At work today I had a library cart full of legal periodicals all neatly ordered by call number to make shelving quick and easy. They don’t arrive to be shelved this way, I spent half an hour putting them in order. I wheeled the cart out of the circulation area and around the corner to the elevator cheerily telling the librarian covering the desk for me that I would be back soon. Entered the elevator and pushed the button for the lower level. The doors opened on the lower level and I pushed the heavily laden cart and it got stuck on the ridges between elevator and library floor. This happens frequently and I gave it a good shove because it was so full and then watched helplessly as the whole cart tipped over in what seemed like slow motion.
It was a spectacular sight that no amount of special effects or stop action filming could possibly replicate. And no actor, however good, could ever achieve the look that must have been on my face. It being a library I could not yell, “NO!” or any of the fine expletives that would have been so very satisfying. Since it is a library and the cart tipping and periodicals tumbling made quite a racket, my only sound was a very quiet “crap!”
Half the periodicals ended up on the floor of the library just outside the elevator and half ended up in a heap on the elevator floor. There were a couple of small glossies slithering toward the gap between floor and elevator that would have taken them down the elevator shaft. I quickly rescued those. Then, I set the cart back upright–it’s front wheel had turned sideways and had been lodged in the gap the glossies had been heading for. Crouching against the elevator doors so they wouldn’t close, I quickly started piling the journals onto the cart. I hauled everything back into the elevator and pressed the button to take me back to the circulation desk.
Thankfully in all this no one was waiting for the elevator, nor did anyone walk by and see me crouching and scrambling to pick everything up. The librarian was rather surprised to see me and I said, “Didn’t I tell you I’d be back soon?” She kindly did not laugh when I told her what happened.
And so it is that I spent my afternoon re-ordering the cart of periodicals and adding in a bunch more that had been brought up from technical services after I had prepped the cart for shelving earlier. Tomorrow I will try again and hopefully it will go a little more smoothly.
My sympathies! I used to work in a library during grad school and I did that once — just once, thankfully. I have to say I was less restrained with the obscenities.
Isn’t that when a handsome stranger (perhaps a B&N rep with excess coupons) is supposed to appear out of nowhere and help you pick everything up?
Oh my. You have my sincerest sympathies! I have a rattly old cart with wheels similarly the same width as the elevator gap…I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. I keep submitting requests for a new cart with those lovely puffy wheels much larger than the gap. No luck yet…
I love days like that! Not really. I’m sure it will go better tomorrow! I can just see the look on your face. “Ooooohhhhh Nooooooooo…..”
As they say in ‘Singing in the Rain’, ‘Dignity, always dignity’. Well done, Stefanie, on a brilliant description and on being remarkably restrained!
Smooth move, grace. :p
Do they give hazardous duty pay for library work?
Mary
There is a worse scenario… imagine that one of the slim periodicals would fall in the gap between the floor and the elevator! And then you would jump sideways to grab the last inch of it and fall on the cart… (my imagination gets overheated these days) This job definitely demands hazardous duty pay!
At first I thought this was going to be a “stuck-in-the-elevator” story, but this was much more spectacular than that. Hope it all went a little more smoothly today.
This is the kind of experience that’s really tough in the moment, but great for a story later (which you take very good advantage of here!). I can totally see myself doing something like that …
Oh no! Well at least the librarian showed restraint and didn’t laugh. I’m afraid I probably wouldn’t have been so tactful. Thankfully when I worked in the library during college it was in the reference section, so there wasn’t a massive amount of re-shelving to do, and it was all on one floor so I didn’t have any elevator mishaps. I hope your next try is (or was) more successful.
I think all legal periodicals should fall down an elevator shaft! Why, oh why, did you rescue them?
Oh poor you. All your hard work. I was waiting for you to tell us they had fallen down the elevator shaft! So I’m glad at least that didn’t happen!
Ahh Stefanie, as an archivist, I can tell you I have done this sort of maneuver so many times! I hear your frustration. I hear that “crap”.
I work in a warehouse all day ALONE…. constantly moving boxes and open-shelf files, and carts of files, so… imagine what I say when I spill something!
My cussing shakes the cobwebs!
I have toppled boxes of legal files, and when the contents spill out of the bellows they are in, it is near impossible to put it all back together and know that you have gotten it right.