E-Filed

Our former employee turned rogue, Miss E, has made a few appearances as of late.

A few weeks back, Mrs. C and her husband, Mr. C, spied Miss E at Wal-Mart. Mr. C was the one who did the actual spotting, having come around an aisle only to find himself sharing it with Miss E. As soon as she saw him, she dashed away, so that Mrs. C never actually saw her. I'd been wondering when one of us would have such an encounter, as this is a pretty small town and running into folks at Wal-Mart is a regular occurrence.

Mrs. C has also had some dealings with Miss E's mother, Mrs. E, as they both belong to a local group that meets in our "liberry's" activities room. Mrs. E has only slightly more contact with her daughter than we do these days. She did, however, try to offer some words of explanation as to Miss E's sudden and as yet unexplained exodus from her job here. While she didn't offer up any real reasons behind it, Mrs. E says that Miss E feels terrible about abandoning her job like that and wishes she had done things differently. Mrs. C told Mrs. E that we're still willing to be friends with her and that while mistakes were made this was not a deal-breaker as far as our relationship with Miss E goes. We would, however, like to have the library books that Miss E checked out from us back, not to mention the interlibrary loan from another library that she still has and that we've been billed for.

That all happened a month or two back. We've still seen no books.

Last Thursday afternoon, Mrs. C told me that she had spoken on the phone to Miss E's mother earlier in the day on unrelated matters. At the end of their conversation, she brought up the fact that we still haven't gotten our books back nor the ILL from Miss E. Mrs. E said she'd packed up all of Miss E's books and sent them over to her other daughter's house, where Miss E now stays. That's all I heard about Miss E from Mrs. C

Then, last Thursday night, I had my own encounter with Miss E...

ACTUAL TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS HEARD IN ACTUAL LIBRARIES # 14.5

*RING*

ME: Tri-Metro Public Library.

MISS E: Hey, JUICE, it's MISS E.

ME: Oh. Hi.

MISS E: I talked to MRS. C earlier and she said she was leaving my W-2 form there. She had to reprint it cause the social security number was wrong on it. I don't think I'm going to get there before you close. Could you leave it in the mailbox?

(I LOOK AROUND FOR THE W-2 BUT IT'S NOT WHERE THE W-2'S USUALLY ARE)

ME: Uh, well I don't see it here.

MISS E: Well, MRS. C said she'd leave it there for me.

ME: Let me look some more. (I search the entire desk area and all the usual place stuff hides, but it's not to be found at all. I then search Mrs. C's desk area, but still no dice.) Sorry, it doesn't seem to be here. Maybe give MRS. C a call in the morning.

Miss E didn't sound as though she believed me. Perhaps she suspected that we were trying to delay getting her W-2 to her in order to punish her for running out on us. I even considered this as a possibility for a bit. After all, Mrs. C had not told me that she'd spoken with Miss E, only that she'd talked to her mother. Perhaps she was giving me plausible deniability when I couldn't find the W-2. As I learned this week, though, this was not the case. It turns out that Mrs. C had NOT talked to Miss E at all, but only to her mother. (Therefore Miss E was lying when she said she'd talked to Mrs. C.) And the reason Miss E's W-2 was not present was that Mrs. C had given it to Mrs. A to look over and Mrs. A didn't realize she needed to bring it back downstairs afterward.

While I imagine that Miss E truly is sorry for the way she departed, she doesn't appear to be sorry enough to quit being aggressively deceptive toward us. We have come to suspect in the intervening months that the money that went missing in May of last year, just three months before Miss E abandoned her post, may have been taken by her in the first place. We've certainly had no massive amounts of cash missing since she left.