Changing rooms

We're having a bit of a domestic about meeting rooms in Helminthdale Central Library at the moment. We've got four meeting rooms in all: Meeting Room One (counting from the left) and Meeting Room One (counting from the right) are for staff use downstairs on our floor. These are usually reserved by our writing on a board by the doorway. Meeting Room One, which is the big room in the lending library, is available for use by staff, community groups and other parts of the council whereas Meeting Room One, which is the small room behind the reference library, is only available to staff, community groups and other parts of the council. [This all sounds mad when I write it down. No wonder we're cracking up.] These rooms are reserved by ringing the lending library and having them record the booking in the bookings diary kept there. Unless you ring downstairs and have the booking recorded in the bookings diary kept there. Or ring the reference library and have the booking recorded in the Day Book. Anyway, it's all pretty simple and transparent.

Today, Maudie had booked Meeting Room One for the Asian Ladies' Reading Group; group of youth workers had booked Meeting Room One; and downstairs Maudie had booked Meeting Room One for a meeting with the auditor, which left Meeting Room One free for Doreen and the Assistant Librarians to have a chat about how to address with the swine flu outbreak in one of the local schools now they've received official advice from the Health Unit...

Until T.Aldous commandeered that room for a meeting with a furniture salesman to discuss some new tables for Carbootsale Library. Which left Milton with a problem as he wanted to have a meeting with me to go through a programme of activity we've suddenly discovered is being planned for Catty Library. And both of us with a problem as a key piece of work had been arranged to be done with the PCs in Meeting Room One and the IT guys had come over to do the necessary. But this was OK as Maudie and the auditor had decided to work at her desk anyway. Which was just as well as a carpet salesman arrived to show T.Aldous some samples for the proposed foyer at Umpty Library.

So, while T.Aldous had simultaneous meetings in two different rooms; and Julia went to find some staff to have a look at the carpet samples; and everybody found something else to do so that they didn't spent the morning looking at table samples (really); and Milton checked that the IT guys were OK with the project; and Maudie walked the auditor through the e-procurement processes; and Salome supported the reading group; and Bronwyn moved the display boards for this week's author visit out of Meeting Room One so that it could be poshed up for a Big Chiefs' Pow-Wow; and Maisie made teas and coffees for the youth workers because T.Aldous told her to; I got on with my morning's work and hoped for the best.