Welllllll, my evil joy at Seefiling may have come back to bite me.
Turns
out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for
patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not
have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and
2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too,
but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the
books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of
annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or
otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if
they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament
wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a
benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check
the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the
overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to
include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the
patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30
they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries
in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There
were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of
shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the
dreaded Fagin
"fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of
returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life
with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool
and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his
wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life
outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been
banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each
one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and
they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have
precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they
like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their
evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a
card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly
they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see
again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the
desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE
CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was
at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan
has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize
she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if
we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards
before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And,
of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types
louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I
hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type
fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched
through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless
anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
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