Current Ramblings
Monday, July 26, 2004
On top of finding out I would need another $500 in repairs to my car to get my air conditioning working, and being told I'm pretty much not going to get this second promotion I was trying for at work (also that my co-workers hate me and I should be on Ritalin) , Friday also marked the loss of my title at work as Queen of the Fictions. I would like to think that this was, like my loss of comics, not because of failings on my part, but Friday was bad enough already without asking about that. Instead, I have now been put in charge of Young Adults and...Religion. While I have been known to read the occasional J.K. Rowling or Eoin Colfer, I haven't read a religious book since sating my curiosity as to what this "Left Behind" business was about. (And learning it was about writing to the lowest common denominator. I had more challenging reading assignments in junior high.)
I always kinda dreaded the idea of getting stuck with Religion. It's not that I have anything against religion itself. Conceptually, it's fine, and I find the non-Christian stuff especially interesting in a "Let's learn about other cultures!" way. But it's the hate stuff that always bothered me. The fact that there even is a book called "Is The Homosexual My Neighbor?" is kind of appalling. Or one I discovered today, "Who Is My Enemy?", which tells you how to draw homosexuals, "militant feminists", and even (Gasp!) liberals into your church so you can convince them to stop having sex with other men, putting on shoes and leaving the kitchen, and voting for Kerry, respectively. Okay, so I find this sort of stuff a little insulting.
But I started running it today, and it wasn't really so bad. Most of it was pretty innocent. My main lingering concern is being a heathen in the section. When I ran fiction, if I apologetically expressed to a customer a lack of knowledge of Nora Roberts aside from what I learned while stocking, that customer was unlikely to get upset or try desperately to convert me to reading Nora Roberts. I wonder if any of my predecessors have been proselytized to for a lack of deeper knowledge of the subject matter. Though I guess it's not really that much different from working any other part of the store, or any other store, for that matter. I've been invited to churches or asked if I know that Jesus loves me while working almost as many times as I've been awkwardly hit on by extremely creepy men. I'll manage.
posted@11:18 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments