KAOPECTATE IS A GOOD THING: On the purely professional front, this past Sunday a woman came into the library needing to use the rest room. The Sunday staff gave her the key and sent her off to the ladies’ room. She came back a few minutes later and then checked out a computer. Having sat down at the computer, the woman proceeded to type in http://www.yahoo.com, and then had an accident; apparently, she was not finished with her previous activity and chose the computer island as the place in the building most in need of homemade fertilizer. The Sunday staff, who are all part-timers and volunteers, were utterly aghast; the librarian on duty is a corporate librarian who usually doesn’t deal with this sort of thing at the Fortune 500 business library where he works during the week; and who wouldn’t be, really?

After the woman fled the scene, the staff was made even more aghast to find that they had to clean up after her, there being no janitor on the premises on a Sunday, and that the culprit had suffered an accident in the ladies’ room as well, and had used the bathroom wall for sanitary purposes instead of the Scott’s tissue we provide for the public. You know, I’m so happy I don’t work on Sundays, but the thing of it is, what I want to know, and what no one will tell me, is just where she was sitting on Sunday, so I can avoid the spot entirely. You know, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we’re paying the Sunday people enough to put up with natural disasters like this one.