day one: sister cities ... i mean sister libraries

day one: bat out of hell's library
so i am spending my first day away from hell's library and i am at a nearby branch only several blocks away. it's definitely nicer looking here, but not super nice or anything. it's no heaven's library. but it's an improvement. so far everyone has been polite. i'm in the children's room, so it's usually better. crazies typically like to stay in the adult area. we'll see what happens when i'm down there.
one of the employees asked me about the renovation going on at hell's library. then he said that he didn't feel that hell's library needed any work. "have you been there?" i asked as politely as possible. he said he had and that he felt that sister city library needed a new children's room more than we do.
i asked him whether or not he had noticed that the ceiling was falling down. literally. a year or so ago a large part of the ceiling fell in over the children's librarian's office and then instead of fixing it they just moved the office somewhere else. so there's bits of ceiling and weird scary dust all over the place. oh and there was some sort of flood they never cleaned up properly and now there may or may not be mold growing in the ceiling.
"huh," he says, "hadn't noticed that."
"oh," i add, "and the carpet there is held together by black duct tape." which it is, and it has this threadbare look where if one more person walks on it and drags their heels the whole thing might come up.
"hmmm," he says. then he looks around at their perfectly reasonable children's room that is not falling apart, is not littered with toxic dust, and is not being held together by tape. "maybe you do need a renovation."