Cleaning Up My Desk

I've been at my job for 28 years.  I started as a two year temp, hired to label thousands of crumbling state law books which filled an entire floor of our library building.  When the project was done, the kindly Head of Cataloging asked me to stay on as a clerk (and eventually cataloging assistant), which I did gladly because I didn't know what else to do.  (Think hard about that Humanities degree, kidlets!)  Now, decades later, I am waxing (slightly) nostalgic over stuff from those days of yore, like a silly handmade manual of cataloging instructions which are now mostly defunct.  And I wrote everything down in my prettiest Catholic high school penmanship too.

“If the printout is a maintenance record, set *fun cat mai.* If new record, *set fun cat.* Go to the first LOC field and type <F2> b. This will recall the string bh 1, com 1, lb 1, nwk 1, pas 1, pom 1, sm 1, tor 1, vn 1.”

 

I also found photocopies of retirement cards I had made over the years for now departed friends & colleagues.  Interesting how I apparently even made cards for people I disliked profoundly, just because I was deemed the *resident artist* and everyone thought it was my duty.  And then, there are all the leftover thingies from the *blockbuster* library exhibits I had done in the 90s:  that dried up mangy tulip bulb (the Monetary Law Exhibit of '98), the resin apple pie which a hungry co-worker tried to eat (the Food Law Exhibit of '97), and the rather wonky Han granary (Ancient Chinese Law Exhibit of '99) which I should really re-sell on Ebay.  (Originally $15!  Authenticated by Sotheby. Seriously.)

A lot of this stuff will go, of course.  Still, I will particularly miss the 40 ketchup packets which I had been planning to sell to the highest bidder if the staff had all been trapped in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake.  And that tempting bag of chili lemon pork rinds from 2004?   Ehhh .. maybe not so much.

                                                                Going, going ...                                                     

Bookish Confessions, Pt. I

My sister, Tipsy VA Loan Analyst, interviews Tipsy Mermaid on her Wildly Exciting Career Path:

Tipsy VA:  How did you find your job?

My mum found my job.  I had just spent 7 months watching Frankie Goes to Hollywood videos when my mum pushed me off our flowered gabardine couch, shoved the LA Times Classifieds in front of my nose, and told me to apply for a temp job at a downtown law library. Since I was already sick of watching the only TWO Frankie videos available on MTV, I affably agreed to apply for a two year job relabeling 10,000 law books.  

Eventually (because I was so good at applying glue), I was offered a library clerk position, and after two years of rather intermittent training, I was promoted to Library Cataloging Assistant. Huzzahh!  From there, it was only a matter of time (like 20 years!) before I reached my current title of Library Assistant Who's been Around since the founding of Angkor Wat.

What is your favourite library?

THE LONDON LIBRARY in 14 Saint James Square, London. What a beautiful building!  Their collection is particularly strong in the humanities: history, art, world literature, religion, and gorgeous Jude Law type circulation clerks.  

Your favourite books?

Difficult question. You can't have just one! I would say my favourite historical fiction is Colleen McCullough's epic ROME series, which covers the Age of Sulla to the death of Cleopatra in six gigantic doorstop volumes.  I also love the endlessly inventive Gary Jennings who wrote AZTEC and THE JOURNEYER, books I re-read almost every year for their hot Kamasutric possibilities.  Sex featuring an onion?  CHECK!  Sex with a teapot?  CHECK!  By the way, if you want to experience *erotica* by purchasing FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, don't waste your money.  If I read about one more *shattering orgasm that happened because he touched me down there, there, in my secret private place, using his very long index finger*  I think I'll puke into 15 handbags.  Good grief, woman!  Be glad the author hasn't thought of chopsticks!

Tipsy VA:  Uhhhh ... where were we?  Can we continue next week?  I .. uhh .. have something to buy on AMAZON. 

       Interview to be continued next week!     

96 Days & Counting!

WOW, could it be so?  I have 96 days left on my Novelty Retirement Clock!  (A blue cartoonish object purchased on Amazon for a ridiculous $14, eeek!)  Counting assorted holidays & days off for doctors appointments, that is actually only 64 working days!  (My last day is November 30, 2012.)   A lot of people tell me that the days will go by like a speeding bullet, but I don't think that's true at all.  I find every day unbearably slow, and I am actually considering using some of my vacation so I can leave even earlier. (I have 200 hours vacation which cannot be converted into service credit.)  I know my boss won't be happy about it, but frankly, who cares?  28 years of near non-appreciation from most of my superiors and I'm supposed to give a Flying F**k?  (Pardon the salty language, but I'm a bit pissed at the moment.)

It's funny, but after working here for so long, I no longer have a sense of the weight & depth of real life.  I come to work. I get my coffee. My boss emails me my assignments for the week.  She checks with me to see if I'm ok with it. I work for eight hours. If there happens to be a stray electron of amusement in my working day, it comes from some cynical friend or from the internet. I work some more.  At 4:45 PM, I leave.  And every two weeks, I get paid.  Thats It.

96 days left on my retirement clock.   Tick tock, tick tock ...

                                                   

When Enough is Enough ...

A friend recently told me, "You're too young to retire!  Why not stay two more years to increase your pension?  You would be making 75% of your salary!"  Why not indeed?  I've been thinking hard about this.  My twin sister, who works for the VA, makes more than twice as much money as I do, but is always stressed out from coping with report deadlines, a workaholic boss, and deadbeat employees.  And yet she will not consider leaving until 2016, when she is eligible for Full Retirement & generous federal bennies. 

Meanwhile, Poverty-Stricken Me wants to throw in the towel at 51 despite a wallet full of credit cards and considerable debt.  Am I bored, even lazy?  Perhaps.  But I didn't get this way without help.  For one thing, I haven't been promoted since Bruce Springsteen wore blue jean nappies.  Even weirdos have received more consideration -- one of them was a colleague who got promoted 3 times while trimming her toenails and complaining to me that she is overworked and that her wrists hurt.  (From what?  Excessive wrist rotation from overactive toenail growth?) 

So I am retiring, calling it a day, engines are now disengaging, Captain.  Not just because 50 is the mimimum age for early retirement in my neck of the woods.  But also because, over the last year or so, it is now clear that the lack of acknowledgment / promotion / new desk inlaid with rare Neapolitan woods also rankles.  I'll miss my friends when I leave.  But continuing to work under these circumstances would be foolish and, ultimately, self-destructive.

                           

                                        Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
                                         And sorry I could not travel both
                                         And be one traveler, long I stood
                                         And looked down one as far as I could
                                        To where it bent in the undergrowth ..

                                                                                            Robert Frost