"A Liberry Ass. Called Juice"

It's very odd to me how certain books can suddenly become overwhelmingly popular. I'm not talkin' bout when Oprah adds Steinbeck to her book club and suddenly everyone's tearing extra holes in their butts running to read East of Eden. I mean how a perfectly normal book that's been out there on the shelves for a couple of decades can suddenly become the "sought after" book of the year. Or in this case, the day.

We had a run on the Dave Pelzer book A Child Called It yesterday. A minor run, but I think two unrelated patrons counts as a run.

The first one was turned away easy enough. Due to the fact that Pelzer's books do pretty high traffic anyway, I had already assured her that there was little chance they were on the shelf even before I looked it up in the computer to see. Turns out I was wrong. His second two books in the It/Dave series were there, but the patron didn't want them until she'd read the first.

Hours later, the second Pelzer pursuing patron popped in. I explained to her that she was now second in line for it. She didn't listen to a word I said.

"Well, when's it s'posed to come back?" she asked, adding, "I need it by tomorrow." She actually said that. Apparently, she wanted to write a paper about it for class and figured it was scheduled to return within the next few minutes. Before even trying to convey her shit-outta-luck-would-have-it nature, I brought up the book in our online card catalog and had a look. The catalog said it was due on October 20. That didn't make sense, though, cause our loan time is two weeks and all the books that went out today were due on October 7. This meant that a staff member had to have checked it out, as one of our staff perks is a 10 week loan time on all materials. Unfortunately, this meant that whoever checked it out did so at least two months back. And I had a feeling I knew who it was.

Sure enough, after I brought the item record up, I saw who had checked it out: Miss E. That's right, Miss E, our errant former employee who abandoned us without warning but who has yet to turn in a resignation or her keys.

I alerted the patron that the book was not likely to be coming back any time soon and suggested that she try Wal-Mart's book section, which often stocks Pelzer's titles.

I let Mrs. A know about Miss E's possession of our book. It isn't technically overdue yet, so we haven't sent out overdue notices on it. I suggested we phone her voice mail and leave a message saying she has an overdue book she needs to turn in and is scheduled to work the weekend. Mrs. A laughed and pointed out that the girl is technically still on the payroll. She said that if the state unemployment service ever phones to confirm that Miss E is unemployed before issuing her an unemployment check, Mrs. A will just tell them, "Oh, no, she's still employed here. She's on the payroll and everything."

That's cold-hearted, I know, but so is walking off the job with no notice. Plus it's likely the only thing that will get her to finally explain herself.