¡Libros para Libre!

Fair warning about tonight's post: It's about work, a subject I usually avoid because it bores even me.

I've completed my first week at the library, where I push carts and shelve books in near silent solitude, which I enjoy. The repetition makes the time pass quickly, and all the squatting and standing is giving me a great workout. It’s like cardio for nerds, where instead of an aerobics instructor chirping instructions at me, I have the Dewey decimal system, so I move to where the book goes according to the number like some kind of alpha numeric DDR game. The library is quiet, too. Not ninja-quiet, per se, more like Calvin Coolidge-quiet. No annoying music, and what few slack-jawed yokels find do their way into the building mostly behave themselves. My new co-workers are all very nice, too. A group of people who choose to eschew sunlight for books are my kind of people indeed.

For now, I probably won’t leave Barnes and Noble. I work with some really great people, some of whom I may even call friends. I get tired of the BS sometimes, like trying to sell the membership cards and working on a cash register for seven hours with no place to sit. Every time I think I might call it quits, though, I have a great conversation about Tom Waits with another bookseller, or I get to listen to Dave the history buff manager discuss American history, or I get to go out after work with a group of people, and the job is worthwhile again. It’s only a few hours a week, but that’s enough.

Two days this week I worked both jobs, which amounts to close to an eleven-hour day, including lunch break. That’s a long day, but I make a pretty good amount of money on those days. This sort of thing is when I just have to keep telling myself “if I can’t do this, I can’t do grad school.” That’s been my mantra since I first started at the bookstore.