The Longmont Public Library

The second real job on my resume is working at the Longmont Public Library. I was a volunteer there for a few years in high school and then was hired on staff the summer before my Senior year of high school. Ever since that point I've worked there in between college semesters and now I'm back after taking a month to recover from life in Mississippi.

The job is simple: Shelve books. Check books in. Straighten shelves. That's pretty much all there is to it.

But if you think working at a library sounds boring, you couldn't be more wrong. I'm telling you, there is always something exciting or crazy going on. Just last week my co-worker was checking in books and found one that did not belong to our library. It actually belonged to the Denver Public Library! It caused quite a stir among us page staff and we all shared a good chuckle over how silly people are when they turn books into the wrong library.

Okay, the job is actually pretty boring but I absolutely love it. There is something so peaceful and calming about putting books back on their shelves and into their rightful places. Each book or movie or magazine has a very specific label which indicates the exact place on the shelves where it belongs. It is such a relief to be in an environment where everything has a place where it belongs and I have control over that environment in terms of the fact that I ultimately get to decide the fate of each item I pick up. Either the book is shelved properly or it isn't. I wish there were such a dichotomy in real life. It would be great to know that my decisions are correct and that I'm going in the direction that I really need to be going.

There are a few rare moments when things get a bit crazy at the library. A few years ago we had a guy we liked to call "The Urine Bandit" because he would pee on the wall near the 300's of adult non-fiction. It took us several weeks to catch him in the act and there was a fabulous celebration in our break room when we finally did catch him. Other times we've had issues with transients who make other patrons nervous. Most of the time they are harmless and just want a place to sit or sleep. The library did have to create a policy on their list of rules that anyone who stinks too much will be asked to leave. I'll have to look up the exact wording of that when I'm at work tomorrow, but basically I see it as an excuse to kick people out who don't fit the "norm" of library patrons. The funny thing is that I probably violate that rule from time to time since I don't shower everyday. Lets hope they don't kick me out.