The Unspoken Feud

Now I'm not sure whether I should write about this on the interweb, in fear that it might insight something, but I think my department might be in some sort of a gang war with the East Asian Collection Staff. There is an area over by the China stacks which my staff has been using as storage space for books and I've heard rumblings that the East Asian staff has been pressuring my team to get those boxes out there so that they can use the area.

Rather than risk their own lives though, the librarians have sent the other student assistant and I into their territory to clear out those boxes, which while I'm on the subject, are so covered in filth that I come out looking like a coal miner. It turns out that several of the East Asian staffers have noticed our efforts, some even coming up to the other student assistand and excitedly asking him what we're working on. He doesn't have the heart to tell them, but the only reason we are clearing out those boxes is because we have twice as many coming tomorrow. AHAHAH!

I'm kind of afraid that they might have found out though because ever since we talked about this the other day, they've been giving me dirty looks. Of course that could just be because I am the embodiment of western culture I like to think they disdain. I'm just glad I have a box cutter or else I might be in serious danger because I'm always on their turf.


The two staffs are like night and day. We're mostly white, they're mostly (surprise) asian, and our differences are further exaggerated by our side of the floor being a group study area and theirs being a quiet study room. I thought this whole gang fight idea was just a figment of my imagination until I was reshelving some books today and discovered the following scrawled on our stacks:



Now I don't know chinese and I'm not even sure if this is chinese, but roughly translated, I think it means "Stay off of the East Asian side...or else... whitey!"*

Whitey! Thems fightin' words. Though I'm pretty sure that if it came down to it their side would kill us because I like to think that all Asian people know karate even though I don't know a single Asian person who does.

Yep they'd definitely destroy us. And then they would steal all of our carts which have been systematically stolen from every other part of the library and never returned. We've got a wealth of carts and the East Asian staff has been using shopping carts to push their goods around. If that's not reason enough to throw down, I don't know what is. It would seem it's only a matter of time....

Until then I will keep my box cutter close to my heart and my fighting spirit alive.

2:^)

*If anyone actually knows what that means feel free to tell me.