The (Potential) Final Conflict, Part I

And So It Begins... Summer Reading.

Day One has now passed and I feel like I've been run over by a truck. Oddly, I don't care.

Normally, I don't have much to do with our library's Summer Reading program itself. However, I've often been recruited to man the desk during Summer Reading while the rest of our staff—Mrs.'s C, B, J, occasionally A and Miss E—ride herd over the 100 plus kids who turn up. As busy as they are outside, working the circ-desk is no picnic either, as Summer Reading takes place on a Monday and Mondays at our library are already horrible to begin with. So I get the usual horrific Monday Madness as well as line after line of Summer Reading kids marching through to check out books as well. This year, however, I got not only the usual Monday Madness AND Summer Reading kids, but these were both compounded by the fact that we've got the new circulation computer system to deal with at the same time.

We tried to head off problems by making all the Summer Readers' library cards in advance. This was very helpful. It was also very helpful that the computer finally regurgitated the new patron records it ate last Friday and seems to have cut back on its cravings for patron record flesh. What completely didn't help was our usual Monday crowd, though. None of these people had new cards and most of them were in a fussy huge hurry to check out and didn't want to wait around for us to make them one. This would have been fine with us, but they decided to wait anyway just so they could grumble about it.

Fortunately, I wasn't there solo. Mrs. A was also on the desk and Mrs. J was our runner, responsible for shelving the billion books that were either checked in or merely knocked off the shelves by yungguns. This way, one of us could always stay on the circ-computer leaving the others free to help patrons, answer the constantly ringing phone, make more cards on a different computer, keep up with the internet crowd, tell the kiddies where the potty was or just answer dumb questions in general.

"Do you know why it's so busy in here today?" a patron asked, staring in bewilderment at the sea of reasonably well-behaved kids around him.

"Yes, I do," I told him.

"Well... Why?" he asked, seconds later after it became apparent that I wasn't going to answer the question he SHOULD have asked.

"It's day one of Summer Reading," I told him. Duh!

Between 1:30 and 3:30, both the interior and exterior of the library were eat up with kids and parents and regular patrons and madness in many forms. At no point during that time were either Mrs. A or myself able to utter the phrase, "Whew, finally a chance to catch my breath without eight pressing responsibilities requiring my immediate attention!" (And I know that Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Miss E outside were run just as ragged by the actual Summer Reading program itself.)

Then there was the phone... THE $#%*ING PHONE! Oh, how it rang!!!

The following exchange happened no less than FOUR TIMES during my shift:

*RING*

ME: Tri-Metro County Library?

CALLER: Is Mrs. A there?

ME: Yes she is, but I'm afraid we're incredibly busy at the moment. Can I take a message and have her call you back?

CALLER: Um, er, sure.

Then there was the call that went...

CALLER: Yes, I have a child at Summer Reading today and my mother is there with her. I'm having an emergency here, can I please speak to her?

So I break my ass running outside to find Grandma only to learn that she stepped away to run errands. Then I learn from our caller that there wasn't actually an "emergency" as per the definition of the word, but more of an "inconvenient situation" which should not have required the breaking of any ass, especially mine.

Around 2:30, at the height of the tumult, Mrs. A suddenly vanished.

There I was, swamped at the desk with a line of kids waiting to check books out and adults waiting to be told they have to leave the desk again and go fill out an application for a new card before they can check books out. Mrs. C came inside, walked around the desk and whispered to me that Mrs. A was currently indisposed as she was busy following the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)