Saturday, February 5, 2011

Meet you in hell, Melvil!


I've only been fired from ONE job ever and I've certainly had some interesting ones over the years; clearing tables, Canobie Lake Park, news producer, promotions assistant, ice cream scooper, cashier, blah, blah, blah. So which job did I lose for simply "not really getting it": THE LIBRARY. Who the hell gets fired from a job where you check in, check out and organize books and periodicals? Let me back up and try to redeem myself for just a moment - I was only 15 years old. Long before bar code scanners, the Internet and electronics did the job for you. Back when the DDC, also called the Dewey Decimal System was really the only source of locating a book - kind of like finding a needle in a haystack only the haystack was a large room that smelled like mothballs and the needle looked like this: BR-0009-87-FA/NON-28. According to WIKIPEDIA, the DDS is a proprietary system of library classification developed by Melvil Dewey (GEEK) in 1876. In a nutshell, the damn system organizes books on library shelves in a specific and repeatable order that makes it easy (no, not really) to find any book and return it to its proper place (lies.... all lies). Why isn't ABC order sufficient and to-the-point enough? Books don't need numbers. That's just crazy and if Melvil was alive today, I'd punch him in the face. I'd blame him and his idiotic, anal-retentive, OCD way of grouping books together - the reason I got fired when I was 15. It's sort of like paying a credit card late once- and it appears on your credit report for 7 years reminding you - you suck. The fact that I got fired from a job that from the outside appears like anyone could manage is demoralizing, embarrassing and plain retarded (no offense). Forward 17 years later - I now work in payroll where everyday I'm faced with all kinds of numbers. Big numbers, little numbers, negatives, calculations, %, and vacation accruals. Sometimes my 15 year old self comes out and I lose my shit (ahem, this past Friday) and wonder if I can really do my job surrounded by all of these numbers that need to make sense somehow. The Melvil's DDS didn't make sense back then, and frankly it still doesn't. Thank god I have a power of voice, and can just ask any of the metro-sexual dudes (at Barnes & Noble) where the "self-help" books are. You know, the books on people with obvious insecurity issues regarding past failures - which usually finds its way into like, now. Yeah, those kind of books.