Slimer Day

Slimer Day

03.06.04 (8:53 am)   [edit]
It's a "Slimer Day." Warmer, but still snowing a bit; gray, with no breaks in the cloud cover. I'm working again today and this is the 3rd out of 4 Saturdays in a row that I've been scheduled to work. This time it was of my own doing though. I needed yesterday off to help move my grandfather's furniture since we had to move him into the medical care unit of his senior living complex. (My back is really sore today :( ) The way things are going, I might get one Saturday off this month before I have to start doing my stint of 3 Sundays in a row and have no weekends to speak of for a while. :?

Our library system is open for about half the year on Sundays, from October through April to combat the suburbs for circulation - it's a long complicated financial mess involving reciprocal borrowing charges.

They keep the main branch and the two most active neighborhood libraries open on Sundays from 1-5 and staff them with "volunteers." The staff service is voluntary, but mandatory, meaning that you have to "volunteer" for a selection of the days they want to be open and tell them which days you'd be "willing" to work and then they choose from the pool of volunteering staff and assign dates. The wording on the date selection form is very ambiguous as they ask, "how many days would you [b]prefer[/b] to work." I and others have gotten in trouble for stating that we'd [b]prefer[/b] to work 0 days. Because as you can guess, they don't want to hear that we'd [b]prefer[/b] not to work on Sundays. The true question is how many total days we'd be [b]willing[/b] to work out of the ones on the list.

As someone with a degree in English, that kind of misuse of the language burns me - especially when the ambiguousness of the text, particularly in a job-related form, can get one in trouble. I don't know what the author of the form's intent is, so I have to go by a strict definition of the terms in the text - even when it's known what the intent was . . . :twisted:

Today we have our Dr. Seuss 100th birthday celebration this afternoon. I would expect that we're going to have over a hundred people attend, if the attendance at the other branches that have had theirs is any indicator. I just saw the cake that's been provided; it's going to take a mathematician to divide it up so that everyone can get a piece and the pieces will be have to be about 1 inch square. :roll:

At least it's quiet for now though and I can catch up on my blogs while I wait for the fun and games to begin. :roll: