Sunday Shift

So with our weekender Miss E effectively out of the picture, I hit the library at 1 today for my first Sunday shift in quite a while.

Sunday shifts are usually plenty boring, but I knew I was going to have a busy enough day. See, Mrs. H has now been recruited to become our new Saturday "liberry" ass. leaving Mrs. B and I to rotate Sundays. This is fine with me. Trouble is, Mrs. H doesn't seem to know how to prepare and pack up the week's worth of interlibrary loans, so it's fallen to the Sunday shifter to do that for the past couple of weeks. This is okay too. I'd rather have something to do. Beyond that, though, today's shift was far from boring.

There was, of course, a crowd at the door as I arrived at 12:55. Great.

When I went upstairs and flipped on the light switch, the lights all came on then immediately went back off as the breaker tripped from the surge. Double great. Even greater is the fact that I have no idea where the breaker switch box is. I looked around for it, but it wasn't in any of the obvious places like closets or bathrooms or walls. Damn, it was probably in the basement.

Mr. B-Natural was among the crowd outside and was the first to sign up for a computer. More followed, including Brent & Brice, two twin teenagers who have been making a nuisance of themselves for reasons which will become apparent. They're not related to the Devil Twins, of Rogues Gallery fame, but they probably should be.

The wife turned up around 1:30 with lunch for the two of us. She's on her way out of town, headed back to Clarksburg until later in the month. After lunch, I decided that while she was there and was able to guard the desk, I'd go to the basement and see about the breaker. I was headed for the door on that very quest when Jimmy the "Anonymous" Snitch came in and started signing in for a computer. Jimmy's been in a couple of times recently. One day last week, I actually had to ask a patron I liked to get off the computers just to give one to frickin' Jimmy's dumb criminal ass. And just minutes earlier, I'd had to bust another favored patron off to give one to Parka. At the time I thought, Who's next? Chester? The computers were all full, though, and not due for any openings for 16 minutes. I mentioned that to Jimmy on my way out the door.

Despite high expectations, I could find no evidence of a breaker box in the basement. I didn't want to spend a lot of time in there, though. Jimmy was lurking in the library and while the wife was standing guard on the cash box no one was guarding the upstairs restroom, where Jimmy's pal Bladder Boy once found and stole our laptop. I rushed back up to the main library and then upstairs. Jimmy was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs near the periodicals. I walked behind him and into Mrs. A's office where I retrieved the restroom key from its hiding place then made a big conspicuous production of locking the restroom door as loudly as I could.

Back downstairs, a few minutes later, I was telling the wife what I had just done when she suddenly signaled to me to be quiet. Too late, I was still finishing my sentence, "...conspicuously locked the bathroom door" when Jimmy entered the room behind me. He had to have heard what I was saying and he would also have to know what it meant. I realized that I didn't care if he did hear me. I really don't mind if he knows that I know he's a sneaky little weasel. If I were really ballsy, though, I would ask Jimmy how his sentencing went this month. I'd honestly like to know, cause I haven't heard.

I had to tell Brice and Brent to relinquish their computers to let Jimmy and another patron have them. B&B, who are probably 13 years old, are infamous for coming in, using our computers, printing lots of pages and either leaving the pages unpaid for or, more often, taking the pages unpaid for. Mrs. A and I both have spoken to them about this and told them they had to pay for everything they print, but they don't seem to care. I figured with the wife still guarding the desk they wouldn't dare grab their prints and leave, but they did. They probably even felt safe in doing it, since they're not card carrying patrons so we don't have their home number to rat them out to their mother. Unfortunately for them, they neglected to remember that we do have their phone number on file as part of their parental permission slip. Unfortunately for me, I didn't remember that until just now, so I'll have to phone her up next time I'm in. Should be fun.