Invoice the puppy!
One thing made my day today.
It wasn’t creating a PowerPoint presentation about reciprocal borrowing schemes. Honestly, if PowerPoint makes your day, you really need better days.
It wasn’t browsing the bookshops at lunch time. I really can’t afford to buy any more books at the moment, so that was actually mildly depressing.
It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t have to reconcile the stupid library till at the end of the day. That was quite pleasing, though.
It was having to withdraw two copies of popular books from library stock.
Yes, that’s right. Normally, this would be very annoying, and probably the result of extreme vandalism, or on one memorable occasion a terrible accident with a bottle of cherryade. Today, though, a student came in sheepishly with two books in terrible condition. She was most apologetic, and offered to pay for replacements. ‘You see’, she explained, ‘my new puppy got into my room and attacked my library books.’ This time, the dog came very close to eating the homework. We could even see the tooth marks.
So, no, I am not going to invoice the student for replacement copies, though I did toy with the idea of sending an invoice to the puppy. The incident brightened my day so much that I could have forgiven the young lady for any number of library sins. How often do you get to dispose of a book that has been mauled by a puppy?
The Singing Librarian Talks 