Dispatches from the vignette department

These things have happened that have direct effects on me.

1. I get to scratch off several markers on my Experience List. (It probably means I've increased my librarian level quite a bit without looking.) Namely, the squares that say "Major system malfunction caused by rolling crash" and "Petty thievery by user cabal" can be checked off, as can the multiplier of "two major incidents happening at the same time", "2x incidents while you are the person in charge", and "2x incidents while the boss is on vacation." Plus the bonus experience that comes from both happening on a Monday and one in the evening.
   
   Yeah. The first warning sign was when the catalogues went down. No biggie, we thought, because the staff clients still work.
   
   Then people couldn't authenticate with their library cards for the public terminals. (Those of you in the know have probably said an expletive reflexively.)
   
   Then it was temporarily fixed. Then it crashed again, and this time it started taking staff clients off-line. We were able to limp along in there terminals that were working and manual checkout procedures.
   
   Then came the theft, where users knocked the hinge pin out of our printer fee cash box, after having posted lookouts. After which they reached in, grabbed a handful of bills, and exited the library. So now I have to gather all the information for that while still trying to provide service tip or customers add the infrastructure is failing.
   
   I managed. Everything in proper place, and the system came back on later.
2. I must be too impatient for my organization. I see the possibility of a good idea, and I want to gather up funding and do some research on whether it would be a feasible option (including potential measures of success) and then I want to go do it. The organization does not move that quickly, nor does it really encourage employees to go skunkwork or 20 percent things. I'm trying to think of ways that we could start moving toward the leading edge instead of the trailing edge, but more often, I have to not throw my hands up in frustration at how long the process takes for anything that could be a good idea to get approved. Someone told me that it's a generation gap between new workers and older managers. Maybe that's it. Either way, holding patterns, even on cheap ideas, suck.