It’s pretty lonely in my neck of the woods today. Most of the time, my wall of offices is full of my co-workers. Today, I’m the only one along this wall. My supervisor is here, but her office is farther off. And the liaison in charge of all things media is here, but he’s, like, 40 whole feet away and in another area of the library.
Why am I so isolated today? Because one of our librarians doesn’t work summers and isn’t back yet, two are taking the day off, and one more has reduced her FTE so that she can have Fridays off to be with her baby girl. And that leaves me.
I have enough to do that this should be a welcome development. But unfortunately, my office is the only one that’s open and visible from the reference desk now, so I’ll be getting all the drop-in questions that should go to the person on call (who will be here, but not directly visible from the reference desk). I’ll have to be ruthless about paging the on-call librarian or I’ll never get anything done. I hate doing that. It always feels like I’m deliberately not being helpful or something