Working in my
public library was probably my favorite job. I worked
there for three years during high school as an aide in the children's computer
room, leaving only because I had graduated and was leaving for
college.
1) I was able to read all the time. If no kids or parents
needed help and nothing was broken, I was pretty much free to read, do
my homework, or just about anything else as long as I didn't leave the
floor. When they got an Ethernet connection piped into the computer
room, they didn't even bother me about using that for my own purposes.
2) The pay was great. While most of my friends were making
minimum wage (or less), I was paid more than double.
3) I finally got to find out what was in the "NO ADMITTANCE"
section of the library, the curiosity of which had bothered me for years.
And no, I'm not telling.
4) I had never, nor have I since, met such modest, polite, and nice people as the librarians I worked with.
5) I did my small part in educating the next generation of America.
Coming into the job at 15 years of age, I hated children.
I had been a Counselor-in-Training for the previous two summers at different
camps, and I just really never got used to the whole "babysitter cum guardian"
experience. The fact that I was being paid peanuts (cheap ones at
that) didn't help. But the library was different--this was computing,
something I knew and was excited to help people with. After working
at the library for only a short while, I started actually looking forward
to questions instead of dreading them. The look in their eyes when
they discovered something new was enough.
There were things I didn't like, of course (The public library is NOT
a day care center for your kids), but the positives far outweighed
the few negatives.