job hazards, and other stories
I have been telling myself, very firmly and resolutely, to list the things I don't like about my job, lest I get too carried away with enjoying it, and... unspecified bad things happen. Not dwell on them, mind, just -- keep them in mind. To help me along, as it were, today I was introduced to the saddest task I have ever been asked to complete thus far.
I. destroyed. books.
I feel like a murderer.
I have betrayed my sacred duty as protector and advocate of book-kind!
Apparently The Company has a great massive list of things they have decided are not selling, and therefore we must remove them from our shelves and send them back. I scan every single book with some sort of device (it goes 'whirrrring!' when there's stuff), and mostly it just beeps, but every couple of shelves it makes a great racket and then I know I have to dispose of the book I have just scanned. The hardcovers and the nice paperbacks are simply placed on a cart, where they do look forlorn, but at least they are going back to somewhere, perhaps to bargain bins, or to the publishers. The cheap mass market paperbacks, however, we are ordered to strip. Which is a clinical euphemism for brutally ripping off their front covers and tossing them into a box to be thrown out.
(All right, and it isn't only the book lover in me that rebels at this wanton destruction: I was raised not to waste things, ever, at all, and to understand the value of everything, and destroying perfectly good merchandise is wrong. I wish we could at least send them off someplace to be recycled, instead of to moulder in a landfill somewhere.)
In happier news, I am scheduled to work two days next week, instead of the one I've been getting, and... my name is no longer at the bottom of the schedule list. Which is probably somehow telling? I've been moved up to right beneath the managers and key-holders. People who have worked jobs before, this is good, yes?
* * *
Yesterday the gang & I finally finished Coraline, and it was very very lovely and wonderful and Mr Gaiman should be proud (which I am certain he is, after reading blog and Twitter entries on the subject), and stop-motion animation is fabulous, and imagination is fabulous, and how did they make fire on the candles sakhghg, and alas, I do still have the niggling complaint that they shouldn't have changed the setting to America, rather than Britain, but that is niggley and due mostly to my extreme Anglophilia. (Also, the fact that everything is tiny and real fills me with glee. Sets! Which are real, and filled with real tiny hand-made props!)
And then I came home and my family was gone and the only member left (Timmy, on the computer) had no idea where they were. Which is to be expected, as he never remembers such things, and I had a vague memory of Mum planning to go shopping, but it was still a very eerie and hilarious coincidence.
I feel rather tired and smushy and blank; I hope bed and book will cure much of this.
(Also, take note of my glorious new layout, courtesy of midenianscholar's scholarslayouts. I've tweaked the fonts a wee bit, but otherwise it is all her masterpiece: all hail Alyssa!)
I. destroyed. books.
I feel like a murderer.
I have betrayed my sacred duty as protector and advocate of book-kind!
Apparently The Company has a great massive list of things they have decided are not selling, and therefore we must remove them from our shelves and send them back. I scan every single book with some sort of device (it goes 'whirrrring!' when there's stuff), and mostly it just beeps, but every couple of shelves it makes a great racket and then I know I have to dispose of the book I have just scanned. The hardcovers and the nice paperbacks are simply placed on a cart, where they do look forlorn, but at least they are going back to somewhere, perhaps to bargain bins, or to the publishers. The cheap mass market paperbacks, however, we are ordered to strip. Which is a clinical euphemism for brutally ripping off their front covers and tossing them into a box to be thrown out.
(All right, and it isn't only the book lover in me that rebels at this wanton destruction: I was raised not to waste things, ever, at all, and to understand the value of everything, and destroying perfectly good merchandise is wrong. I wish we could at least send them off someplace to be recycled, instead of to moulder in a landfill somewhere.)
In happier news, I am scheduled to work two days next week, instead of the one I've been getting, and... my name is no longer at the bottom of the schedule list. Which is probably somehow telling? I've been moved up to right beneath the managers and key-holders. People who have worked jobs before, this is good, yes?
* * *
Yesterday the gang & I finally finished Coraline, and it was very very lovely and wonderful and Mr Gaiman should be proud (which I am certain he is, after reading blog and Twitter entries on the subject), and stop-motion animation is fabulous, and imagination is fabulous, and how did they make fire on the candles sakhghg, and alas, I do still have the niggling complaint that they shouldn't have changed the setting to America, rather than Britain, but that is niggley and due mostly to my extreme Anglophilia. (Also, the fact that everything is tiny and real fills me with glee. Sets! Which are real, and filled with real tiny hand-made props!)
And then I came home and my family was gone and the only member left (Timmy, on the computer) had no idea where they were. Which is to be expected, as he never remembers such things, and I had a vague memory of Mum planning to go shopping, but it was still a very eerie and hilarious coincidence.
I feel rather tired and smushy and blank; I hope bed and book will cure much of this.
(Also, take note of my glorious new layout, courtesy of midenianscholar's scholarslayouts. I've tweaked the fonts a wee bit, but otherwise it is all her masterpiece: all hail Alyssa!)