Where's Jan Brady when you need her?

There are a couple of homes for wayward youth in the area. They send groups of their kids out on field trips into the real world and occasionally these lead them to the library.

These visits have been a bit of a tricky situation for us in the past, as we have to walk a fine line with them. We want to encourage their rehabilitation as much as we can by allowing them to check out books and videos. However, doing so is a risky gamble since our stuff often fails to come back by its due date, or indeed at all. These kids are usually only at the home for x number of weeks and many of them don't seem to mind taking our materials with them when they go. Or, they "lose" them, at which point they begin claiming that they "brought them back already" and we still never see them again.

The administrators of the homes in question have historically been unsympathetic to our plight. One of the homes even received a banning due to their poor attitudes about the borrowing/stealing behavior of their residents. They were only allowed to return once Mrs. A established with them that they, the administration of the homes, were in fact responsible for returning all our materials to us. It's still probably a 60/40 success ratio, skewed toward those who do return our material, but at least when the kids don't bring stuff back the home now pays for the lost items.

So yesterday, in walked a group of around seven 15-17 year-old boys from one of the homes. Nearly every one of them had a book or two and came up and plunked it down on the circulation desk, under the watchful gaze of their daytrip supervisor, an enormous muscle-bound man who looked like he could take the whole lot of `em using only his steely no-nonsense expression. They quickly spread throughout the "liberry" to search for new stuff to borrow. I was just thankful they all already had cards--well, except for one of them, who managed to lose his card since they were in last and didn't appreciate the $1 we were going to charge him for a replacement card.

About this time, Mrs. C decided to take her lunch break, leaving me and Mrs. J to run the ship by ourselves. I didn't really like this, but I also couldn't really say why since we almost never have trouble from the group home kids while they're actually IN the library. It's only after they leave with our stuff that the trouble usually occurs.

They behaved, as far as I could tell, though. The group stayed for around fifteen minutes and a few of them found things to check out. When it was time to go, their pro-wrestler-looking supervisor herded them up and back to the van they obediently went.

A few minutes later, I went back to the computer hallway to log off the vacant computers. I'd done one of them and was nearly finished with the second when I realized that the familiar smell my nose was detecting was not actually familiar to the library.

*SNIFF*SNIFF*SNIFF*

Yep. It was definitely coming from in-house and seemed to be stronger near the stairs. I ascended and the smell became even stronger. I went into the non-fiction room. The only people there were a lone patron and Mrs. J. I didn't think the smell was coming from them. Besides, it seemed to diminish in the non-fiction room.

I turned around and traced it back to the top of the stairs, then into Mrs. A's office, then into the private staff restroom, the door of which was left open, the light of which was left on. That's where the smell was at its most concentrated.

Someone had been in there and... (*ADOPTS BEST JAN BRADY VOICE*)... they were SMOking!

If the smell of smoke hadn't been enough of a clue, there were ashes on the toilet seat to back it up. My guess is at least two of them had been in there. (After all, what fun is it to be bad and rebellious and take a smoke break in the library all by yourself?)

Mrs. J had smelled it too, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from or who had been doing it. She also seemed to think it smelled like marijuana, but I assured her it was most likely Marlboro.

Mrs. C was unhappy about this when she finally returned. I asked her if she knew which home that group had come from and she did. She phoned them up and advised the administrator she talked to that the entire library was most definitely a non-smoking facility.

Course, now the kids will probably all get in trouble.  I just hope our library materials don't bear the brunt of any revenge they seek upon us.