My brother has repeatedly told me that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.  I don’t often follow that piece of advice, especially since my workplace errs towards always asking for permission from several people before taking any action.  Today, however, I had gumption.

There are three bookcases behind the reference desk.  All three of them contain binders and flyers and pamphlets  with information on just about everything imaginable.  If you want to know what to read, we can help.  If you want to know who to call, we can help (I recommend Ghostbusters).  Even if the internet is down and the world is crashing around us, we can use our binders and pamphlets to inform you as you battle the forces of darkness.

The thing is, everything was in stacks and clusters.  It was ordered chaos, but definitely chaos.  It kind of drove me nuts.  I blocked those shelves from my mind altogether, so if you told me about your long-lost nephew’s drug problem, I would sympathetically nod and find a book for you.  I didn’t know that there were 5 pamphlets about that on the bottom shelf of the third bookcase.

Now I do.  A co-worker and I totally reorganized those 3 bookcases this morning.  Instead of wading through stacks and layers to find the right information, I can now choose from several logical categories to get just what you need.  And even though the organization is nice, the best part of the morning is that we didn’t ask permission or tell anyone what we were up to.  We didn’t get opinions on the best way to arrange the information, we just did it.  The second best part is that we haven’t gotten in trouble yet.  Fingers crossed on that one.