Learning to Respond to "Librarian"

My favorite part of the workday is driving home at night, relaxing out of my Customer Service stiffness and drinking in the beautiful way the city adorns itself with rubies and emeralds and warm glinting diamonds of light. I’m often exhausted to the point that I don’t remember I’m driving until I’m halfway over the bridge crossing the train tracks, halfway home. I don’t like lingering in the parking lot in the dark, so I’m often changing my music at a red light.

This is the part of day when there’s no expectations for what I should be getting done. There are only headlights, and watching the sidewalks for unhoused people, the ones I know or recognize or watch as they look to cross the street. I have fifteen minutes between clocking out and having to decide what to make for dinner, and I spend that time looking both ways even when the light goes green. I like catching a glimpse of an empty road, grayscale under warm streetlights, trees catching the bright orange hue and trapping it so that once I’m home and getting out of the car, I can look up and see Orion. This is my city, the one I’ve always called home.

Most nights I’m lugging an armful of library books—I’ll read maybe one or two from each stack before they’re due—and a stack of notes about either my day or story ideas or movie recommendations from my coworkers. I had someone ask me the other day (outside of the library) where to find book recommendations, and I had to take a moment to appreciate a life lived without the guilt of dodging other people’s suggestions. But now as a librarian, I have an official mandate to recommend books to people, from every genre. There’s a definite art to reading a library patron and determining what they’d like to read, especially if they read in genres that I don’t feel much urge to explore. More than once I’ve had to do some rapid google searching while they stand at the desk twiddling their thumbs. I could probably fill out a horoscope of what I recommend people, based on the last book they read, their birthday, and what they do for a living.

I didn’t mean to become a librarian, at least not long term. But I’ve always meant to be the kind of person who notices. I think that’s why I’ve stayed in this minimum-wage part-time job rather than looking for something more challenging.

Let me answer every church lady’s question of how I ended up working here.

I graduated from college in a faerie-pink dress with a completed book draft in hand. Like every other person in my graduating class (especially those not going to grad school), I had no idea what structure the future might take on. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to move back to my hometown and live there for a few years, if not forever, and get the chance to lay down some roots. I only had one year at college where I was able to spend the entire semester in the same dorm room, only one year where I wasn’t packing everything up every three months to move on to my next spot. I wanted the chance to make a home. I wanted to collect the detritus that comes from lingering: the casual acquisition of cheap books, old program guides, and layers of dust in forgotten corners where the vacuum doesn’t reach. But as for a job that paid—I had no idea what I wanted.

I worked at The Kenyon Review for the summer, to earn a little money while I continued applying for jobs, and there I learned how to be an adult in the workplace: how to manage interns, how to manage grumpy adults, how to manage operating in a grown-up world with a face and demeanor that reads as juvenile. I made a little money to add to my savings, made a couple connections, and finally nailed down a part-time job at the library in the Humanities Department.

I expected this to be a half-way job. The I-just-graduated, figuring-out-what-I’m-doing job, likely to be held in tandem with another part-time job so that I could afford groceries and the occasional signed book. But then I got a seat behind the desk.

The world has changed in the years that I was away in muddy Ohio. Poverty levels are higher, disparity is stronger, systems that worked before the pandemic are still struggling to catch back up. Climate change is more noticeable. At the library, I have a good vantage point to see how the broad headlines affect the individual. If it’s true that things will get worse before they get better, I’m wondering when the ‘getting better’ starts.

I see a lot in a workday. I see people applying for jobs then for unemployment, I see unhoused folks learning how to use the computers, I see future nurses and doctors and engineers using our whiteboards to study for exams and finals, I see people in crisis doing their best to save themselves with resources that aren’t nearly enough to keep them safe. Right now, there’s a child laughing as hard as they can as they go down the escalator with their parents. The sound reaches above the mechanical roar and continues as they check out. In one day, a librarian sees both the best and the worst of the human condition, and we provide resources for all.

If you don’t have anywhere to go, no one to talk to, no one to look you in the eyes—go to the library. We’re always here, book recommendation in hand, eager to point you to our favorite quiet corners. You can stay until we close.

Novel-writing update: about halfway through editing the fifth draft. The book now has a title.

Current read: Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

and Happy Holidays!!