I think the library is 50% poster at this point

[spindizzy]

Hey everyone, I am absolutely knackered and I've no idea where the last six weeks have gone, but hi! I exist! MOST of the workmen have finally left our house!

• We have a functioning bathroom, everything is a mess, and last week I rehang the bathroom door all by myself after the builders left! Lex was gonna do it after work but I was impatient and decided that I could do it. *strikes heroic pose* Although I may have accidentally dropped one of the builders in it, because the next day I asked where the rest of the screws for the door were, and the gaffer seemed very surprised that the door wasn't back on its hinges when the last workman left. To be fair, I was surprised that we had six screws between two doors, so I guess it evened out?


• But we also had a guy come and FINALLY FIX OUR KITCHEN CEILING. WHICH HAS BEEN LEAKED THROUGH FOR LIKE TWO YEARS. Like, he sawed around the edges of the room and then just started ripping it down by hand??? Kinda cool! Incredibly messy! He also roasted every previous builder who came through our house for shoving anything they didn't want to look at into the space between the ceiling and the floor above. Like instruction books! Which would explain a lot about the people who had the house before us!


• The builders cleared our entire front yard, which I assume was to give them space to actually cut up plasterboard and stuff, but mates I have been trying to clip back this bastard of a bramble all summer and they've sorted it. They are OFFICIALLY my heroes.


• Me and sithe are gonna have to paint the new walls and possibly the kitchen ceiling (landlady didn't want to pay for repainting) but I honestly kinda like the colour the plaster is right now. Oh well.


• Went back to work for my first half-shift! It was entirely set-up, so no customers to deal with, but seeing how the library is being changed around is terrifying and fascinating.
  
  • I was on the third shift, after the first two had moved all of the furniture, so my job was mostly putting signs and floor markers out. The layout of the main customer area feels really different, because all of the area that used to be seating for students has been replaced with a click+collect station. Didn't know was going to be there, but I'm glad it is!
  
  
  • I love seeing everyone's masks, because so far they're all pretty and colourful! Is it weird to start a thread on the staff group-chat to ask where everyone got their masks? I don't want to show up wearing the same mask as someone else, that would be weird.
  
  
  • All but like, two of the student printers have been made inaccessible. The rest are either in staff-only areas or are being blocked off. (Will it stop them? WE SHALL SEE.) I'll be interested to see how this works in practice, because a huge amount of the enquiries we get are "Where/how can I print/scan/photocopy?" and I have no idea how the apocalypse is affecting how many people are going to be there and need to print off coursework/paperwork. ... Is this what is finally going to force the university to accept digital submissions? WHO KNOWS. But I really hope that people's accomodation and visas stop requiring paperwork being printed out and faxed, I'm just saying.
  
  
  • We no longer have a prayer space. Okay, no, to be fair, we never had a dedicated prayer space, but there were out-of-the-way parts of the building that people used for that, like underneath the back stairs or in a corridor that's only used to access one specific office and a fire door. Both of which are now in the staff-only areas. ... On the one hand, sure, yes, don't go outside cause you don't wanna die, but also – I am not comfortable with saying to people "Yes you can be in this building for six hours at a time despite the virus, but we can't give you anywhere to pray while you're here."
  
  
  • Also I'm 99% certain that one of the elevators is being made staff only and the other one is being put out of order to stop people sloping in from the café downstairs to the actual library, so godspeed anybody with accessibility requirements.
    
    • Me: Oh no, what about the man who comes in with his guide dog?
      Manager: It's okay, we'll walk them through it when they come in.
      Me: *desperately trying to keep quiet that my first concern was "We have all these signs and dogs can't read"*
    
    
    • The worst bit of this is that the students who need to use the elevators are probably very used to this, given that we have three floors that are completely inaccessible if you can't take stairs because the lift breaks down that often.
  
  
  • Fun fact: ideally we would have cut the number of seats available for students by another 150, but apparently management's management got to "only 350 students in the building at a time" (down from our initial capacity of 1500) and wigged. The plus side is that if students want to sit in the library at all (like, to study), they have to book a slot! And they can only book two slots in a week! Watch this space to see if that is ACTUALLY what the system does or if it's like the outlook calendar system we all had to use where they could book as many as they wanted and management had to go through and manually delete the extra.
  
  
  • So... It's weird, is what I'm saying here. I know I've joked before that I have no object permanence and how things are when I perceive them is how they'll always be, but it's fucking bizarre to experience that shift happening in real time. Like, the "It's like I've never been away" sensation while I'm changing things to something new is cognitively dissonant and I have no idea what to do with that.
  
  
  • Formal training starts next week so we can all start back again formally the week after. THIS IS FINE.
  
  
  • I am making myself a little velcro pouch to carry around work that's going to have my Doing Things kit in it (notebook, pen, hand sanitiser) and I have realised that I need a glasses chain to go in it as well because it turns out that the mask + my glasses = glasses falling straight off my face.

Right now, the biggest non-apocalypse drama is that the landlady's gracing us with her presence tomorrow and she's gonna kvetch that the house is a mess, but honestly I might just hole up mine and Lex's room and hiss at her until she goes away. Yes I emailed her to let  her know that I'm back at work and thus more of a transmission risk! No that is not stopping her getting the train for two hours each way to inspect the builders' work. HE SENT HER PHOTOS ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE PROCESS. WHY DOES SHE HAVE NO CHILL.

... I say. As a person who ALSO has no chill.

Comments

[bookgazing]

Hope all goes well when yoy open to students :) The lift thing is :( We clean inside ours every two hours as part of our new cleaning schedule & cuz so many of the lifts in the centre are blocked off it's really useful to customers.

[bemused_writer]

Sounds like awesome progress on the house! Getting a leak fix is definitely good.

The library I work at isn't even close to letting people in (we're doing curbside pickup). Admin is planning out the details, but I have a feeling it's going to look very different from what they've envisioned once it comes along. Still, the idea is we're going to have a limit for how long people can be there and we're going to limit how many people can be in the building at a time, so not too different from what you're doing. We've moved some things around, but not a whole lot.

I hope the changes at your library go well and that customers take the changes gracefully! Sounds kind of chaotic at the moment, so you definitely have my sympathies.