Maybe not

Long-time readers will know that I'm pretty ambitious and would like to be a branch manager, or something similar, someday. However, I have times when things happen that make me discouraged, like this week. Here are some dilemmas I encountered recently that were both boring and difficult to figure out how to handle--a bad combination:

Someone left a cart belonging to the grocery store down the street in our parking lot. Do we take the store's property indoors even though it isn't ours, or do we leave it in the lot and risk someone's car hitting it and getting damaged?
(Our resolution: We brought it inside, but the next day the manager rolled her eyes and took it down the street to the store. We didn't know we were allowed to go off-premises for things like that!)




We are one of the places where kids who are truant from school can come and to make-up work. The school district gives us a big packet. We hand out a copy to each kid and keep track of how much time they spend at the library working on it. Today a girl came in who really didn't read English at all, and the packets are only in English. Do we give her the English packet and tell her to do her best? Translate the packet into her native language on demand? Tell her sorry, we can't help her? Of course this is in the evening so the truancy person at the school district cannot be reached, and she insists she needs to work on it NOW.
(Our resolution: We told her sorry, we couldn't help her. No one is happy with this, but neither can we come up with a better solution.)




A kid peed on a chair. Our custodian doesn't work weekends, and neither does the central system's call-in system for bigger clean-ups. Do we clean it up ourselves? Block off the area until Monday? Call the on-call facilities manager and ask him to handle it?
(Our resolution: I put on latex gloves and cleaned it up after a coworker discovered it. I firmly believe that if it has to be cleaned up before someone whose job it is can get there, the highest-paid person in the building at the time should be the one to suck it up and do it.)