Who's Got the 10 and a Half (minus the half) 2007?

My fellow "liberry" ass. and former newbie greenhorn, Ms. M, is almost always willing to fill in whenever any of the rest of the staff have pressing outside scheduling conflicts. I had one of those earlier this week and she was kind enough to fill in for me during it. She's actually racked up quite a bit of credit with me in that regard over the past few months, so when I heard she needed Thursday off I figured it was time to pay her back. Granted, I was already scheduled to be at work from 9 to 1 today, which would turn this into a 10 hour shift. I agreed all the same. It's been a while since I've had a 10 hour shift, but in the past they've been great blogging fodder. And at least with Mrs. A, B, C and J present, it wouldn't be a 10 hour solo shift, which is what my previous 10 hour shifts have usually been. The drawback to it being a near full staff shift, though, is that it's difficult to blog it in real time. So I spent the day jotting notes to myself on scrap paper and tucking them into spare pockets to be able to reconstruct at home the following day. 

9:02 a.m.— I arrive at work 2 minutes after 9 due to leaving the house a bit late. However, it was completely necessary for me to make a new thermos full of coffee.

9:05 a.m.— The Coot arrives for what will likely be a 10 hour stay himself. He heads for his favorite seat outside Mrs. A's office where, as in accordance with tradition, he will groan and wail and burp and fart whenever Mrs. A has to use the phone or, indeed, her voice. 

9:15 a.m.— I process the huge stack of periodicals that have piled up since I was last here. As I do so, Mrs. C and Mrs. B are inspecting the general fiction walls, pulling shelving slips out of books and noting whether or not they are shelved correctly. Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S, as per usual, has several that are misshelved, a surprise to no one.  

9:37 a.m.— The staff discusses the fact that we have to move story hour from our usual activity area to the upstairs nonfiction floor due to the fact that we're having a class of violinists and their instructor in today to play for the story hour kids. We put signs up to that effect on the activity room door and then another on the library's front door in the hope that our traditional late comers, (i.e. little Kayla's family), will note them and be quiet when entering. 

9:41 a.m.— Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine arrives for his first computer shift of the day. 

9:45 a.m.— A few months back, Ms. S ran out of her usual orange shelving slips. At that point, she cut out and carefully initialed a large supply of pink shelving slips and in the intervening months, she's continued to use both orange and pink. Recently, former newbie greenhorn Ms. M ran out of her yellow shelving slips, so she too cut a bunch out of pink ones and carefully initialed them, apparently so that they wouldn't be confused with Ms. S's pink shelving slips. While sorting the various slips that Mrs. C and Mrs. B pulled earlier, I make a command decision and announce to the rest of the staff at hand that I am throwing away both sets of pink slips on the grounds that it is moronic to have them in the first place.

9:54 a.m.— The Bakers arrive for story hour. They bring 12,000 books to return. Amazingly, all of their books are from our library branch. 

9:55 a.m.— Mr. B-Natural arrives for his first computer session. He puts 10:00 as his signup time, no doubt thinking it will give him five extra minutes. I start his timer so it won't. 

10:00 a.m.— Story Hour begins. Kayla's family fails to arrive, a surprise to no one. Tuning of stringed instruments can be heard through the very floor above my head. I'm sure the Coot is thrilled.  

10:05 a.m.— I start checking the shelves for this week's overdues.  

10:10 a.m. — Little Kayla's family still has yet to arrive. 

10:27 a.m.— Mr. B-Natural departs, inquiring about the violin noise as he does.  

10:46 a.m.— While still checking shelves for overdues, I see that someone's flagged one of the books I shelved as being misshelved. I double check it, but cannot determine how it is misshelved. It's a mystery book shelved in the mysteries section, it's way too old to be in new fiction, and it's author, Davis, is shelved neatly after Davies and before Debin, just as it should be. What gives?  

11:00 a.m.— Story hour concludes. I notice Gene disappeared at some point, for he is no longer on his computer, nor the can, nor elsewhere in the building. 

11:16 a.m.— No way. It's not even noon and the mail has already arrived. Glory be!  

11:28 a.m.— I sneak away to my hidy-hole in the supply cabinet and retrieve my emergency toothbrush, with which I head to the sink outside our little public restroom under the stairs to brush my teeth and rid myself of coffee breath. No sooner is the brush in my mouth than the Coot squeezes past me to use the can. No good can come of this. I hurriedly brush my teeth and flee the area before he can release any fumes at me.  

11:30 a.m.— I spy the Coot outside, headed for his car. He better have flushed.  

11:40 to 11:47 a.m.— Mrs. A, Mrs. B, Mrs. J and I all stand around and tell Ms. S stories, chronicling her latest misadventures in dumbassity. 

 11:50 a.m. — While pulling some shelving slips Mrs. C and Mrs. B missed, I find another pink shelving slip, this one with Ms. S’s initials on one side and Ms. M’s initials on the other. Damn, they’re conspiring together now!!  

12:03 p.m. — I walk down the street to the local market to pick up one of their impressively generous and patron-awe-inspiring salads for lunch.  

12:10 p.m. — I return to the "liberry" and begin eating my impressive and tasty salad.  

12:18 p.m. — Mr. Little Stupid arrives for a computer.  

12:28 p.m. — I finish my salad and go brush my teeth again. Eww, salad breath.  

12:34 p.m. — I receive a phone call from one of the New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids. I think it's Delbert. He inquires as to whether or not he will be allowed to use a computer should he turn up at the library. It's our policy, you see, that school-aged children of appropriate computer-usage age, even equipped with a permission slip on file, are not allowed to use a computer during school hours, unless they are home school students doing genuine research. According to Delbert, though, he is being schooled in an alternative school, which means he's gotten in trouble at regular school and has been sent there for reform. The alternative school doesn't meet until after 4, so he thinks this is a loophole. I bring it up to Mrs. A and C and they say he can only use a computer during normal school hours if he has a signed letter from his alternative school teacher saying he can, and then can only use it for genuine research. He can't come in and surf MySpace. I gleefully inform him of this.  

12:40 p.m. — Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch arrives for computer time. He brings his mommy with him, who I believe he still lives with and is likely his only means of transportation. What a colossal loser. 

12: 42 p.m. — The rest of the staff leave for lunch. It is Mrs. J's birthday and they're taking her to Crapplebees. Wow, and I thought we liked Mrs. J.  

12:57 p.m. — Jimmy and mommy leave.  

1:00 p.m. — I get a few minutes of peace and begin typing this up in hopes of putting some of it up on the blog early. 

1:04 p.m. — Sudden rush on computers, including a usually clueless wireless guy who will no doubt have trouble logging on and then have to get me to help him.  

1:10 p.m. — Our first "What are your hours?" call of the day. 

1:13 p.m.— Mr. Little stupid approaches the desk and asks me how to spell the word "talk." I tell him.  

1:15 p.m.— Lennie arrives for his Thursday shift. He complains that "it's so hot you can't stand it." He notices me typing and becomes very interested. I stop. 

1:30 p.m.— An old man with a long silver beard arrives saying he has 25 boxes of book donations for us, where do we want them? Since we aren't busy at all, I tell him to drive around to our storage area (i.e. the basement) and I'll come out and help him haul them in.  

1:31 p.m. — There's a sudden rush on the desk, with checkouts and reference questions. The phone also starts ringing with people calling for Mrs. C. I'm the only one on staff, except for Lennie and now can't leave the desk to go help this old man haul boxes. Instead, I send Lennie out and tell him to go unlock the basement and help haul boxes. He leaves.  

1:38 p.m.— The patron tide stemmed, I dash out to the basement door. The old man has two other slightly younger men helping him haul boxes out of a truck and into the basement. Lennie is standing there idly, saying that he'll lock the door back when they finish. I tell him that he's supposed to be helping them, but he doesn't move. One of the old men tells me that they have quite a few more boxes of books they wish to donate. I tell him he'd better give us a few days to get things sorted and cleared out to the BIGGER storage area, before bringing in any more. Mrs. B, our resident donation sorter and reboxer, is going to faint when she sees all these boxes. She only just yesterday got the basement and current crop of book donations sorted and sent off to our larger storage area, off property.  

1:40 p.m.— I dash back inside where a patron is waiting. 

 1:56 p.m. — Lennie won't quit snooping whenever I try to continue typing this up. I don't know how much he's capable of reading, but I learned long ago not to underestimate him. He seems to sense that I'm doing something of interest, though, and keeps asking me questions, like "Who are you writing a letter to?" "Myself," I tell him. I switch from the screen to a scrap of paper, but he's even now trying to get a gander of this very note.  

2:00 p.m. — The rest of the staff returns from lunch.  

2:07 p.m.— I ask Mrs. C and Mrs. B why my book in the mysteries was flagged as misshelved. They say they weren't the ones who flagged it, though. Must be a dumbass newbie greenhorn who did it as some sort of half-assed revenge for my flagging all their misshelved books over the past few months. They can't even get that right.  

2:12 p.m.— I leave for an extended break. Mrs. C tells me I can take more than an hour, as I'm the poor soul on til closing.  

3:30 p.m.— I return. Mrs. C says that drama has occurred in my absence. She says an older lady phoned and asked Mrs. B if there was a man here delivering books to be donated. When told that there had been some men delivering books earlier, who were now gone, the lady said she wanted to leave a message for the man that he needed to phone home. Then the lady burst into tears and hung up. No idea what that was all about. The other news, though, is that the old guys who donated the books took all the empty boxes we'd been saving to sort donated books into. Mrs. B had been begging for some for a week and now they were gone. Lennie told Mrs. C that the men asked him if they could take the boxes but he didn't answer them, so they took them anyway. We'll get them back, most likely in a few days when they bring more books. 

3:45 p.m.— I see that Delbert, the aforementioned Neighborhood Auxiliary League Member, is now using a computer. It's after school hours are over, so there's no rule against it. However, he's been on for over half an hour now and I have to bust him off for another patron. Mr. Little Stupid is still around too, but had, apparently been busted off before because he's now on a different computer than when I left. When I go to reboot Delbert's station, Mr. Little Stupid asks me how to spell "work."  

3:59 p.m.— Fatty Manchild arrives for a computer. He's not wearing jams, per se, but he is wearing shorts. They look to be of the no-print, off-white, board-short variety.  

4:06 p.m.— Mr. Little Stupid finally leaves.  

4:18 p.m.— A woman and three children, each of whom is whining for books, approaches the desk. I hear her tell them that they can't have any books from our library because they have their own library at school to borrow from. They persist. She tells them that kids aren't allowed to have library cards at our library. Never mind the fact that they just exited the CHILDREN'S room, this is what she says. I suspect she's lying to them to get them to quit whining. They continue. She spies me and says, "Kids can't get library cards here, can they?" Her "can they?" seems loaded with intent. "Um... I guess that all depends on what answer you're looking for," I tell her. "The truth," she says. "Okay. Sure, kids can get library cards here." This is not what the woman (their baby-sitter, I think) wants to hear, because she immediately tells the kids that she didn't trust them to check books out on her card since they'd lost so many from school. "But I only lost one, this year," one of the kids says. I gamely try to back her up a bit by telling them that we're really serious about getting our books back and will send our enforcer, Mrs. J, to come get them. They leave with only the sitter's books.  

4:30 p.m.— Yay! I get to make a trip to the post office. People hate us at the post office. Not the postal workers themselves, who seem incapable of caring how many packages we have to mail each week; it's the other customers who hate us for clogging up the lines for 10 minutes at a stretch. I feel their pain. Fortunately, we only have one box and an envelope to mail and I get them sent off without incident.  

4:47 p.m.— I return to find that someone has had a blowout in the public restroom while I was gone and the whole reference hall is super butt-fume stinky.  

5:05 p.m.— Everyone else on staff leaves for the day.  

6:00 p.m.— Been pretty slow going. I've called all my holds and had time to type a bit.  

6:01 p.m.— A patron brings in a book for return. He looks ever so slightly miffed that he actually had to come in the building to do this, as the book return stays locked during hours we're open. 

6:05 p.m.— Wow, an honest to God reference question! A lady wanted organizational information about the W0rld Hea1th Organizati0n and the Pan Amer!can Hea1th Organizati0n. We have no books specifically on them but EBSC0 had loads of articles, two of which seemed to suit her criteria. I print them for her. She writes us a check for a whole dollar. 

6:18 p.m.— A little kid—who's here with his mom and is maybe 7 years of age, if that—comes up to the desk to tell me about how much he likes Shrek and Shrek II and Shrek the Third, even though he's not seen it. He has matching fake tribal tatoos extending from beneath his short sleeved shirt down his arms nearly to his wrists. At least, I hope they're fake; his mom is sporting a few real tattoos. 

6:24 p.m.— Some child is screaming outside. It's that sort of high-pitched, make a dog's ears bleed and your spine seize up sort of squeal that should be reserved only for occasions when murder is about to be committed, but whatever kid it is seems to be flinging it around the neighborhood pretty liberally. It's not a cry of distress. Most likely it's more a scream meaning: "It's raining and I'm getting wet!" 

6:45 p.m.— Closing duties begin in earnest.  

6:47 p.m. — the Purple Nun's brother arrives, but leaves within a few minutes. 

6:55 p.m.— And I am alone and nearly finished for the day. 

6:56 p.m.— Some goofa pulls up outside, no doubt with 400 books to return. 

6:56 p.m.— False alarm. They were just parking here to walk downtown. 

7:00 p.m. — We are officially closed.

Who's got the 10 and a half?

Yup. That's right. It's time for another 10 hour shift for the Juice man. Mrs. A and Mrs. C are out for the day at a meeting of the minds over in Town-D's branch.

Running tally for the day proceeds here...

8:50 a.m.-- I arrive at the library. There's a large SUV parked out front that I don't recognize. I figure it's a patron waiting for us to open, but no one is in it and no one is banging on the door to get in. I go to unlock the back door and find it's already unlocked and slightly ajar. Uh oh. Now I'm thinking the patron is inside, taking advantage of a door left unlocked by one of the librarians as they departed this morning. This kind of thing has happened before. As I cautiously round the corner of the computer hall, I get a line of sight on the circ desk and see Mrs. A there. Whew! Turns out it was Mr. A's SUV.

8:52-- I turn on the light switch for upstairs and blow the breaker.

9:00-- Mrs. C turns on the downstairs light switch and also blows the breaker. Mrs. A is irritated at this and swears we will not be paying to rewire the building since we're within a two year spitting distance of a brand new building altogether.  As a result of the breaker blows, though, a third of the lightbulbs in the front room have gone.  At 5'9", I'm still the tallest employee so it's always my job to change them. No doubt half the bulbs upstairs have also blown.

9:20-- Both patrons who've come in so far have given me cheerful yet marble-mouthed greetings that I don't understand. They are not together.

9:33-- First phone call for Mrs. A.

9:41-- Mr. & Mrs. Smiley arrive.


10:00-- I start changing bulbs.

10:19-- Boring assed task for the day: Stuffing fund drive envelopes. Mmm, boy howdy! At least I have Shawn Colvin's Whole New You album playing on the circ computer to keep me company. Great album.

10:35-- First computer patron of the day.

10:50-- A library staff member from Town-R's branch phones. Mind you, she doesn't identify herself whatsoever so I didn't know she wasn't a patron at first. The conversation followed:

CALLER: Is MRS. A there?

ME: No, I'm sorry, she's out of town for a meeting today. Can I take a message?

CALLER: Well... When I turned on my computer it said I have an error.

ME: (Realizing this is probably another library and not some derranged patron) Uhhh. What sort of error?

CALLER: (Dimly) It said "an error."

ME: Okayyy. Did you try turning it off and back on?

CALLER: Yes. It still says I have an error. I just want to know how to get it to stop telling me I have an error.

ME: (Since our branch is the regional hub for all computer issue requests, I realize I'll need to note this.) Well, if you'll give me your name I'll tell MRS. C when she gets back this afternoon.

CALLER: (Ignoring my question) I can still use the computer. I just want to know how to get it to stop telling me "error."

ME: (Trying not to get angry) I realize that. If I can have your name, please, I'll let MRS. C know about it.

CALLER: (Adopting a tone that says I should know full well exactly who I'm talking to) This is TOWN-R library.

Actually, I really should have known. If I were to make a list of the most computer illiterately staffed libraries in the area, Town-R would top it.

11:19-- Out of coffee and in need of a change in music. I'm going to my car for some Neil Finn.

11:40-- The wife calls to say she's going to join me for lunch.

12:15 p.m.-- The wife joins me for lunch. She brings us tasty non-Atkins approved goodies such as pizza and a pecan encrusted stickybun, both baked by one of our fine downtown bakeries.

12:44--Holy shit! Stoner Lad just came in! I cannot believe my luck. Just when I thought today was going to be way more boring than I'd hoped, a long lost Rogue makes an appearance. We've not seen Stoner Lad in here for well over two years. He walks up to the desk and says, "Hey, uh, long time." Then he mumbles his way through a request to use a computer, saying he has something he really needs to print out. (Dare I hope more angsty half-literate teenage screw-letters?)

"Sure thing," I say.

After I log him on he says, "Uh, how clear are the lines today?"

"Pretty clear. We got DSL since you were here last."

"Sweet!"

Stoner Lad still dresses like he used to, which is to say small town gangsta wannabe, but with an auto-racing themed ball cap. His facial hair has gotten better too, as evidenced by his pointy goatee. He also dosen't seem to be actively "on" anything and has no trouble making eye contact when he speaking. Perhaps he's been away in rehab?

12:46-- A lady comes in and asks to use the bathroom. I don't figure this out until later when they leave together, but this turns out to be Stoner Lad's mom. Stoner lad prints out a few pages, pays for them and then leaves with mom, saying, "Bye." On their way out, she says something about having an old wallet of his with his library card still in it. Yeah, his OLD library card. Looks like maybe he's back in the area for a while.

12:55-- An assistant librarian in a neighboring county, who's head librarian is currently at the same meeting that Mrs. A is at, phones to ask to speak to Mrs. A. "Oh, wait... she's at that meeting," he says. Riiiiiiight.

1:02-- Oh, great! It's old rogue day! Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch just came in.

1:10-- Jimmy leaves after paying for his prints. I am irritated that he is coming here again, particularly since from everything we knew a few months back he was supposed to be going to jail for embezzling money from his employer. The last we'd heard he was supposed to have received his sentence in June, but we never learned what it was. He's been in a few times since then and was in yesterday. Evidently he's under house arrest or town arrest or maybe just was let off altogether. Who knows. Maybe he turned state's evidence against Bladderboy and was given a light slap on the wrist. Never did hear if the cops caught Bladders after their high-speed chase a while back.

1:22-- Harry the Killer Midget and Buddy come in. I've not written about Buddy before. He's a mentally handicapped man who comes in with an Unobstructed Doors aid. I call him Buddy because he once asked me if I would be his buddy, therefore I assume he is mine as well. Buddy is a really nice guy. His only major distinguishing characteristics, beyond the whole being my buddy thing, are that he's very tall and he always wants to know if Mary is working today. Nearly every time he comes in he asks one of the staff if Mary is working today. We always tell him, "No, Mary's not here today," at which point he responds, "Mary must be at home." None of us know who Mary is, nor has anyone named Mary ever worked here in the past thirty years, so we're not sure who he means. He didn't ask about Mary today.

2:48-- I've been running kind of silent. Mrs. C is supposed to come in to relieve me so I can go on break, but I don't know exactly when. Gotta keep my nose clean til then.

3:00-- Still no Mrs. C. One of our board members, Mrs. Aitch, comes in to do some fund-drive letter related paperwork. I'm jamming out to Neil Finn's One Nil when she arrives. Not sure if she approves.

3:50-- Mrs. C arrives to relieve me. I head to the post office to ship out ebay auction items, pop by the shoe store where I fail to find any decent shoes.

4:30-- I swing by the comic shop for the latest Bloodhound, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, the Supreme Power spin-off Doctor Spectrum book and something else I can't recall off hand. I'm terribly happy that the comic shop guy is now stocking Neil Gaiman's Sandman collections, after months and months of me bugging him about it. Now I'm going to have to do a Sandman symposium to get folks to buy it--uncultured peons!

4:45-- I pop by Ornathological Coffee, (not its real name), the local gallery/coffeeshop down the street for a cup of Sumatran coffee that is just slightly not hot enough, but is nevertheless tasty. While I'm there, I hear a familiar voice say, "So, how many books do I have now?" I turn to see Mrs. West, one of our regular patrons. Mrs. West almost always has books on hold with us. This is because she goes down the list of all the latest bestsellers that are out and has us put her on hold for them. Then she asks us to put her on hold for just about every other new fiction arrival as well. We're happy to do this. Trouble is, she NEVER answers the phone when we call. We have it on good authority that she's usually at home when we call, she just won't answer for whatever reason. This would be okay too, but she also refuses to purchase an answering machine saying they're annoying. Yes, they are annoying, especially when they don't pick up the phone and allow us to tell you your books are in. So our hold shelf is often CHOKED with holds for Mrs. West, which after 5 days have to be passed to the next patron on the list. I told her she had three waiting for her. She said that sounded like enough to justify a visit up the hill.

4:50-- I'm back on the job.

4:55-- A different board member, Mrs. Emm, comes in from the meeting they were having next door and asks if its true we have music CD's. It is. We got the same allotment of Remainder Closet material all libraries got after the big music industry settlement. I tell her that I don't promise it's all good, but there are some gems here and there. I guarantee her that the Shawn Colvin and Ben Folds Five are quality. She goes over and finds lots of things she likes (including the Colvin & Folds), then begins suggesting music to me, including Kas3y Chamb3rs and Gr3g Br0wn. "Br0wn's kind of folky," Mrs. Emm says, adding, "I like all sorts of music, though. Folk, rock, country, rap... I love Eminem!" I sort of just stared at her blankly for a few seconds on that one. Nothing against Em, but I just had trouble reconciling whether Mrs. Emm was really into his stuff or if she was just searching for some kind of street cred with me and Mrs. C.

5:00-- Mrs. C leaves via the back door before any of the other board members she see's lurking out front can find her and assign her something she doesn't want to have to stay extra to do. Good for her!

5:10-- Oooh. I'm asked by a computer patron to override our internet blocking software. It's the same guy who always asks us for overrides. In fact, I think he's the only guy who's ever asked us for an override. He's always trying to look at some album cover involving J essica Ra bbit. For some reason in the past I've never been able to get the override to work properly, but today it does. (And no, I didn't get a peek at it before I turned the station back over to him.)

5:27-- We are paid a brief and pleasant visit by the brother of the Purple Nun.

5:39-- Mrs. West, true to her word, comes in for her books.

6:03-- I begin attempting to eat my supper; a nice hunk of pork roast that I first cooked two nights back, plus some cheese and a spinach/artichoke dip I made. Mmm tasty, I love it.

6:22-- Still haven't been able to finish my food. We're plenty busy.

6:32-- A patron asks if he's smelling good food from one of the nearby restaurants or if that's coming from my food. I say, "Yup, that's probably my pork roast." It's not even heated and it smells good.

7:00-- The last patron departs, making sure to print out four pages just after I finish the daily cash box count. Thanks! I lock the doors and try to finish up my closing duties.

7:03-- Still closing up when someone starts pounding on the door to get in. Sorry, we's closed.

7:05-- Going home. It's a day.

Conference Week: Day 3

Day 3 of the conference is underway. There is no day 2.

I'm only working an 8 hour shift today. As my wife would say, "God forbid you have to put in a full day. Oh, the torture." In fact, as a fourth year medical student who has regularly had to pull 12 and 14 hour shifts, she had very little sympathy for my poor tired feet on Wednesday. And rightly so.

Today, I'm wearing better shoes. It will be just me and Mrs. J til 1, when Mrs. B comes in to join us for Freaky Friday.

It's raining... It's cold... The chronicle continues...

8:50 a.m.-- I arrive for work. The circuit breaker for the lights upstairs immediately blows, so I have to go into the hobbit door under the stairs and turn it back on. I do notice that Mrs. A's husband, Mr. A, has been in to replace the bolts in the rolling ladder.

8:56-- Folks already banging on the door to get in. Nobody told them to get out of their cars and come stand in the rain. We open at 9, people. I believe there's a sign on the door to that effect.

9:00-- I open the doors. One of the two patrons waiting says, "Well, it's about time." He's actually joking with us, though it takes me a moment to figure that out and I can feel the fires within me rise.

9:04-- Because we were closed yesterday, the after-hours book return box is packed to the tits. We have to empty it in the rain, which is made even more problematic by Mrs. J's insistence on leaving the drop box's interior book bin pulled out IN THE RAIN ITSELF. Making matters even worse, we both keep dropping piles of books and tapes and sundry items onto the wet and puddle-soaked ground, forcing us to wipe them off with an old shirt from the Dead T-Shirt bin. It's the last shirt in there. Someone really needs to do the wash.

9:10-- Already the foot wiping has begun. I want to scream, "Hey, that's not a door mat, it's a runner carpet. They are not the same thing. If you want to wipe your feet, might I suggest you use the actual door mat that we've provided just OUTSIDE the door!"

9:15-- I finally get around to running the stats for Wednesday. We had 215 checkouts and 145 checkins. This is not a record or anything, but it is a damn sight more than we usually have.

9:33-- Marlene Doodah (not her real name) phones to ask us to renew a book on tape for her. She explains that she loaned it to a friend who subsequently loaned it to another friend, so she needs more time. I look her up and renew it.

10:09-- The REAL Marlene Doodah (still not her real name) phones to ask us to renew the same book on tape for her. I tell her that someone claiming to be Marlene Doodah already phoned to renew it this morning. She explains that this was a clever ruse by a friend of hers to whom she had loaned the book on tape.

10:41-- Another foot wiper.

11:06-- More foot wipers.

11:31-- An asshole phones. He was in last Friday and checked out a couple of the books he needed for the contractor's license test. He gave me a tremendous amount of shit back then over the fact that we charge the full price of the book as a deposit. (Note: He had the full amount for the two books in cash on his person at the time, to the tune of $112, and did leave it as a deposit for them.) I told him we have to do that because if we just charged a $10 deposit like we used to then we never see these pricey books again. He also gave me shit over the fact that we only loan the books out on a first-come-first-served basis and cannot reserve them for specific days, and that we also only loan these books for one week at a time.  (We do allow a renewal of another week.)

Last Friday, I stressed to him the importance of calling to renew them if he needed them longer, because according to the book deposit policy, that he both read and signed, the deposit is forfeit if they're late. We tell this to everyone who checks them out, because 9 times out of 10 they never call. I should also say that most of us here hate this policy. We would frankly rather have our books back instead of having to take people's money, particularly when they usually have brought them back, albeit a few days late.

So today Mr. Asshole calls to renew his books. I can tell from his tone he already has an attitude about it. I look his record up and try to renew them but one of them will not renew because someone else has it on hold. He was instantly furious.

"But you told me that you can't put them books on hold!"

"No. I told you you couldn't reserve them for a specific day. You can still place them on hold, though." Trying to still be diplomatic with him, I offered to go and make sure we didn't have an extra copy on the shelf, which I could then give to the holding patron. We did not.

"So what does that mean for me?" he said, the attitude thick.

"Well... basically, it means you need to bring the book back today."

Barely under his breath, he says "Aw, that's bullshit."

"Sir, my hands are tied on this. The computer will not allow me to renew the book for you if someone already has it on hold. There is nothing I can do to help you."

"Yeah, well that's bullshit," he says. "Maybe I'll try to bring it back today."

At this point my attitude is, Do what you like, dude. If you don't want your $70 back, that's just peachy with me.

11:49-- Kanji the Kid puts in an appearance. He's a guy in his early 20s who I believe has Asperger's syndrome. He is called Kanji the Kid because, according to him, he has memorized every character in the Japanese Kanji alphabet--or at least all the ones he can get his hands on through interlibrary loans. From what little research I've done on the subject myself, there are several thousand such characters in Japanese alone. Kanji used to be a fairly regular patron, but all he would get were interlibrary loans for books of Kanji. He would often keep these for months past their due date and refused to return them until we had harangued him with calls for weeks to the point of infuriating him. Only then he would bring them back.

Today he returned our video of Webber's musical Cats as well as the trade paperback of Bone Vol.2: The Great Cow Race. I told him we had Vol 3 and 4 on the shelf if he wanted those.

"What about Volume 1?!" he asked loudly. "You have Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4, so it would only make sense that you should have Volume 1 too!" Speaking of volume, Kanji always speaks at his loudest and has no inside voice.

"We own it," I said. "It's just been checked out for quite a while." That seemed to satisfy him.

1:00 p.m.-- Mrs. B arrives. I warn her of Mr. Asshole, who may be on the way. I will likely have to curtail my blogging now that a computer saavy person is here.

1:10 -- Parka arrives.

1:20-- I eat lunch. Patron floodgates open, but at least we have the staff for it.

1:35-- I go on break.

2:30-- I return. Mr. Asshole has not come in while I'm gone.

2:40-- My wife arrives to eat a Dairy Queen Pumpkin Pie Blizzard in front of me. She's been craving one for weeks and figured since today marks the first day of a two week vacation for her she'd chow down on one. She offers me some, but I decline.

3:04-- Harry the Killer Midget comes downstairs and leaves. Harry's not actually violent and would be hard-pressed to actually kill someone. But he IS a midget. He's with the Unobstructed Doors group.

3:10-- Mr. Smiley comes in, takes his latest ILL and leaves. Afterward, the wife and I and Mrs. B stand around the circ desk telling stories about his tantrums of the past. Like how he used to like to come in and read, but would always take the batteries out of or unplug any clock near him because the tiny clicking of its second hand made too much noise for him.

4:21-- Brent and Brice: The New Devil Twins and around four of their neighborhood colleagues arrive for some computer using. I have to break it to them that they can't use the computer cause they're still twelve. Meanwhile, we've managed to misplace the prints they illegally made  again so I have no actual proof that they haven't already paid for them and taken them home. Two of their friends are indeed fourteen, so they are sent back to print stuff out on B&B's behalf. Fine by me as long as they get paid for. After a few minutes, Mrs. B finds the errant prints from before. I take them back and show them to Brent. He claims he had to make new prints of the same material because we'd lost the first batch before and he paid for the second round. This makes sense, except that I don't know who let him on the computer to do it. I let him go.

5 p.m.-- Time to head home. Not for the whole weekend, though. Yep, I've got to be back at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning for a Saturday shift fill-in gig and I'll have a Sunday one after that. That's okay. I don't mind, cause Mrs. A gave me all the days off I wanted for Thanksgiving. Plus it just increases my chances that Mr. Asshole will come back in while I'm around.

Conference Week: Day 1

(Reconstruction of Eaten Blog Entry, with a big thanks to Phil and Sam for sending me the original pre-chewed feed which I've now reincorporated)

Today is the first day of our state's "liberry" association conference, taking place in a resort hotel up in the northern part of the state somewhere.

Am I going? No.

Do I want to go? No.

Are me and Mrs. J the only staff members in house today? Yes.

Am I wearing shoes appropriate to a 10 hour shift? No. (These Skechers tend to start biting after about four hours. My feet are screwed, but it's my own fault.)

Am I anticipating "liberry" goodness/badness to shortly ensue? Hey, it's 10 hours in the crazy house here. Of course there's going to be standard issue "liberry" activity, both good and bad.

8:54 a.m.-- a full six minutes before we open, I get a phone call asking to speak to Mrs. C. I have a feeling that the phrase "I'm sorry, she's out of town at a conference for the rest of the week" will leave my mouth several thousand times today.

9:24-- Yet another call, this time for Mrs. A.

9:44-- And we have our first Rogue sighting of the day as Mr. Smiley comes in. He brings Mrs. Smiley with him. Mmm, that's some grumpy old people goodness for your ass.

9:58-- More people phoning for Mrs. A.

10:06-- We get our first computer patrons of the day. Two at once. Unrelated.

10:10-- Mrs. J informs me that some mischief-minded turd-blossom has removed the bolts that hold the back guard-rail portion of our rolling step-ladder in place. As a result, she nearly tumbled ass over teakettle off the top of it while trying to shelve a book. That's right, Mrs. J might have been killed because some asshat kid thought it would be funny to use his dad's leatherman to unscrew the bolts. The culprit seems to have stolen the bolts as well. Now I have to go put a sign on it telling patrons to stay the hell off of it before someone else tries to take a header.

10:11-- Someone comes in looking for Mrs. A.

10:15-- One of our board of directors, Mrs. Day, calls to say she's going to come in to sign checks and is on her way. This doesn't actually mean she's on her way. This means at some point during business hours today she'll roll in, probably at an inopportune moment, and will likely give me shit about having to come in and sign the paychecks two full days early, like I'm twisting her arm and forcing her to come in. SHE CALLED ME!

10:22-- A patron asks if we're closed tomorrow because of Toyota. I say, "No, it's Veteran's Day. What about Toyota?" He explains that Toyota will be filming a car commercial along mainstreet in Town-A, just down the hill from the library. They're apparently going to close off the entire area for traffic throughout the day. Good thing we won't be open.

11:34--Mrs. Day comes in to sign checks, several hours earlier than I expected. She doesn't even give me any crap, though she does have an ILL request for a book that does not exist in the entire state system.

12:40 p.m.-- I see a crabby looking lady trying unsuccessfully to put her books into our locked after hours book drop box out front. She must know that books that actually make it into the box are considered fine free, because when she finally brings them in I see that they are 89 days overdue.

12:51-- We're having surprisingly low traffic today. We did 169 checkouts yesterday, which is a busy day for us. I was expecting a patron flood since I'm the only guy manning the building. We've actually been able to search the shelves for overdues and mail the notices out, though. Ooh, that reminds me to remove Mrs. 89 Days overdue notice from the pile before we waste 37 cents on her.

12:55-- Parka makes his first appearance of the day. Oddly, he's not clad in his namesake parka despite how cold it actually is outside.

12:56-- I go to sign Parka on a computer. I have to wait for it to reboot from the ground up, cause the last user shut it down rather than just logging off. While I wait, two clients from the Unobstructed Doors Mental Health Assistance Organization come in and their aid heads them right for the restroom. One of them cuts a fart that is impossible to ignore. (*I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped... I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped* )

1:45-- After nearly half an hour of circulation silence, I attempt to eat my lunch. Staff lunches are an odd phenomenon here. No matter what time we decide to eat, as soon as food is unwrapped and begun to be consumed, the patron floodgates open up and we're suddenly swamped. Food presence also tends to act as a magnet for one or more of our board members to come in—usually the one who thinks it's just horrible that the staff eats at the circulation desk in front of God and everybody. Hey, once we get the new library built and actually have a break room we can move the party somewhere else. Right now it's either the picnic table outside in the cold or Mrs. A's tiny office or the restroom. Of course, the moment I unburped the lid of my salad container today, the front door started swingin'.

1:50-- Parka comes up to complain that the internet is slow. He's enlisted the testimony of a fellow internet crowd member to back up his claim. Naturally, he assumes I have the power to do something about it. I don't, but I go reboot his computer for him anyway. He's lucky I don't go into a diatribe about how slow things USED to be a year and a half ago, back when we had dialup speed instead of cushy DSL.

2:18-- The Toyota crew evidently thinks our nearly post-Autumn town isn't foliated enough for them. Patrons have come in and mentioned that the crew is downtown in a cherry picker attaching leaves to the bare trees in front of city hall. From our side window, I can see them doing this.

2:43-- A female patron returns eight John Grisham and Patty Cornhole books on tape all of which are in horrible condition, are 61 days late and some of which are missing tapes. The cardboard cases look as though she sat on them repeatedly. She fesses up to one of the tapes being missing, but I detect others. Her husband—who looks exactly like you'd imagine Hagrid's younger brother might—unleashes two very loud open-mouthed sneezes with barely an "excuse me."

2:55-- Parka returns for his second appearance. He's evidently waiting for a specific e-mail.

3:00-- Like a big ol' coward who is only scheduled to work til 3p, Mrs. J flees the building leaving me by myself for the rest of the day.

3:25-- Blogger EATS this entry and I have to reconstruct it from the ground up. Thanks guys.

3:27-- Shortly after discovering this, the circ desk becomes awash in patrons. A lady is irritated that she can't seem to log on from home into the practice test service we offer on our website. The community college library has told her she needs to come to us for the password. I explain that we don't have a password for it. The old testing system used to use the patron's library card number for it, but I don't think that's how it works anymore. She claims she's tried that, but can't actually demonstrate for me how poorly this works for her because she has—all together now—forgotten her library card. She's fed up with the site and with me. Her attitude and the fact that blog entry was just eaten, is pissing me off. I tell her that Mrs. A and Mrs. C, the two people with definitive answers for her, are out until Monday.

"So, what, I'm out of luck until next week?" she says.

"Not if I can figure it out for you now," I say.

She starts ranting at me again. While she's busy with that, I load the practice test site on the circ computer and see that it clearly does NOT require a library card to access, but simply and clearly asks the patron to choose a username and password of their own. Once I've told her this, she suddenly remembers what her username and password are, logs into the system and is now in love with me that I've solved her problem.

3:37-- Someone phones for Mrs. A. Turns out the caller was already fully aware that Mrs. A is out of town at the library conference, she just thought she'd call anyway. In fact, the phones will NOT. STOP. RINGING. I can't even hang it up from the two calls I've just taken back to back without another coming in.

4:15-- Dadgum, I wish I had a big stool to sit on. Stupid Skechers!

4:34-- Our first call of the day asking what time we close. Whoo hooo, take a drink!

5:05-- And the world comes to the library. For 20 minutes straight, we're slammed. And when does the circ computer decide that it's going to take a break and completely freeze up? Oh, only when there's suddenly a line four patrons deep, two of whom want new library cards. I beat the computer into submission.

5:30-- Man my legs are hurting. Okay. Fine. I'll sit down.

5:48-- I call a patron about a book she has on hold. Unfortunately, she had just been in half an hour earlier so I should have given it to her then. I hate it when I do that.

6:03-- By pure chance, I spy Chester the (Potential) Molester parking in our half-hour parking and then lurking into the darkness toward the community college. From what we're told by the college's librarian, Mr. Rob, Chester's been racking up quite the reputation around there too. The only good thing about that is that at least the girls there are of consenting age.

6:32-- Half an hour to go. We've had very little traffic at all for the past thirty minutes. I think I'll vacuum.

6:51-- Already finished my end of the day duties. One last patron (who I like) is left to go. My 10 hour shift is nearly over. I plan to go home, eat whatever delicious meal my wife has prepared, and completely skip church choir practice. (The choir director is just gonna make me stand up.)

Shite! I hear a car!

Ahhh... False alarm.

6:59-- That's a wrap. Wow... a whole day with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C gone and no call from Mr. Kreskin. I would have had money riding on that one if there was anyone around to bet with.

7:00 p.m.-- I don my coat and exit stage right. (After craftily deleting my saved reconstruction file and browser history, of course.)