Skip to main content

Saturday Librarian be like...

It's Saturday.  I'm at work.

I work Saturdays - Saturday is my permanent shift and I gotta say I am used to working them now, it also helps that I don't have any other family routines to conflict with the concept of the weekend.  I used to think that one day was pretty much like the other.  The sun rises, you do stuff, the sun sets.  Turns out though the cultural attitudes and expectations that are associated with certain days (Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday), still linger quite strongly, even if your schedule is no longer based upon the routines that give these days their flavour.

So now my Saturday is like my....  Tuesday.  Kind of.  Friday is Monday.  Monday is Friday.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  Either way, working in an institution that is open every day is a little weird (and I'm also talking Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years, even if it just for chute clearing).  The entire year just morphs into a pattern of weeks.  My cycle is two days on, one day off, one day on, three days off.  Rinse and repeat.  There is no discernible beginning or end; just one continuous cycle of being on and off.

If you are not used to working odd hours, of if you have never been in that retail or hospitality sphere were no day is sacred, it can take a bit of adjustment.  There is the inevitable sense of longing when a whole bunch of friends are planning to do something on a Friday night.  Wanna go out for a few drinks?  Well, yes it is Friday, but do I really want to go out for a few drinks on what actually feels like a Monday?  No?  Now you understand my problem.  And it's not just the social side of life that suffers - any mildly interesting work or professional development event also seems to fall on a Saturday, and I often look longingly at a potential chance to network and maybe meet a few newbie Librarians knowing I can't attend.  I'm also a mediocre musician, but I love watching actual musicians perform.  When do these musicians perform?  On a Friday night, or on a Saturday, when I am knackered from the Saturday shift and inevitably fall asleep on the couch at 9pm.

As a newbie, I get it.  The undesirable shifts will always be the first on offer, and I know the Saturday shift and I will likely be buddies for quite some time.  I can't really complain though.  Saturday is a good time to figure out what the hell I am doing - it's sink or swim, or perhaps dog paddle with my head just above the water.  It's busy, lots of people want a lot of different stuff, and if I can handle a weekend desk shift during school holidays, shit, I can handle anything.

So, newbies, are you prepared?  Are you prepared to readjust your idea of what the working week is?  Are you prepared to be a bit socially stunted and to feel like you're completely out of phase with the rest of your mates?  Are you also prepared to invest in a good Netflix subscription, or else make sure you take a goodly pile of books home after work for company?  If the answer is YES, welcome to Librarianship!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using librarian skills to uncover a network of dodgy shopping sites!

In all my posts over the years I'm not sure if I ever mentioned I am an avid steampunker.  Like many of my quirky fellow librarians, I love a good dress up and recently found myself searching for a great pair of boots to go with the Steampunk Aviator Superhero costume I'm assembling (trust me, it will work!). One evening whilst idly thumbing through Pinterest I found a picture of these undeniably AWESOME combat-boot style boots.  I followed the link to the website ( www.chichola.com ) and although it didn't look dodgy and offered PayPal, I am a cautious online shopper and always check the customer reviews first.  They were 1000% abysmal.  Like the kind of reviews that say SCAM, THEFT and CAN I LEAVE 0 STARS.  So despite loving the shoes, I was definitely not parting with my money on this occasion. Fast forward a couple of months and I see an ad for Victorian-style cosplay boots in my Insta feed.  Did I mention that I am an avid steampunker? ...
24 comments
Read more

Academic vs. Public

For those of you who have followed my story from the beginning (yeah, just me!) the whole idea of The Ambidextrous Librarian is that I am a newbie librarian working two jobs; one in a public library and the other academic.  I try to blog about my experiences and provide a bit of insight into each library environment, maybe provide other newbies with a bit of an idea what each is like.  My version of worldly wisdom and all that! But enough intro - I'm sure you're dying to hear my thoughts. Since the beginning of the year I have been getting a lot of shifts at the academic library. These were very welcome, not just for the extra bucks but because the job gave me interesting things to do - long term projects that require me to plan and create and research and present things. I've made it sound all very high-brow but let's not get too excited, it's basically just a Digital Literacy learning plan for struggling new tertiary students.  Still, I was part of a ...
2 comments
Read more

The Trials of Youthful Exuberance

Attracting youth to the library is such a THING. Endlessly discussed across the ages, we as librarians want to connect positively with this elusive subset of the population - draw them in with our smiles and our warmth, instill in them a lifelong love of reading and be that “third place” that everyone was waxing lyrical about a wee while back. If only we could get them to start talking to us, if only we could get them to read a book or two, if only we could get them to see that we’re actually really cool! (and that my friends, is the problem right there 😆). Our library's youth space was about as inspiring as cold, one day old oatmeal, so we recently underwent a total revamp.  We now have funky chairs and bookend art, traditional games, gaming consoles and colouring stations - all these things have merged to create a much better vibe in that area, but has it attracted youth? Well yeah, but it's sort of attracting everyone at the moment because it's such a nice area ...
1 comment
Read more