Bit by Alligator, swamp still flooded and nasty...

I lost the battle today, the war is over. Mission last Bureaucracy always, sigh. Tomorrow I will talk to my liaison about how impotent I am, no longer able to get a couple bins of books up to F-unit and back. They did make me take down the chin up bar in the library that the guys and I were having fun improving our strength on - seems one could imagine someone falling off and hurting one self, and a library is not a gymnasium (although they have more in common than I think).

I have a heart problem, I care too much, and I am a State employee and shouldn't care at all - I am not an elected official. My job is to do what is required, not to inovate, not to assume, presume, nor to think of solutions. If it is broken, just report it, don't try to fix it. I do have a problem. If the mission weren't so important I think I would take that boring eight hour day at the Public Library.

I was wondering at my three neophytes, they still aren't working hard enough, nor fast enough and certainly not smart enough. But they are trying.. they try me all day long. I was telling one of them about something he needed to correct, and he said I never say anything good about his work, which I am sure isn't correct, I always point out good things, little victories are important in life and I do point them out. Then another one wandered away from where I wanted him to work, and he has at least sixty reference books to become familiar with, but he doesn't see that as useful, yet. But the one that got my blood boiling was the smartest of the three, the mature and sure of his importance one - he interrupted my work flow because he couldn't help a customer with shipping charges from JC Penny. He told me that both catalogs didn't have the data for shipping cost, guessing that someone had ripped them out. So I looked at both catalogs after looking in the back for the extras - which I didn't find - the pages with ordering instructions to include the shipping costs were in both catalogs and I showed the customer, and yelled - LOUDLY - at the inmate library clerk, "I need competence, I don't need you to tell me that something is beyond your ability to find it!" Not good form, old chap, expecting someone that could be caught, tried and covicted of a crime to be competent. Not good form at all.

I was upset by all those alligators and the rising waters, but we knocked out a lot of work today. We did pull and check out to F-unit, sixty seven items - we just aren't delivering. I did link and put into the collection sixty-five items, some purchased and sent to us and the others donated, which means my experienced hard working and mostly quiet clerk prepared, stripped and stamped, covered in mylar, or book taped the spines over the call numbers he typed up -- those same books. While he and I processed out and in ILLs, and did requests for more ILLs, and accounted for some missing so far. And the overdues are done and out in circulation to the patrons, with a new clerk learning that job, a bit. Lots accomplished.

Well, I did talk to some customers, help find some stuff, and made a fool of self - another completely good day at the prison library. So when I check my Lotto ticket and find I am the big winner, should I quit and allow someone better to take that cushy job? Don't know, but the motorcycle ride home was fun, something new to work on showed up, and I, like always when I ride and feel like I am flying, I was smiling broadly... very.