Job, and SERENITY

I was glancing through a book in passing at work the other day, Bonjour Laziness: Jumping Off The Corporate Ladder by Corinne Maier. One passage leaped out at me. It was something like, "It doesn't matter how well you do your job. What matters is how well you conform."

Chills to the bone, eh? Yet still SO TRUE. The heads of my department seem on the whole hugely uninterested in hiring bright people who can do the job. (I was hired by personnel and put in there at the last minute.) We have several substitutes who would love full time employment but when it comes to choosing... my boss is totally bent on always selecting the dullest, most bovine candidates. Any occasion when they don't follow this rule of thumb is cause to celebrate.

Let me make something clear: My job as library clerk is not hard. Being a really good library clerk is nothing to shout about. But it's such a not difficult job to do that you really have to struggle to find someone who can't do it to a professional level.

I get morbid and depressed when I think of all the fascinating work my synapses could be firing over. Then I go to the library and go livid when what a job that should be Grand Theft Lollipop becomes an ordeal because someone else's synapses fire naught but blanks.

Remember when I said that working in Access Services was the hardest job in the library? Well, sometimes I think that on some level that it was just me. Good friend and consumer of umbrella drinks Randall informed me that no, I was correct: Access Services is Hell: Library Division.

More on that stuff some other time.

Right now, I wanted to mention that I have tickets to see Serenity tonight at 12:20 a.m. Gentle Reader, It Is Going To Rule. My favorite review for it so far has been this one by Ken Tucker in New York magazine. Be warned: There are spoilers. Some choice quotes from the review:

Joss Whedon proved in his long run on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (seven seasons) and his short one on Firefly (eleven episodes), he has two distinct yet complementary gifts: He can write quick, gabby banter for an array of heroes and oddballs better than any auteur since Preston Sturges, and he can dramatize the camaraderie within an ensemble better than anyone since Howard Hawks.

and:

Serenity frequently plays like the best sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark that Steven Spielberg never made.

So basically, Mr. Tucker would have you know that Serenity has been perfectly tailored to fit my ever demanding movie watching needs. Which can only be great for the rest of you, barring those perverse individuals who watch Tarkovsky movies for fun.