Friends in the Trenches

This Saturday night, I spent the evening at the book store/cafe down the street from my house chatting it up with Sweetbraids. She's a librarian too, and one that I get to work with often, so we have lots of work-related fodder for the gab-mill. We also have grown into good friends on non-librarian turf, which got me to thinking about the work-friend.

I have made a goodly amount of friends on the job. Not all of them, but maybe half of my good friends I met through work. Is that true for everyone? Or at least everyone who has a job? Maybe Paris Hilton doesn't meet people in the middle of...whatever it is she does. Or perhaps being a socialite is sort of her job, so anyone she meets while falling out of her dress on a red carpet somewhere constitutes friend-found-at-work.

In any job I ever had, I always got along with people and got pally with them when AT work, so I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking about the people that you meet at work, where the friendship goes off the work-page and into the personal-life-page. What is this weird page-metaphor that I am trying to draw out of thin air? Just go with it, people. You get what I'm saying. People that you hang out with even when you're not at work, of your own free will, people that you call or email just for the heck of it, the people that you make an effort for.

There are occupations that lend themselves to making friends at work. When I worked in the theatre (please pronounce that "the Thee-ah-tah!" and make jazz hands while doing so), everyone was friends. That's because you're at work for 16-plus hours a day, and you don't come home from work until the wee hours of the morning, and the hours you keep don't lend themselves to ever meeting anyone outside of that circle, ever. (Unless it's guys that are in bands, which is a whole other sordid story that I'd rather not get into, because it doesn't come off making me look too smart). So when I was doing that, I was friends with everyone I worked with, and literally no one else. Not so healthy, and can lead to Burnoutus Incestiata.

Since that time, the only other place where I made a ton of work friends was when I worked at a boat rental place for the local University. This was a shitty student job, yes, and it was of such a shitty caliber that I am completely embarrassed to say that it was NOT the shittiest job I ever had. It really should have been. I had a crazy married boss who conducted a messy affair with one of the college student employees. Her husband and her lover both had an uncanny resemblance to Shaggy from Scooby Doo, as I recall. No accounting for taste, I suppose. We had to schlep these canoes in and out of the water for people (many of whom were angry, horrible, drunken devil spawn) amidst pounds of goose crap and dirty lake water. We also had to deal with the sailing crowd who would come in and hit on us while simultaneously insulting us (so attractive, those Tommy Hilfiger types), and all of this for the low low price of 6.50 an hour. I hated that job. And yet, somehow I made some of the best friends I've ever had in the middle of that filth. Biology Girl, Jenny, HVD-- all three of them I owe to that cesspool of smelly lifejackets. Maybe there's something about going through such an experience that bonds people.

Now, in Libraryland, I have found another context wherein cool people seem to just fall out of the sky in front of me. And this time it's not because we all have to stay here until all hours of the day and night, and it's not because we're bonding over slipping and falling in goose dookie. I don't really know what it is. Librarians just seem to have a high proportion of good peeps. No late hours, no geese, no red carpet necessary.

Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl