The Manglehoffen Bluff

One of our semi-frequent patrons, Mrs. Manglehoffen (not her real name) came in yesterday. She dropped her books on the circulation desk and went to browse some while I checked them in. One by one, the books checked in bringing up her name on my screen as they did.

Presently, Mrs. Manglehoffen wanted to search for some interlibrary loans and asked if I could look them up for her. Sure thing. I helped her out, found the books at other libraries and put ILL requests in for them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Manglehoffen had picked out a few new books and walked up to the desk to check them out.

"Do you have your card?" I asked.

"My card? Oh, no. I don't. But I'm in there," she said, pointing to my screen. "It's Stella Manglehoffen."

"I'm sorry, but we do require an actual card to check out books now."

Mrs. Manglehoffen stared at me for a second, making some careful calculations. "I don't have a card," she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am. I realize you don't have your card, but we do require that you have it to check out books."

"But I'm in there," she said.

"Yes, ma'am. But we do need a card. If you like, we can hold your books here at the desk and you can look for it."

"Oh, no. That won't do," she said. "I don't have time to come back to town tonight."

I was fully prepared for Mrs. Manglehoffen to do the typical Old White Lady Stands There Staring at You, Waiting for you to Accede to her Wishes bit, but she didn't even try it on for size. She just stacked her books neatly on top of one another and slid them to one side of the desk and left the building. She wasn't even angry about it, which I thought was mighty nice of her. I felt a little bit bad for her, but we've really been cracking down on actual physical card presence recently.

A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. A allowed a patron to check out books without a card due to the fact that Mrs. A had forgotten to close out the patron's record and it was already on the screen. That patron rewarded her generosity by going around to other area libraries and telling them that we'd let her check out without a card, so why were they getting so snotty about requiring one? The libraries then, in turn, got snotty with us about it, so we've been card Nazis ever since.

A few minutes later Mrs. Manglehoffen reappeared at the desk. She had her purse out and had evidently been searching through it, as she was clutching several stray pieces of paper that she likely found during the search.

"I've looked. I don't have one," she said.

I started to explain to her once again that I understood that she didn't have it with her, but that she couldn't check out without it when she stopped me and threw a new wrinkle into the mix.

"No, I mean don't have one at all," Mrs. Manglehoffen said. "I was never given a card."

Did my ears deceive me? Was she really trying this? Was this really the hand she was attempting to bluff her way through with?

"Uh, yes, ma'am, you were," I said.

"No. No. I never got a card."

"Ma'am, when I checked your books in, your name came up on my screen. That means you DO have a card with us."

"No, I never got one," Mrs. Manglehoffen said again. "She wouldn't give me one that day because I didn't have my drivers license."

By "she" Mrs. Manglehoffen likely meant Mrs. A, who wasn't there to defend herself. Didn't matter, because I've witnessed Mrs. A issue plenty of cards to people who forgot their drivers licenses, telling them to phone the number in later. We're not in the business of entering patrons into the database and then not giving them their cards. Occasionally, we've had patrons walk off and forget their cards, at which point we save them in a little card box at the desk, but Mrs. Manglehoffen was not one of them. I checked.

I tried to explain all this to Mrs. Manglehoffen, but she didn't care. She just wanted a new card.

Fine! But I wasn't giving it away for free. We're already getting plenty of people who "forget" to bring their cards and suddenly claim that they've "lost" the card in order to get a new one and check out books. So we've decided to charge them $1 for the first replacement card and $5 for each additional. I explained this to Mrs. Manglehoffen and she forked out a dollar for her new card, no arguments at all.

After Mrs. Manglehoffen had left, Mrs. C stepped over from her desk, where she'd kept herself deeply involved in a telephone conversation while all this had gone on. She suggested a very real possibility for why Mrs. Manglehoffen didn't have her card. It seems earlier in the week, our very own Mrs. J was attempting to check out books and was lamenting that she had already managed to lose her own card. She'd looked everywhere for it, searched her purse inside and out, trashed her house trying to find it and came up blank.

Mrs. B had just smiled as Mrs. J told her story, then said, "It's on your keys."

Sure enough, Mrs. J had one of our key-card models instead of the full-size wallet card. I'm willing to bet Mrs. Manglehoffen does too.

D-MINUS: 9