which meant that I totally skipped out of work to eat cake in the middle of my shift and hung around talking to people and had a way better time at work than I was used to having. I was even a little bit emotional when I made the rounds for hugs.

I vividly remember the mid-July (2009) morning I showed up for work and my assistant manager said, "Good morning, Amy! Are you ready for your interview?" and I blinked like I was shell-shocked and tried to find something intelligent to say and came out with, "...what interview?"

Turned out she'd forgotten to tell me I was being interviewed for a Circulation Assistant position I'd applied for, since my tenure as a Student Page was ending. I still think this is the optimal way to do job interviews. No stress, just a moment of slight panic. Far preferable.

Speaking of slight panic, just a month or so after I started as a Student, I was shelving graphic novels and heard behind me, a little ways away at the computers, "You're under arrest for trespassing."

And there was a cop standing there with about four teenage guys, and one of them said, "What happens if we run?"

At that point I turned around and kept shelving and was really glad when I looked again and they weren't there any more.

Mill Woods is a very tiny, very busy branch--we serve the same number of people as the nearly-biggest branch, Whitemud Crossing. I laughed when people asked if it was nice and quiet working in the library. Are you kidding me? If the kids' section is remotely loud the ENTIRE library is loud. Once my manager said it was, "literally bursting at the seams." REALLY? LITERALLY? Can I SEE?

I was always the slightly weird kid, too. A little while after I started I squeed to a fellow Student that I was so excited to be working in the library and she was utterly bemused by this. (It did wear off. Still cool, though.) I also loved the jobs other people hated, like shelf-reading and weeding from a list and boxing books and pulling holds. And emptying the sorting machine, which was always my favorite thing to do.

I discovered things about myself, working, and one of them is that I'm highly intimidated by authority. I couldn't relax around my managers even when I was sitting in the staff room on lunch break with them, and for a long time my MO at lunch was to sit on the couch with my iPod in and be antisocial. That changed this summer, and today I went and sat on the Starbucks patio with some of my coworkers. It seems a little ironic that I'm leaving just as I had started to feel like a valuable member of my workplace.

This was always an in-between job. It's never been something I wanted to do for the long run, and it was never very intellectually stimulating or challenging, but every so often I'd be shelving books and kind of stop and realize, "Dude, I work in a library. For the rest of my life, people are going to ask what my first job is and I'm going to say, 'I worked in a library'." And it's going to be cool.

I didn't cry when I left, but I think I might miss it. A little.