An interesting sell

Yesterday, I was driving through a neighboring city and saw a bunch of signs for a high school fundraiser. We all remember those, right? Well, me not so much in high school. We did chocolates in grade school and junior high. And I know there was other stuff we were supposed to sell. I wasn't much of a salesperson (not then, not now), so I didn't do much selling, other than the chocolate. In the words of my 3 year old niece, "Because...chocolate." And I bought most of it, I'm pretty sure. 

Anyway, reminiscing aside, back to the story. This high school wasn't fundraising with chocolate or calendars or wrapping paper or cards or whatever. Their fundraiser was--wait for it--mattresses. 

Yes, mattresses. 

It's an interesting choice. I mean, there's a very specific demographic that would 1) be able to buy a mattress to help raise funds for a high school and 2) would need a mattress. Whereas, chocolates most people could probably scrape enough together to buy at least one box and you always need chocolate. Long-term, a good mattress is much more healthy than a box of chocolate, but short-term, one is definitely more affordable. 

So, it's an interesting choice, yeah? Mattresses. And then a block or two after I saw the first sign, I saw kids--and I just need to say it, there's no way that these kids could be in high school. I mean, they looked twelve! Maybe this is just one of those, "you are getting old things", but seriously, they do not look old enough to be in high school. Anyway, these kids were wearing mattresses. Half a mattress, accurately, and obviously not the springs and stuff, just the exterior. But they were wearing mattresses to sell their mattresses.

And basically, I'm just curious to know how they decided to fundraise with mattresses. And what other fundraisers are the kids doing these days? 

Man, the times they be a changing. 

My mental status

Earlier this week, maybe Monday I think, I did two loads of laundry. And when I threw the towels in the dryer, I knew I wouldn't have time to fold them that night, but it would be fine. 

Well, Friday rolls around and I have another load of laundry to do. So I run it to the laundry room and by chance see a laundry cart full of towels that look far too familiar. And realized that I had completely forgotten about my load of towels and they had been sitting in the laundry room for about 5 days. Yeah. Just totally forgot about them. Didn't even realize they were still sitting in the laundry room. I think I vaguely remembered that I needed to fold them, but was totally unaware that they weren't even in my house. 

So, yes. That's how my brain is working these days. How's yours?

Office space

Today, I printed a comic that I might hang up in my office at work. Which seems pretty dull stuff, but is a little bit of a big deal. See, my office is pretty sparse in terms of decorations. A couple of people have mentioned that I need to decorate it (which, considering that 75% of the staff is at home on any given day, a couple of people is a lot more than it sounds). 

My office decor consists of the Muller, Feith, Fruin frisbee, a few things I've pinned up under the desk cabinets, a picture of a Lotus Elise on the cabinet door, and some postcards on the eraser tray of the whiteboard. And then a bunch of boxes and archival collections. And since I finally cleaned off my desk, even that looks sparse. 

But there's a reason, and this little anecdote (also from today) may explain it: I was standing at the counter outside of my office doing some work and one of our volunteers kept coming by to deliver stuff to me. I joked that I should maybe use my office once in a while, and the volunteer said, "Yeah, if you don't use it you'll lose it." "Yes, well, I've had 6 offices in 6 years, so I've learned don't get attached."

Yes folks. Six offices in 6 years, and 1.5 of those years were working from home so they couldn't move office spaces if they'd wanted to. After the 4th move, I packed up all my professional books and took them home. And stopped decorating my space for the most part (besides, it wasn't great for decorating anyway. It lacked the right cubicle features). For the 5th move, I had 3 boxes of files, a stack of board games, and computer equipment to move. Nothing else (keep it light. Not just because of the moves, but also because I'm an archivist not a hoarder). Move number 6 consisted mostly of archival collections. And for the past month, I've also taken over a table at the opposite end of my team's 'aisle'. (Look, you need space to process archival collections. An office desk doesn't cut it). 

So, yes. It's kind of a big deal that I might hang up a cartoon in my office. But, the decision isn't final, so we'll just have to see. 

Technical difficulties

I showed up to work on Monday, very excited for my team to make a big push to finish up a lot of our collections. And then, Monday actually happened. 

Turns out, there are some ongoing technical difficulties, and all the systems we need to do our work are down. And have been all week, and may be into next week. 

Ordinarily, this would be no biggie. My last job, there was a day when the internet went down for several hours. Me? I just kept on working with my paper stuff. No web required. For a lot of it, no computer required.

But not so much in my current institution, which has made this week a bit of a challenge. Not because I don't have plenty to work on. The real challenge has been finding work for 2 interns and 2 FTEs under me to work on. 

Most of us agree that, under the circumstances, it really doesn't make a ton of sense for us to be going to work at all. Couldn't at least some of us just have an unexpected paid vacation? Honestly, after the pandemic, we could all use a bit of a break, and we'd come back in a better state of mind, which long-term, would benefit everyone. 

However, I do understand the difficulties of paying employees to do nothing. Really, I do. At best, one or two days might be okay, but after that, I would start to feel a little...well, I'd start to feel a bit guilty. And honestly, the situation feels vaguely familiar--the pandemic started out this way too (although we had a bit of lead time to strategize. And access to the tools). Encouragingly, that is a good indication that we'll figure out how to navigate this time. And it will be much shorter than the pandemic, at least. 

Anyway. It does make work a weird and kind of dull experience. I think I'll try to enjoy it while it lasts.