#werkstuff

So last week, i missed an emergency meeting due to my tardiness. Aside from the fact that the meeting was scheduled at 8am with word released to participants at 6am the same day, one might think 'it's alright' because it is understandable. I mean, dude, you'd inform me at 6am to be there by 8am? Shytes for a late riser like me, that's like asking for a miracle.

But coming from a working history where people gossip and inflate your faults, the first thing'd that'd come under fire is the time you punch in. It doesn't matter if you're working hard, doing a lot of things for the project or if you stay back late - you clock in past the 9am mark and that'd be a black dot next to your name.

In performance evaluations in my old offices, it doesn't matter that you'd work weekends. They'd mention the faults in your working performance.... And that we don't arrive early anyways. Meaning it goes "For this project you had ordered squirrels instead of chipmunks... And you come in late in the mornings" - it makes the situation worse, trust me, cause that's the first thing and/or the last thing they'd bring up in performance evaluations.

So when a colleague apologised for a snarky comment made about me missing the 8am meeting, i thought: don't. It's justified. Padan muka, siapa suruh datang lambat kan? Kalau terasa, i should've been there on time, and that didn't happen.

Tonight, at work, I ran through a bunch of Inter Library Loans borrowing requests. Technically, that's not my job. I used to work for ILL Lending, and quit (because the supervisor was a creep, and it was too many hours, and my mental health was a shit show and I wan't sleeping). 

A couple of weeks ago, my supervisor came and asked me if I'd be interested in helping out with the Borrowing part of ILL (a different supervisor). I said, "sure!" So, now, during my regular circ shifts, I work ILL borrowing. It's not particularly difficult-- I process requests, and try to find materials for free online, and if I can't I submit borrowing requests from other Libraries. It's not particularly difficult, just a little complicated-- First, I do a preliminary search for the material on google. If I'm not finding anything that looks remotely right, I check their citation and fill in as much information as I can, fixing their mistakes. I keep searching, and if I can't find it online, I have to track down the right record, find the holdings, and submit a work order for the holdings. There's a lot to remember in the process-- blanks I have to fill in, boxes to check, what to do if we have the item or if the requested material is in a different language but they didn't check that they'd take it in a different language, e-mail forms to send out, duplicates to cancel, notes to add to the materials depending on what I find...

It's a lot to remember. But I'm getting better, and faster, at it. Tonight I got through EVERY request. I didn't find a whole lot online, but the ones I did were mostly PT school requests (the department that actually gave us money to purchase their requests.), and there were only about 5 that I couldn't find online of PT requests, and those, because I'm not yet comfortable with the ordering process, I left a note in the notes field telling my supervisor that I exhausted googling and we should probably just buy it. The rest of the normal requests I either found, downloaded and filled or requested. 

I do this because my ILL Borrowing supervisor doesn't have a student assistant, unlike the Lending supervisor. I work enough hours at the Library, have been working there long enough, and had experience with the software so they asked me.

After work, on my way home, I texted my supervisor to let her know that the ones I left in the PT requests were ones I couldn't find and had annotated them as such, and to save her time she could just order them tomorrow morning. 

On all accounts, I kicked ass tonight. I helped out my supervisor, doing a job I'm not technically hired to do, that's way past what my fellow student managers/workers are doing (again, not that it's particularly hard, but most people working my shifts would be doing homework, screwing around on the internet, whatever). 

But I still feel inadequate. My homework is not done. I probably could have processed some of the requests faster. Did I really search enough for the PT requests I annotated that we need to buy? Did I fill in all of the blanks correctly (particularly the ones about the type of order it was, the place I found the articles I DID find online?) Did I request from appropriate holdings Libraries?