You make me wonder whether to take a course in neurosurgery or go and watch a Care Bears movie

We've got a prodigious amount of new non-fiction hanging round on the shelves backstage waiting for somebody to put subject headings into the catalogue records (no, we don't buy in MARC records)(long story, clues: our local network environment puts a spoke into batch import processes and electing to buy in MARC records involves somebody making a series of decisions somewhere along the way).

Back in the day, Jimmy Huddersfield or Eddie Gravy would have done the work. Since then, Mary has relied on a series of strategies:

• "I can do this myself," involving cherry-picking the easy or interesting ones and leaving anything else on the shelves for a few months.
• Asking Lola to do some on top of her filling in for two other Assistant Librarians (Lola works job-share, though the other half of her job's been deleted. Go figure.)
• Getting Maybelle in on extra hours to do the stuff left behind by Mary.
• And back to "I can do this myself."

Noreen's going frantic.

"Mary, these need to be finished off and shipped out. People might have reserved them and be waiting for them."

"They weren't ordered as requests."

"No... but they might have reserved them now they've arrived. There's no way of knowing until you deal with them."

"Leave it with me."

I can't think why Mary doesn't just tell everyone not to buy any non-fiction pending the spontaneous generation of catalogue records.