Our first edition of Take a Break at the Library without Brett around to purchase the snacks and distribute them to all of the branches has been an interesting and challenging adventure!
First, Adele from Education & Music had to order the snacks. Then she had to reorder different snacks when the store didn’t have what we wanted in stock. Then she had to recalculate the amounts when it was discovered that the Saskatchewan government now charges PST on snack foods. Many, many emails and phone calls were made.
Next, Cheyenne from the Dean’s Office had to book and coordinate two separate deliveries from two different stores, and get everything brought to Murray in a timely manner.
Last week, the first order came in. A small delivery van arrived at Murray to give us 210 lbs of popcorn kernels, 50 lbs of white coconut oil, and 2 litres of popcorn salt. It only took two book trucks to bring it upstairs to room 122.
On Tuesday morning, the second order arrived. A giant delivery truck came to the Murray loading dock, loaded with a pallet filled with 6,760 granola bars, 3,312 bags of fruit snacks, 800 juice boxes (for the food-free Science Library), and 7,000 paper bags for the popcorn. It is truly a mystery that Brett used to be able to fit this amount of stuff into the back of his van.
After the delivery driver hit the garbage bin while backing up and triggered the fire alarm by opening the wrong door (causing Protective Services to stop by and ask what was going on), he unceremoniously dropped the pallet into the loading dock and drove away. It was up to Lara (with some help from a few unlucky coworkers like Rachel and Duane, who happened to be walking by at the wrong time) to disassemble the pallet and bring all of the supplies up to be stored in room 122. It only took about an hour and six fully-loaded book trucks to get everything moved. Lara’s scratched finger was deemed a serious-enough injury for a band-aid to be deployed, but not serious enough to send her home for the rest of the day.
Now it was time to deliver the snacks to the rest of the libraries scattered across campus. Why not just put the snacks in the transit bins that already visit each branch daily, you may ask? The answer is quite simple. They wouldn’t fit. There’s just too much stuff. So it was up to Lara (who volunteered for the job) and Kelly (who didn’t) to bring everything over to all of the other library branches. The one nice thing was that since Murray is the biggest library, approximately half of the supplies would be staying in Murray to be used there.
On Tuesday afternoon, Lara and Kelly carefully maneuvered a very heavy book cart filled with juice boxes across the Bowl, to the Science Library. They only got stuck once, but a friendly student who was passing by helped them lift the cart over a big bump in the sidewalk, and they were able to successfully deliver the juice boxes to Beth, who was very happy to see them, since she had been working all by herself that afternoon.
On Wednesday morning, Kelly and Lara were able to take the indoor route to the Law Library (using the AES elevator key to get the cart down from Murray to the Arts tunnel), and drop off some snacks to Robin at Law, who was surprised to have visitors, since she hadn’t received the email letting her know that they were on their way. Once the Law snacks were delivered, Lara and Kelly carefully crossed the slushy road and climbed the bumpy ramp to bring the rest of the snacks to the Education & Music Library. The Education staff were also happy to receive their snacks, but let the girls from Murray know that they hadn’t brought enough popcorn kernels, so another trip back to Education would need to be planned for the near future. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, and Lara and Kelly enjoy the exercise and the outdoor walk back to Murray.
That same afternoon, Lara loaded up another cart full of snacks to take to the Health Sciences Library. It was a very winding path, down the Murray elevator, through the Arts tunnel, past the Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre, up another elevator, and then through a maze of construction detours to finally end up at the Leslie and Irene Dubé Health Sciences Library. Fortunately, Gwen gave Lara some chocolate Easter eggs, which provided her with enough energy to make the long trek back to Murray with her empty cart.
Now it is Thursday. There are only two libraries left to visit, and of course Lara (not-so-smartly) left the furthest two for last. The windchill is a brisk -27 degrees today, and the overpass between Biology and Agriculture still hasn’t been rebuilt (or has it???), which means that there is no easy indoor route to the Engineering Building. Will Lara’s toes freeze? (hopefully not) Will the cart get stuck in the snow? (probably) Will Lara forget how to find the Vet Med Library? (definitely)
One does dread the thought that this will need to be done all over again in December, with the addition of winter weather and ORANGES ORANGES ORANGES AAAHHH ORANGES. In December 2017, to ensure freshness, Brett made 4 separate deliveries over two weeks of many cases of oranges to the branches, above and beyond the delivery of the other snacks. In December 2018, prepare for that to… probably not happen.
However, overall, organizing and delivering the snacks has been a nice excuse to get out from behind a computer screen, get some exercise, and visit some coworkers from far-off branches. And if you can’t find Lara at her desk at the end of day Thursday, know that it is because she is lost somewhere in the Western College of Veterinary Medicine building, eating granola bars and fruit snacks to survive.
169 boxes of granola bars (40 bars per box)
210 lbs of popcorn kernels, 50 lbs of coconut oil, and 7,000 paper bags to put the popcorn in
92 boxes of fruit snacks (36 per box) – the store didn’t have enough Rice Krispies in stock for us this year, so we’re trying something new!
