December 1999: Wife spots an add in the paper saying the library wants a part-time employee to drive the bookmobile. (This will be a point of deja vu later in this article.) I figured I'd give it a shot. I already had an application in at a local bookstore, and another couldn't hurt. It's not that I didn't like my job as a sacker at a grocery store. I got paid pretty good for part-time, and the people were great. They were most willing to work around my school schedule. (I was finishing up my MA in history at the time.) I turned in the application and attached a resume.
Only a couple days later, if not the next day, the library called me. I thought that was too fast for the bookmobile job, so I figured I must've had an overdue book or something. They wanted to schedule an interview. Naturally, I agreed. I dropped by the bookstore and asked if I was still in the running for that job. The manager said I was, so I told him about the interview, and that I needed to know stuff like potential pay, scheduling, etcetera. He tried to make it all sound like the greatest part-time job in the world.
I interviewed for the bookmobile job. (I was getting paid more at the grocery store than the bookstore offered.) I either impressed the assistant director and bookmobile librarian, or they didn't get many applicants. I got the job. When they asked when I could start, I said I really needed to give the grocery store two-weeks notice of my departure. Well, I started the next week, right after New Year's, working around my store and school schedules.
I worked about a year for the Bookmobile, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Our courier had to quit his job, due to his wife's at-home craft-store business getting to be too much for her to handle. I guess if you gotta quit working at a library, that's a pretty good way to go. The bosses asked if I could cover the courier route for a while, and I said, 'Sure.' Well, that went on for some time, and I got to liking that part of the job too. It must have been convenient for the library to have both jobs covered by one person, since, to my knowledge, they never did look for a replacement courier as long as I felt I could do both jobs. My two part-time jobs had me at three-quarter time status. It was pretty nice making my own schedule, so long as the jobs got done. In September, 2001, a wrench got tossed in the works (phrase meaning: Something came along to disrupt the tranquility).
