Sandy deserts full of wild beasts

In between quizzing staff to find out who's been organising birthday presents for him T.Aldous has been having a series of panicky 'phone calls (in the public arena because his 'phone's through to Tilly Floss who put her 'phone through to the Acquisitions team who work in the open-plan office). The panicky 'phone calls are all on the general theme that he knows there's a problem and somebody else caused it. Naturally, there's not much in the way of problem-solving. The reason is simple. I have to apologise for this metaphor: once it occurred to me it was inescapable...

Imagine you've got a big, white living room with a big, white shagpile carpet. All white and clean and shiny and lovely. And you've got a great, big dog. Which takes it upon itself to stroll out into the middle of the carpet and empty its bowels thereon. What would you do?

• Me, I'd get the dog out of the way, in case it had plans for a repeat performance, then I'd clean the mess up. Once all was done and dusted I'd then make it clear to the dog that this had't been a good career move.


• T.Aldous would sit there and do nothing. If you came into the room and pointed out the mess (and smell!) he'd reply: "it's nothing to do with me, the dog did that."

A dead waste of a shilling

Bless him.

In the end, all corners of T.Aldous' empire chipped in to his birthday collection with a rare generosity. Especially given that everybody's well aware that it's not a retirement present. This lunchtime he was presented with a fine card, some gift vouchers and a nice bunch of flowers to take home to his lady wife.

He had a face like a slapped arse.

"Thank you very much but I was keeping my birthday a secret."

He's spent the last hour quizzing people to find out who organised the collection so that he could given them a bollocking.

Bereft isabellas in rubber thigh boots

Frog, who is supposed to be in charge of such things, suggests alternatives to the "Messy monkeys" event:

"How about 'top a toddler' 'nobble a nipper' or 'brain a brat'? "

And it's not even the start of the summer holidays yet.

And nought is everything and everything is nought

A quick review of the collection to date for T.Aldous' birthday gift. A bit embarassing really: Dutch Bend has collected £30; Catty £25 and Helminthdale £10. Embarassing because Helminthdale's got twice the staff as the others.

The charitable explanation is that T.Aldous is based at Helminthdale which makes it difficult to put out a collection tin without his knowing about it.

The realistic explanation is that T.Aldous is based at Helminthdale and has got on people's tits so much that they're keeping their hands in their pockets.

Surfin' safari

One of my colleagues has been conned into doing an internet taster session in one of the branches as someone was off ill and has subsequently discovered, once he arrived, there is a "Messy Monkeys" event going on there. (Anything organised by Fluffyland has to have an alliterated title. They didn't like my suggestions of Kill a Kid or Shoot the S*ds)

Ad quod damn 'em

It's good to be popular. Looking up from my desk today I noticed that I had a queue comprising:

• two from Fluffyland (Children's Unit);
• the part-time, job sharing Web site manager who is not doing part-time, job sharing web site manager work as she has just returned from long term illness, precisely at the time her pay was about to be cut, but now has plenty of time to do nothing but annoy me;
• next a dead ringer for Caroline Aherne "Mrs Merton" who has something to do with IT provison for the disabled, well she is supposed to manage it;
• and finally my line manager was in the queue.

Whatever happened to Geneva Convention? I confess, I started the Second World War, I have Hitler's genes, I was driving the car Diana waa killed in, I shot John F. Kennedy, I taught Lucretia Borgia all she knew about cooking, I was a script writer for Crossroads, tell me what else and I will confess.

The clouds will soon roll by

Overheard:

"Should we circulate T.Aldous' retirement card for people in the branch libraries to sign?"

"He isn't retiring."

"I know, but it might boost morale if people thought he might be."

Euphemisms, Audrey, euphemisms!

Mary has a quiet word with me and Frog by the coffee percolator:

"Could you spread the hint around to staff not to keep calling Management Group 'The Secret Society'? T.Aldous has got wind of it and doesn't like it."

Fair enough I guess, though shutting the stable door as far as I can see. One of last year's inspectors asked me: "why do they call Management Group 'The Secret Society'?" I was so surprised I can't remember my response.

Be careful what you wish for

With the new recruits at Dutch Bend and Catty and their satellite branches they're now up to strength in lending. This should be good news, and will be eventually. At the moment, though, it's a problem as they're all falling over each other and not getting much more done than they were last autumn when they were virtually single-staffing the main libraries over lunchtimes. The reason's easy enough to see: they've been crisis-managing due to staff vacancies for about three years. Now they're able to do more than just run themselves ragged trying to keep the wheels on the wagon they're blinking like rabbits on a roadway wondering what to do next. It's always the way: if you've been desensitised enough your head only starts to hurt after you've stopped hitting it with a tea tray.

Aurea mediocrities

I'm picked up on the front desk/back office issue.

"The front desk is more important. If we weren't there then there'd be no point in having anyone working in the back."

The converse to that, of course, is that without somebody buying, receiving and distributing the stock then the libraries would be empty and the staff could all go home. This nonsense needs to be knocked on the head: there's no "us" and "them", they're all part of a team and if we want to deliver a half-way decent service in our libraries then we need both ends of the process staffed and working properly.

One of the charges commonly levelled against Barry Trotter when he worked here a few years back was that he didn't "spend his share of time on the enquiry desk". Quite right too, I said at the time and say all the more now. What's the point of paying somebody principal officer grade to do an assistant librarian's job? Given the desperate need for any sort of proper management of the service we can't afford to waste what few management resources we've got.

"When Garry Chevalier was in charge at Dutch Bend he wasn't above spending all day on the enquiry desk."

No, but then again Garry wasn't above sliding attractive young female staff's payslips into the inside pockets of their blouses, whether or not there was a pocket there. I don't think he'll do as a paragon of public library management.

Garry was part of the management team that in 1991 decided to completely cut the marketing budget. As Little Billy Liverwort told councillors: "if we publicise our services we might create a demand that we can't meet."

Standing in the corner, nothing else to do

One of the things that constantly irritates me about the library service is the systemic assumption that if anything's away from the public interface it must be

1. Dead easy to pick up


2. Not really all that important

Today's illustration is in the Acquisitions team: there's a bit of spare capacity upstairs so they've sent a couple of people down again to "lend them a hand." Which is great in principle and almost certainly well-meant. Unfortunately, aside from printing out spine labels there's nothing that that team does that can be picked up and done without at least a few days' training. This could/should be possible if someone was assigned to lend a hand on a regular basis over a period of time (I'm saying could/should because knowing this organisation's attitude to staff training and development it isn't a given). Unfortunately, staff are sent down unannounced on an ad-hoc basis for an hour or two, which just adds to the stress overload of the team as they struggle to catch up with their work, cover long-standing vacancies, answer everybody else's 'phones and also try and find things for the lending staff to do.

You couldn't mismanage it better: lending resources are wasted; willing and capable staff are made to feel useless; an over-stretched team is put under more pressure; and an unnecessary tension is built up between the two teams.

Daffodils in your gaiters

A particularly fraught discussion upstairs in the main library. We're supposed to be putting a dozen new public terminals in the community room, partly to maximise the use of the room as a learning resource but mostly because someone got nervous about meeting the public library standard on the number of public workstations. We have the PCs. We have the network connections in the room. We have the network connections in the library. But we don't have the network connected as to do so we need the shopping centre's agreement to take the twelve cables across a seven-foot stretch of ceiling space just outside the library. The centre manager isn't authorised to give the OK, it has to be done by head office, which appears to be a black hole somewhere down south. So we're stuck and have been since last autumn.

Today I'm called up to discuss where the PCs would be going if we could bridge the gap. The answer is the same place as every other time I've been asked, using the network points as a bit of a guide. And just like every other time I'm asked why the network points are in those locations. And just like every other time I remind T.Aldous that he decided that these were the best places to go once Mary and I convinced him that they'd fit.

Then he tells me about the problems we had buying the PCs, of all of which I'm all too aware. Then he tells me about the problems with the shopping centre, ditto. Then the problems with the PC requisitions forms, ditto. Then the problems with some of the people in IT, ditto. Then he reprises the problems with buying the PCs and with the shopping centre's head office, ditto, ditto, ditto ad nauseum.

I'm in the lift coming back down to my cellar office and about halfway down I hear a noise. It took me a few moments to register what it was: someone was screaming, a long, low, sustained scream. It must have gone on for two or three minutes. I was aghast: who the hell screams like that in a public library?

It was me.

Thrills and spills on the gardener's lady

Tilly Floss is throwing a wobbler:

"I shouldn't have to do stationery. I'm not the stationery clerk. They shouldn't expect me to do other people's work."

At which point her 'phone rang and everyone sat on their hands waiting for her to finally get round to answering it.

Editor's note: Nobody else is stationery clerk either.

Full of sound and signifying nothing

Postscript to the Gypsy Cream drama: Mary's 'phoned Pansy to ask what she's doing putting copies of The Bookseller out for the public.

Let the devil take the park attendant first

High dudgeon at Gypsy Cream Library where local fusspot Mrs. Nattercan is raising Cain because Pansy Potter's moved the 10-year-old copies of The Bookseller off the Reference shelf.

"I wouldn't mind: I've left the past six editions on the shelf and displayed them face on so that everyone could see that they're there. It looked horrible: ten years' worth of Booksellers spine-on in the middle of the library, neither use nor ornament."

"Did anyone use them?"

"No. I checked with the assistants who've been covering here for the past three years [the branch librarian retired last summer after being off sick for two years after doing her leg in after an accident] and they've never seen anyone use them. I've even put string along the top of the magazines to see if it's been disturbed by the end of the day. Zilch."

"Does Mrs. Nattercan read it?"

"No. She just doesn't like me changing the library."

"Can I make a suggestion: rather than having an constant sniping war with Mrs. Nattercan every time to make small changes why not review everything that you want to do and then blitz the place and make big changes. That way you're not constantly battling with your more conservative customers and make a bigger impact."

"I'll have to think about it. If I do big changes then you-know-who will stick his oar in."

Sigh...

Night and day? You are the one.

A colleague in a media library sends me this. It's quite a lot like sending Coles to Newcastle.

It's a crap job, in a crap place
All the work is boring it's a disgrace
It's no rat race, I'll be a mental case,
That it's all shite to me.

It's a crap chair, in the wrong style
So I bought my own chair, it was worthwhile
Feel I'm on trial, and I'm so versatile
But it's all shite to me

I can't say how happy I was to come here
I can't say, because it's not true
There's this stuff I'm trying so hard to forget
Wouldn't you like to forget something too?

It's the wrong sound with the wrong scripts
Though your clips are tempting, they're the wrong clips
Find the right clips, better get to grips
But the day ends, I'm free
Dear, it's all shite
It's all shite to me.

Pavement oysters

We're coming up to T.Aldous' 60th birthday with the vexed question as to whether or not to have a collection for a card and a present coloured further by his announcement that he's not retiring this year after all.

A cricket-loving colleague supplies an answer: Bill Frindle, the chap who does the scoring for Test Match Special on the radio, celebrated his 40th year in the job. His colleagues bought him a card but there was a slip-up and somebody got one with the message: "Sorry you're leaving." Perhaps we could do similar.

"If we give him a "sorry you're leaving card" every birthday he might take the hint by the time he's 65!"

Is that cannon fire or is it my heart pounding?

We've had wind of comments in one of last year's inspection reports:

"Prioritisation and decision-making are either non-existent or based on crisis management. "

Next week: the toilet habits of bears and the bouyancy of ducks.

Icky the bare bum firewall bobby

The council's email server is playing silly buggers again. No, scrub that: it's behaving exactly as you'd expect anything to do with Helminthdale to behave. None of us have been able to receive any emails from discussion lists for about six weeks. In the mean time, we're receiving dozens of spam emails for larger body parts; genuine imitation Rolexes at imitation genuine prices; gentlemen's pharmaceuticals; and weekly global updates from the Chief Executive.

It isn't just us affected: none of the planning appeals are getting through the spam filter because the form includes the word "erection."

Today we appear to have hit a crisis: everyone's email account seems to have gone AWOL: if you click on Outlook on your PC you get access to a pile of spam but none of your emails. A treat.

Belshazzar's snatched cheese butty

Frog's received the first parcel of Reading Mission goodies for the summer holiday Reading Challenge. He's especialy pleased to get to play with the secret message pens (the writing is invisble until you rub it with the other end of the pen). The sensible grown-ups amongst us wonder if the ink in the pens will last out to the end of term.

"I'll be able to write rude things on the walls," says Frog.

"I think the writing's been on the walls here for a while now," replies Noreen.