More library tales
Library bosses being tight is to be understood really, since the annual budget was usually £20 for the county, plus a £5 waterstones voucher. Yet curiously whenever we had big council executive-y types to visit, it was expected of us to present the library as a thriving, well presented and thoroughly modern and contemporary. The logic was if they saw us struggling, rather than help us out they'd just kill us off (and anyone who has worked in local government that the higher ups really are that evil).

So on the morning of one of these visits, I get to the sliding doors to find they don't open. After getting in through the fire doors, I notice all the lights are out. And the computers are off, and the phones don't work. We call our sister library and ask them to send a message out that we'd had a power cut, but throughout the morning I notice my normally satanic boss getting more and more irate. Understandable, I guess, since these posh blokes in suits were coming. Still, a power cut can't be helped, can it?

Well as a mater of fact, this time it could be helped. The evil boss had kept putting off paying the electricity bill and they finally decided to cut us off. We left some leaflets on her desk about debt management and ocean finance and the like. That made her angrier. Oh well.
(GONEism, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 11:01, Reply)