Work-related rant. Scroll down or endure. Your choice:

Working at Library1, the smaller of the two libraries, where donations of books are accepted but there's only a small, dedicated group of seniors who go through them. In comes a guy who asks me where the donations should be brought. I ask him if it's a large amount and he advises me there are ten boxes. That's not exactly a shitload, especially if you're used  to Library2, so I grab a cart and go outside to help him since the security guy who'd normally do it isn't in today.

 Once outside and next to the van, I meet the guy's wife, who advises me in a cavalier manner that her mom just died. I express my condolences and she says, "Yeah, it's a bummer. So, she was an avid reader and we're trying to get rid of all her old books.” She laughs.

 Laughs.

 

So, eight boxes later I’m unloading the cart, thinking there could only be a few boxes left. As I emerge from the back with a now empty cart, I see that she has grabbed a librarian to help her find me because apparently I took too long to unload the cart into the tiny space allowed.  She then asks if we have more than one cart which, because I am already overheated and annoyed, doesn't immediately send up a red flag.

 Back outside, it slowly dawns me on that the cart is filling up again and they do indeed have a shitload of boxes left in their van. We are now at fifteen boxes and no end in sight. At this point, picturing the facial expression of my co-worker who also heads up the all-volunteer Friends of the Library group, I tell her this second round is as much as we can take.

 Is the woman gracious and grateful that we took half of her enormous payload? Have you been to America? If so, don’t ask silly questions.




 

 The woman flies into a hysterical fit, giving me her life story and telling me how she has to drive X amount of people to some-place and yadda-yadda and how the bookstore she tried directed her to a dumpster and the other nearby library wasn’t accepting donations, etc. But for some reason, because we accepted a large amount, we were supposed to accommodate an entire van full of boxed books.

 Try as I might to not let this set the tone for my day, it was within the first thirty minutes and that makes it nearly impossible.

I would say it's a real bummer, but apparently that word is reserved for serious inconveniences like the deaths of our parents.

 

Rant ended.