The Jackson to My Pollock

"All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library." -- Studs Terkel

I spend 20 hours a week working at the local library. A job which I love and really genuinely enjoy going to every day. I work in the circulation department as a circulation clerk which, in my opinion, is the single greatest position a library has to offer. I could have gotten a degree and became an actual librarian, but why do that when everyone who walks into a library automatically assumes you're one anyway? And, believe me, the title "librarian" is a lot more glamorous than the actual job itself. As a librarian you're usually cooped up in an office, researching subjects in your specialized field, helping patrons find information on specific topics, developing and improving library databases, and so forth, that sort of thing. You might go home at the end of the day feeling pretty damn satisfied with the fact that you helped that old guy with the crusty lips and ratty suspenders find two rare books on indigenous plant species, but you're also going home with a sore throat from overexposure to the dusty old books from the musty reserve basement where you had to fish out those two books. Or a headache from the florescence of your computer screen. You choose.

So point being, I don't need that fancy library science degree to do my job and I still reap all the benefits it has offers. All the credit that you, with your illustrious degree, deserve for ordering that library book that we didn't have, the one that everybody kept asking about, goes to me despite the fact that I say, "Oh, I had nothing to do with it." "Well, of course you did," they all reply. "You're a librarian!" Well, actually no, but there's no point in arguing because they probably won't get it anyway... Believe me, I've tried.

Oh, and remember that time you worked really hard putting that display together about challenged and banned books? The one you spent nearly two weeks busting your ass on, trying to find interesting, new, quirky facts that everybody hasn't heard already for a thousand times? Well, I get that credit, too. We "librarians" are just too clever and never disappoint when it comes to providing the public with new information! (Yep. We both know that Cather In the Rye and Of Mice and Men are old news, but nobody ever seems to remember...)

And this is the part where you might argue and say, "But, Megan, you have to interact with the patrons on a daily basis! They can be so irate and rude. How can you possibly say that you're job is better?!"

Well, my friend, this is when I say to you: the customer is not always right. We're not a supermarket or retail store trying to win you over with our sensational customer service and superior item exchange program so that you'll come back again and purchase more of our products. The fact of the matter is that I don't have to deal with your shit. (Now, that isn't to say that we're not friendly and professional, because we absolutely are. The difference is that we don't have to act spineless and bow to your every complaint like they do at Groceries-R-Us.) If you break one of our rules or don't feel like paying your fines, well tough titties Tina because I don't have to let you borrow these books, or, even in some cases, allow you in the building. And sometimes, getting to tell a patron "no" is one of the most stress relieving things I get to do. And that's an honest fact.

Now, of course, most of the time I'm not really concerned with whose job is better than whose, especially when I'm working because actual librarians are great people. I like to imagine that they're the color and we're the lines on a canvas. Two integral parts fused together so perfectly that they're nearly one and the same. You can't have one without the other.

I speculate that together we look something like this:



But, in reality, it's probably something more like this: