And there was light...

[jadesfire]

...so now I'm hoping the electrical engineers will forgive me. Yes, we are very grateful that readers will no longer be bumping into bookcases and staff will no longer get eyestrain from looking at labels in the dark. Maybe the idea was to string it out for so long that, by the time they did manage to change the bulb, we'd be so completely and pathetically grateful after having been in the dark for so long that we'd offer them chocolates. Sorry, lads, no eating in the reading room.

Now all we have to do is teach readers about volume control ("did your mother never tell you that you shouldn't shout in a library?") and how to ask questions ("yes, surprisingly, since I work here, I do know where the stairs are. I can even point you in the direction of the toilets and the books, if you ask really nicely.") *sigh*

Comments

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I have sometimes joked that I'd next have to offer sexual favors to the plumber to get things fixed around here!

Next time it might be easier just to issue everyone miner's helmets when they go into the stacks: "Oh, you need a book from the K section. Here, let me switch on the carbide lamp first. Off you go!"

[perspi.livejournal.com]

ooh, you could use headlamps like they use on the Amazing Race!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

You see, you both think you're joking. We did have a day when the light switch broke (I kid you not) and we had no light at all in the main rotunda. Nothing, zip, nada, nil, nothing. On any of the five floors. The photocopy rooms were pitch black as was the Lower Ground and most of the Ground floor. But were we discouraged? No! Did we give in? Did we heck as like.

The plucky librarian went out and bought torches for the readers and bedside lamps for the photocopy rooms. The image of sending one intrepid elderly gentlemen downstairs with only a torch and a 'good luck' will stay with me for a while...

[perspi.livejournal.com]

But of course! You British don't panic in the face of adversity, you put on your big-girl panties and deal with it! :)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Oh, yah, what? Tally ho, stiff upper lips ahoy, and all that malarky, I'll say.

Pip pip.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm only half joking. To switch the heating and air systems over with the seasons, all you have to do is flip open the thermostat cover and press the button marked "system." Easy, eh? Last autumn, they ran out and purchased electric heaters on a cold Sunday morning because they couldn't figure out how to do it.

Instructions taped on the wall over the thermostat? "Nah, we don't need no stinkin' instructions."

Don't even get me started on the time all the lights had burned out in the dining hall and they insisted I call a licensed electrician to replace them. I've never seen people so utterly helpless in my entire life.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I'm convinced that intelligence and common sense are inversely proportional. It's so reassuring that ours isn't the only workplace that things like this happen to...

[toolazytowork.livejournal.com]

Wait? The patrons speak to you? The best I ever get is a series of gutteral sounds that might translate into speech--if you're feeling particularly charitable.
A few times I've had non-conversations devolve into staring contests when people refused to communicate verbally.
Did you ever hear from the old guy again?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

We expect to find his skeleton any day now....

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

We have been forbidden to change light bulbs 'on health and safety grounds'. what exactly these grounds are, I'm not sure, but I certainly imagine that I would not leave a burned out flourescent bulb hanging from the hook on the back of the toilet door, waiting for a woman to shut it, causing the bulb to drop to the floor, shattering into thousands of tiny sharp shards, the way the electrician did.

Perhaps I will squeeze too hard and break a bulb in my fist? Or stick my tongue in the socket? At home, certainly, I always come over all faint the moment a bulb burns out, and need to lie down with a cool cloth over my eyes for a time...

I am trusted to take blood, resuscitate babies, hell, even administer controlled drugs. but I can not change a light bulb in a bedside lamp.

gotta love em... :)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Don't you just? These guys needed me to tell them which light switch turned off the rotunda lights. Surprisingly, it was the one marked 'rotunda'....

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

perhaps they couldn't spell rotunda? Though I am not sure how else one would go about pronouncing a word spelled that way...

*sigh*