- Joined
- Aug 21, 2011
Robert Lake was a maintenance man at Union college. His primary assignment was the Graduate Student Library. Ordinarily it was a very quiet place, even more so than most libraries since it was restricted to Grad students, it had little traffic, and what traffic there was were very studious students. Chief among it’s qualities were the extensive stacks, where rare and valuable books were available to be read by it clientele. Since the books were so valuable they never left the library. Instead, the library included among the stacks 20 small reading rooms equipped with closed doors, a desk and lamp, and reclining chair, as well as high speed internet access. The library was open from 7 am till midnight seven days a week. The maintenance staff arrived at 11 pm and quit at 8 each morning with an hour off for lunch. The work was safe and steady and paid very well. “ Bob” as was printed on his uniform liked his job and did good work. In return, he was liked by everyone. He was 37 years old and had been with the college for 18 years.
Earlier that summer, the college had hired a new night shift Librarian, Elizabeth Evans. Everyone called her Liz. She was 27 and had graduated with her masters in Library Science a year ago. Liz was friendly and outgoing and so far was well accepted at the Library. She was not used to the extreme quite of her job though, as she had started out managing a busy college bookstore at the state university, which had very high traffic. The relatively high pay and secure nature of the job, as well as the opportunity to continue her studies we major factors in why she was there.
For the past several months, the interaction between Liz and Bob had consisted of Bob saying hello to Liz when he started his day, and his receiving a daily list of needed repairs. This had gone on unchanged for the past 5 months. Things were working out fine. That routine was about to change… for the better.
Earlier that summer, the college had hired a new night shift Librarian, Elizabeth Evans. Everyone called her Liz. She was 27 and had graduated with her masters in Library Science a year ago. Liz was friendly and outgoing and so far was well accepted at the Library. She was not used to the extreme quite of her job though, as she had started out managing a busy college bookstore at the state university, which had very high traffic. The relatively high pay and secure nature of the job, as well as the opportunity to continue her studies we major factors in why she was there.
For the past several months, the interaction between Liz and Bob had consisted of Bob saying hello to Liz when he started his day, and his receiving a daily list of needed repairs. This had gone on unchanged for the past 5 months. Things were working out fine. That routine was about to change… for the better.