In praise of button machines and amazing coworkers

As I was getting ready to leave work yesterday I asked Virginia one of our new teen aides to post an Instagram picture since I had totally forgotten. It was so nice to have someone take care of this – admittedly – super simple thing for me. It was great to have I was REALLY ready to go. I had been doing a button-making program with teens for the last two hours. Basically the program is you set out the button machine, a stack of old magazines, paper, and let the teens make as many buttons as you want. I will also print out little pictures of whatever they want and it’s cute to hear what they want. Yesterday I printed out pictures of:

LeBron James
Kevin Garnett
a basketball
LeBron James brand shoes (I think?)
a trumpet fish
coyote
horse
Minions
Batman symbol
Andover golden warriors symbol
Bad Kitty
the humuhumunkunukuapua’a (the teen said, “I don’t know how to spell it but it’s the state fish of Hawaii.” Ah. Gotcha.)
Yoda
Darth Vader
and a few more I can’t remember.

What interesting buttons they will have!

Seriously, if you haven’t purchased a button machine for your library you should. It’s a really great investment. It’s about $250 and recently a refill of 500 buttons cost us about $50. And we use it ALL. THE. TIME. In the last year we’ve made: banned book week buttons, poet buttons for our poetry contest, many many fandom buttons all last summer, Downton Abbey buttons, buttons for a recent retirement party, and more.

Spring for the little thingy on the right that cuts out everything in the perfectly sized circle. It will make your life so much easier.
Spring for the little thingy on the right that cuts out everything in the perfectly sized circle. It will make your life so much easier.

So all this button making to say, constantly printing out images for teens to print out all while managing the new setup of the teen room (Hey, I should write about that! Soon!) made for a crazy afternoon. I was happy to let Virginia Instagram so I could leave. Our teen room staff of Clare, Virginia, and Allison are so lovely. Virginia and Allison have been great additions to the room and we are so happy to have them!

The moral of this story is: make yourself happy at work and get some amazing coworkers. And a button machine!

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