I hereby dub thee
Today I moved from one building to another. I’m apparently due a second move in six to twelve months, depending on availability of renovation funds. For the nonce, though, I am ensconced in a largish cube-farm in the main library building.
(I am not, by the way, supposed to call it a cube-farm, to judge from the flash of fear across the face of the person I was talking to when I used the term. Whatever. It’s a cube farm. Personally, I got nothing much against cube farms, but I think I’ve already observed that I am not subject to the same office-space lust that other people seem to be.)
The new digs are a fairly major ergonomic improvement over the old ones, and a vast improvement as far as space—I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the space I’ve got. The lone downside is that the new digs are gray. Very gray. Gray walls, gray carpet, gray desk surface, and even the chair would be gray if I hadn’t bought my own chair before starting this job.
People wonder about that, the chair and the freaky keyboard. Nine-days’ wonder, to be sure, but they are curious. It’s health, simple as that, and as I’ve paid for my health gizmos myself, it’s nobody else’s lookout. I don’t want to be gimp-handed again, and the chair and the keyboard help me keep the gimp under control. I should bring my Armaid to work; then they can really stare.
Anyway, I have officially been renamed “New Person” for the duration of my employment (or, at least, my tenure in the cube farm). A genial phone-guy came through in the early afternoon to get everyone matched up with their old phone numbers. I didn’t have an old phone number, since I’d been sharing a phone with the main library hardware/software tech (and let me tell you, he got way more calls than I did!), and I so informed the phone guy. “You’re a new person,” he said. “Okay, I’ll be back with a new extension for you.”
Twenty minutes later, from the cube that backs onto mine floated the query, “New Person?”
“Yes?” I answered.
And that was that. On a roar of laughter from the other librarians, I had my new appellation. Okay by me; I also have a new phone number, which was the point of the interaction.
Further upcoming newbie stuff includes another introduction at this week’s Librarian Council meeting, and a New Faculty get-together at the president’s home that I really think I’m going to skip. Said home isn’t on transit lines (hoity-toity places generally aren’t, of course), and the do is on a Sunday. Perhaps it would be politic to go, but hell, I’m not giving up my Sunday afternoon just to be politic. If somebody were there I needed to buttonhole for the repository, that’d be a kettle of fish of another color. As it is—thanks, but no.