It's like someone turned on the stench-electro-magnet today. We were beset by stinky patron after stinky patron.
Well, all right, so there were only two of them, but they were foul enough for ten.
I'm almost certain that the first guy is the same stinky man who darkened our door and soiled our souls with his stench around three years ago,
during Stinky Patron Day 2001. He had been using the little computer by
the stairs just prior to my arrival at work. No one likes to use the
little computer by the stairs provided the other two comfyer
computers are free. I'm guessing that they were therefore not free when
he was logged onto the little one, but they had long since been
abandoned by the time he got up and left.
On his way out, Mr. Stinky walked past me, wearing a
too-tight, filthy gray t-shirt with deep-set stains and a veritable
cloud of nose-permeating evil. My theory is that this shirt is actually
the too-tight red t-shirt he had worn on his previous visit, leeched of
its color by his olfactory aura. Before he had even left the building,
Mrs. H had busted out both the Airwick and the woefully underpowered
automatic air-freshener, which had been secreted within a potted plant
on the windowsill next to Mr. Stinky. The lingering stench ate both of
them.
Barely an hour had passed when the Sweatiest Woman in All the Land
came in. We knew she was on her way because she'd sent her daughter
ahead to herald her coming and check to see if there were any computers
free. (Her daughter's pretty stinky too, but only because of
contact-stench from mom.) I'm starting to believe that the eye-watering
breeze of the Sweatiest Woman in All the Land is not entirely
sweat-spawned. My fellow employees are of the opinion that it is not so
much a sweaty sort of odor as a uriney sort of odor. I didn't buy into
this at first, but now I've come to think that my nose may have simply
been overwhelmed by her wake of funk and automatically defaulted to the
most palatable explanation for what it smelled like. I mean really,
which would you rather have come into your library, a patron soaked in
dried sweat or one steeping in her own urine? And being as how she's a
really nice lady, beyond the impoliteness of her vapors, we think she
must have some sort of bladder control issue rather than just having a
penchant for peeing her pants on purpose. Again, that's the most
palatable explanation.
So anyway, the Uriniest Woman in All the Land
finally came in for a computer too. That's all she ever wants, hence
why we have so many air-freshening products hidden in the computer hall.
Unfortunately for those of us who'd have to share the front room with
her while she waited, all three of our computers were full. We'd just
signed on two people a few minutes earlier and the only one our timers
said was out of time belonged to Mr. B-Natural, who was back with his dog, Bubba, playing solitaire. I went back and told him that his time was up.
"I ain't been on that long!" he angrily grumped. "I had to wait around upstairs for a while. My time's not up."
I sighed. If only he knew the favor I was trying to do
him by allowing him and Bubba the chance to escape before the
stench-fest descended on his head.
"Well, the timer says you're done," I told him. "But maybe it was still set for the patron before you. I'll go check."
As I was about to go check, the patron using the
computer by the stairs stood up and said she was finished. Mr. B cracked
a smug grin at this, thinking himself safe to continue his game. If
only he knew what I was about to unleash into the computer hall. I
smiled with this knowledge, rebooted the free computer and then went to
tell the Uriniest Woman in All the World it was ready for her to use.
Poor Bubba. They say dog noses are a million times more sensitive than human noses.
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