Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Speaking of losers...

Beyond Seefiling, my day was spent running back and forth to the computer hall every 20 minutes or so to roust yet another member of the Internet Crowd from their joy of joys so another patron could get on. The computers stayed packed the whole day long.

I was also shocked that both Mr. Big Stupid AND Parka turned up before 3 p.m. today, instead of at the crack of closing time. Mr. Big Stupid managed a "Gotney`puters,buddy?" before I could tell him he had a sixteen minute wait. Parka (who, by the way, no longer wears his trademark enormous white parka, being as how it's Summer and all, and has now switched to a ratty, sweat-stained, white v-neck t-shirt, the kind that's made of some sort of synthetic fabric that's really too thin and semi-translucent to be worn as anything but an undershirt but he does it anyway just because he's such a big sweaty mongoloid, instead) had to actually wait in line for several minutes before he could utter his "MAY I PLEASE SIGN UP TO USE A COMPUTER" catchphrase. We had to roust him off after half an hour, but he just kept coming back to plague us more throughout the day. Just when we thought we'd seen the last of him he'd turn back up to chat with his e-skanks and pound the space bar with far more force than necessary. His final appearance was 20 minutes before closing time, which meant he wanted to stay on AFTER closing time. I had to go back and stand there tapping my foot.

"I'm getting off right now," he said, still typing away for another minute.

I've decided that the thing that infuriates me about him the most, even beyond his computer hogging and his whole catchphrase thing, is that he has no concept of what our hours are. Every day. EVERY... SINGLE... DAMNED... DAY... this superfluous butthole in humanity's crack asks, "What are your hours tomorrow?" Now that might not seem like the sort of thing that should offend, particularly when our library does have some degree of variance in hours on weekends and Mondays. But after you've answered the question twelve thousand times and each time the answer is "NINE TO SEVEN" and it still ain't sunk into his pointy little porn-addled skull, you might tend to get a little pissy about it too.

I'm thinking of having a T-shirt made up with our hours emblazoned on it in huge red letters. Or just start answering him with our full week's schedule of hours every time he asks, using a loud Don Pardo voice. Yup. That might be good for a few jollies.

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An employee of a small town "liberry" chronicles his quest to remain sane while dealing with patrons who could star in a short-lived David Lynch television series.