Librarians are strange

The more I think about it, the more I realize that librarians are weird. We're always so stingy about the taxpayer's money. When I started my last job, in 1991, I had a box of paper clips on my desk. That was the last box I ever got. When I received correspondence, I would remove the paper clips and put them in the box. Staples never got rich off me.

We also used to write on the back of catalog cards, so they shouldn't go to waste. Someone took the paper out of wastebaskets and cut it in pieces for patrons to write on. They wrote with a pen that was tied to a string, so we shouldn't waste the money on golf pencils ($5 a truckload, probably.)

We are so stingy with the taxpayer's money that when they cut our budget, we can't cut anything more. So we cut the nice little perks. We don't put in our mileage for re-payment. We pick up the cost of conferences ourselves, or at least the hotel charges, which we minimize by sleeping three to a room. (The youngest gets the folding bed.) To raise money, we sell (donated) hot dogs at the Winter Carnival, on our own time.

Our reward? They cut our budget even more, because we are doing such a fine job with what we have!

Article Author: Miriam

Miriam is a recovering librarian and sometime writer who wrote a book about African American aviators and astronauts cleverly entitled, "Distinguished African American Aviators and Astronauts." She's kind of stuck back in the twentieth century.

Visit Miriam's author page — Miriam's Blog