Head Tale

A colleague’s family member is involved with Alley Kat Brewery in Edmonton and brought me this beer after a visit. I did *not* drink it at work!

One of my favourite librarian colleagues, Tanya, recently appeared on the podcast of one of my favourite local craft breweries.

Considering I used to organize a monthly librarian’s gathering called “Books to Beers”, I think this is the perfect combination!

Tanya’s been my co-conspirator for a couple great beer and library-related adventures.

When she first started at RPL, I was still doing new staff orientations and got invited by her manager to lunch.  Since we were going to a place called Beer Bros, I couldn’t help myself and ordered a beer.  Tanya saw me do this and was like “Can’t let you drink alone!” and ordered a beer for herself!  (After that, I joked that this was a test that I’d administer to all future librarian hires – order a beer and see if they followed suit to get a sense of their personality and comfort with doing something like that, especially on what is basically their first day at work!)  After that lunch, the manager later commented, “Jason, I think I didn’t just hire you a colleague, I think I hired you a friend” which was very true.

The other one was when Tanya and I were on a committee reviewing various aspects of the annual SLA conference.  We had a meeting at the SLA office and after it ended, I suggested going to a nearby coffee shop (honest!) to chat more.  One other non-RPL librarian in our group of three said he’d heard the coffee shop was closed and suggested we go to a nearby brewpub instead.  We went to the brewpub and again, I couldn’t help myself (er, I may have a problem) and ordered a beer as did Tanya as did our non-public library colleague.

The next week, a different manager called me into their office and gave me a bit of a talking to for drinking during work hours (basically, “Uhm, don’t do that!”) I bumped into Tanya after and asked if she got in trouble too.  “Oh, I came in on my day off for that meeting.  I was on my own time!” she said, laughing.

Those are a couple of memorable times where beer and libraries have intersected in my life (at least stories I’m willing to share publicly!). But anyhow, my point is that libraries and beer are natural allies and shouldn’t be separated in any way (except maybe during a working lunch?) 😉