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Re: Venting - Happy Monday!



DON'T YOU DARE!!!!

Stephen P. Pentek
Archives Coordinator / Boston University School  of Theology Library
New England Conference (UMC) Commission on Archives and History
745 Commonwealth Avenue / Room 208A / Boston, MA 02215
Voice (617) 353-1323 / Fax: (617) 358-0699 / Email: spentek@bu.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU]On
Behalf Of Thomas Berry
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 3:08 PM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Venting - Happy Monday!


Two weeks ago I brought a major historic collection in from Minnesota, the
most important collection of equipment literature we have yet received.
After having worked over 100 hours overtime since mid-August, I took last
week off.

Last night the managing director called me to say he had a surprise for me.
While I was gone, he took it on himself to save me some work and process the
collection for me, without any advance warning, consultation or the
slightest consideration of what needed to be done.

So I come in this morning and find nearly everything from my desk and
reference shelves thrown randomly into boxes, several of our file cabinets
moved around at considerable waste of critically-needed space so they
would look better to him, the contents of eight cabinets rearranged to suit
his tastes, and about half of the new collection scattered throughout the
eight cabinets and interfiled with what we already had. To help me identify
what came from the new collection, he put the records he removed from it in
- I kid you not - purple file folders. Since the records were dusty, he
cleaned them by vigorously working them over with a dust brush, then
professed amazement when I told him that vacuum cleaners are available for
cleaning dusty documents without grinding the dirt into the paper.

To top it off, he's convinced that he did everything right and that he's
incapable of making a mistake. He's coming in later today to brag some more
to me about the two Sundays he spent doing all this, and I'm having trouble
composing any kind of reasonable (versus yelling and inflicting bodily harm)
way of explaining to him that, while I appreciate his desire to help and
his good intentions, he has created far more problems than he solved.

Thanks for your sympathy. Back to looking for all the stuff he misplaced and
wiping up the dust he left all over . . .

Best wishes,

Thomas Berry, Archivist
Historical Construction Equipment Association
16623 Liberty Hi Road
Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
Phone 419-352-5616
Fax 419-352-6086
tberry@wcnet.org
http://www.bigtoy.com

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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>