Today we began the process of transferring the contents of the Ora Sprague Library to the B Thomas Golisano library building. Crews from the moving company were there before I arrived, sizing up the job, organizing their workflow, scoping out the entrances. They are pros at this, traveling around the country moving libraries to new buildings.
Their carts are rough hewn plywood tall boxes on wheels made to take a beating. They work together as teams, knowing who is doing what, one pair in the old building loading carts, one pair wheeling carts on and off trucks, and one pair in the new building, unloading carts. Every cart numbered, every cart targeted for sections of new shelving - a perfect plan.
Until the first rack of compact shelving began to buckle under the weight of the bound journals and listed at a crazy and dangerous angle. The shelving company was called, they will come tomorrow. But that didn't stop the crews. They continued loading journals on shelves as if nothing were amiss. I am fearful that they will have to offload all those materials to fix the shelving. Not their problem.
They have a contract with a deadline. They plan to meet it regardless of some inadequate shelving. They have to get things done in the prescribed order, there is no time to rewrite the plan. So just keep going.
Sometimes I feel like we treat life that way. Just keep going, be tough, get the job done, ignore the little problems that take time to fix. Somehow one hopes it will work out OK. And if the shelves collapse, we will deal with it then. Maybe. If it doesn't fall on our heads and kill us in the process.
Well, tomorrow we shall see.
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