I had cause to pay a visit to the Tri-Metro area, recently, so I popped by the "liberry" to see everyone. The last few times I've been in, I've only seen Mrs. B, Mrs. D and Miss Temp, but this time nearly everyone was in house, including former bosses Mrs. A and Mrs. C. They're all doing fine and wanted to hear the latest news from me. ("Uhhhh, I got a cat.")
While I was there, Mr. B-Natural came in, signed up for a computer and then noticed me standing at the circ-desk.
MR. B-NATURAL— (In what I thought was an uncharacteristically bright tone for the grumpiest old man in all the world to take) Hey, you're back!
ME— Only temporarily.
MR. B-NATURAL— What? You're not working here again?
ME— No. I moved to BORDERLAND.
MR. B-NATURAL— How come?
ME— My wife got a job there.
MR. B-NATURAL— (Nods knowingly.) I need to get me a wife who has a job.
We stood there for a few minutes as I finished up what I was doing at the desk and Mr. B waited for Miss Temp to finish helping another patron and come log him on his computer.
MR. B-NATURAL— (Gestures toward the computers) Hey, you wanna put me on one of these for old times sake?
ME— Oh, sure.
They hadn't even changed the password.
Showing posts with label Best Of. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best Of. Show all posts
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Fund and/or Temper Raising (Moving Days K)
As you have probably guessed, Mr. Crab did not donate his stuffed animal heads to our new "liberry." I'm afraid I don't know the story behind his decision not to, but I suspect he didn't like our proposal to sell them for cash. I do know that at some point he did donate some amount of money to the new "liberry" project (most likely $200, but possibly more) for he was among the people invited to attend a donors only wine & cheese reception in the new "liberry" building, a few days before the place officially opened. (And on that subject, I must say, the public support for the new project was quite astounding. While there was a lot of grant money secured and state funds allocated toward the construction, a great deal of our funds came through donations from the public at large. In fact, a full two thirds of the fundage was in hand before ground was broken and the rest quickly began coming in afterward.)
Though the "liberry" now has its own set of wine glasses (stored in the staff breakroom--NOT the kitchen) we didn't own them at the time of the donors reception and had to borrow some from a couple of area restaurants. The cheese and wine were likewise donated by area restaurants and area vineyards, respectively. The cheese was high quality; the wine, not so much, but there was certainly a lot of it so only a few people complained.
Naturally, the "liberry" staff had to work the reception, along with members of the Friends of the "Liberry" group and members of the Board. The board poured the wine and hob-nobbed with the rich & powerful while the rest of us canvassed the room, picking up the empty plates and half-drunk wine glasses people kept leaving on every exposed surface, before someone had a chance to come along, knock them over and spill them on the brand new carpeted areas. In between cleanup missions, we had time to nosh on some of the goodies ourselves. During one such cheese break in the workroom, I heard the unmistakable sound of a wine glass shattering somewhere. Fortunately, it had smashed on the tiled floor near the foyer and not on the carpet. Unfortunately, as I quickly saw, it had been Mr. Crab who'd dropped it.
I'd like to think that most human beings, after having dropped a wine glass in public, would actually attempt to do something about it. I'm not saying they should go find a broom and dustpan themselves, necessarily, but at the very least they should tell somebody about it and perhaps try to pick up the broken glass before someone else steps on it. I'd also like to think that most human beings, after someone comes out to clean up the broken wine glass THEY had just dropped (and not told anyone about) would at least have the decency to assist in the smallest way possible by, say, getting out of the damned way. Not Mr. Crab. No, Mr. Crab refused to acknowledge the glass he had just dropped despite the fact that it was very clear he had been the one to drop it being as how there was glass and wine all around his feet and on his shoes. Instead, he went right on talking to the man he had been talking to as though nothing at all had happened. And when I came out with the broom and dustpan to clean up his mess for him, he remained planted in said mess as though the glass and wine weren't there at all, continuing to talk and hindering my efforts to sweep around his feet. This was very, very annoying to me, but not surprising coming from a known colossal asshole such as Mr. Crab. Ultimately it would have been okay as I would still have been able to sweep up most of the glass despite him. What Mr. Crab did next, however, made doing my job without having to first render him unconscious very very problematic.
You see, the reason Mr. Crab was refusing to acknowledge his broken glass was that he was embarrassed about having broken it in the first place. (My guess is that his self-image as the Great White Hunter would not allow for such clumsy accidents as dropping a glass in public.) Being embarrassed about it, he didn't want me calling any more attention to his accident by trying to clean it up. I feel fairly certain on this point, because shortly after I bent down and began attempting to sweep up the glass, Mr. Crab began kicking the pieces away from him. His kicks were quick, rather violent and aimed at sending the glass beneath the cover of a nearby leafy potted plant situated around one of the floor vents. He gave no regard to the fact that I was there at his feet, nor that his kicks were connecting with my hands and very nearly knocking the broom and dust pan from my grasp. Nope. He just kept right on kicking away.
"Mr. Crab," I said, but got no response. "Mr. Crab, please stop that!" I said, but again got no response. I knew he knew I was there because we'd made eye contact as I walked up, so I must assume his refusal to acknowledge me at that moment was just as intentional as his continued kicks.
It was at that moment that my brain flashed red and it occurred to me that Mr. Crab would no longer be able to kick the glass nor ignore me were I to impale him upon the end of my broom. And as absurd as actually doing that might seem, I knew with dire certainty that if I didn't get away from Mr. Crab RIGHT THEN, our little situation would escalate into a physical confrontation and might very well lead to headlines, such as: Elderly Library Donor Given Beat Down at Fund-Raiser by Crazed Staff Member. Retracts $200 Donation. Says Ass "Very Sore."
I grabbed my broom and dustpan and retreated through the crowd and took refuge behind the circ desk where I snatched up a glass of wine and downed it quick before pouring another. Mrs. A saw my face and asked what had happened. I told her.
"What an asshole," she said.
"Yeah."
Mr. Piano, one of our newer board members, saw us talking in hushed, angry tones and also asked what was up. I told him too.
"What an asshole," he said.
"Yeah," Mrs. A and I said in unison.
I remained behind the desk for several minutes, drinking more crappy wine and eating more soothing cheese. And every few minutes, other staff members, having heard the short version from Mrs. A, filtered over to hear the detailed version from me. Even former board member, Mrs. Emm, came by to confirm the details. I told her the story and my embarrassment theory. She shook her head knowingly, patted me on the shoulder in sympathy and walked away. And it was at that moment that I realized I had just achieved the ultimate revenge against Mr. Crab. Mrs. Emm is one of the biggest gossips I know and is probably tapped into the rumor and innuendo stream of the well-to-do crowd of our area more than anyone outside of Mrs. A herself.
Oh, so you don't want anyone to know you dropped a wine glass, Mr. Crab? Well, good luck with that, cause now Mrs. Emm has the play by play and there's no way in hell she's keeping it to herself. It might not have been all that big a deal in the first place, but your actions to cover it up have now assured that it's a small deal being spread to the winds.
After this realization, I had another glass of wine and felt much better about the evening.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Though the "liberry" now has its own set of wine glasses (stored in the staff breakroom--NOT the kitchen) we didn't own them at the time of the donors reception and had to borrow some from a couple of area restaurants. The cheese and wine were likewise donated by area restaurants and area vineyards, respectively. The cheese was high quality; the wine, not so much, but there was certainly a lot of it so only a few people complained.
Naturally, the "liberry" staff had to work the reception, along with members of the Friends of the "Liberry" group and members of the Board. The board poured the wine and hob-nobbed with the rich & powerful while the rest of us canvassed the room, picking up the empty plates and half-drunk wine glasses people kept leaving on every exposed surface, before someone had a chance to come along, knock them over and spill them on the brand new carpeted areas. In between cleanup missions, we had time to nosh on some of the goodies ourselves. During one such cheese break in the workroom, I heard the unmistakable sound of a wine glass shattering somewhere. Fortunately, it had smashed on the tiled floor near the foyer and not on the carpet. Unfortunately, as I quickly saw, it had been Mr. Crab who'd dropped it.
I'd like to think that most human beings, after having dropped a wine glass in public, would actually attempt to do something about it. I'm not saying they should go find a broom and dustpan themselves, necessarily, but at the very least they should tell somebody about it and perhaps try to pick up the broken glass before someone else steps on it. I'd also like to think that most human beings, after someone comes out to clean up the broken wine glass THEY had just dropped (and not told anyone about) would at least have the decency to assist in the smallest way possible by, say, getting out of the damned way. Not Mr. Crab. No, Mr. Crab refused to acknowledge the glass he had just dropped despite the fact that it was very clear he had been the one to drop it being as how there was glass and wine all around his feet and on his shoes. Instead, he went right on talking to the man he had been talking to as though nothing at all had happened. And when I came out with the broom and dustpan to clean up his mess for him, he remained planted in said mess as though the glass and wine weren't there at all, continuing to talk and hindering my efforts to sweep around his feet. This was very, very annoying to me, but not surprising coming from a known colossal asshole such as Mr. Crab. Ultimately it would have been okay as I would still have been able to sweep up most of the glass despite him. What Mr. Crab did next, however, made doing my job without having to first render him unconscious very very problematic.
You see, the reason Mr. Crab was refusing to acknowledge his broken glass was that he was embarrassed about having broken it in the first place. (My guess is that his self-image as the Great White Hunter would not allow for such clumsy accidents as dropping a glass in public.) Being embarrassed about it, he didn't want me calling any more attention to his accident by trying to clean it up. I feel fairly certain on this point, because shortly after I bent down and began attempting to sweep up the glass, Mr. Crab began kicking the pieces away from him. His kicks were quick, rather violent and aimed at sending the glass beneath the cover of a nearby leafy potted plant situated around one of the floor vents. He gave no regard to the fact that I was there at his feet, nor that his kicks were connecting with my hands and very nearly knocking the broom and dust pan from my grasp. Nope. He just kept right on kicking away.
"Mr. Crab," I said, but got no response. "Mr. Crab, please stop that!" I said, but again got no response. I knew he knew I was there because we'd made eye contact as I walked up, so I must assume his refusal to acknowledge me at that moment was just as intentional as his continued kicks.
It was at that moment that my brain flashed red and it occurred to me that Mr. Crab would no longer be able to kick the glass nor ignore me were I to impale him upon the end of my broom. And as absurd as actually doing that might seem, I knew with dire certainty that if I didn't get away from Mr. Crab RIGHT THEN, our little situation would escalate into a physical confrontation and might very well lead to headlines, such as: Elderly Library Donor Given Beat Down at Fund-Raiser by Crazed Staff Member. Retracts $200 Donation. Says Ass "Very Sore."
I grabbed my broom and dustpan and retreated through the crowd and took refuge behind the circ desk where I snatched up a glass of wine and downed it quick before pouring another. Mrs. A saw my face and asked what had happened. I told her.
"What an asshole," she said.
"Yeah."
Mr. Piano, one of our newer board members, saw us talking in hushed, angry tones and also asked what was up. I told him too.
"What an asshole," he said.
"Yeah," Mrs. A and I said in unison.
I remained behind the desk for several minutes, drinking more crappy wine and eating more soothing cheese. And every few minutes, other staff members, having heard the short version from Mrs. A, filtered over to hear the detailed version from me. Even former board member, Mrs. Emm, came by to confirm the details. I told her the story and my embarrassment theory. She shook her head knowingly, patted me on the shoulder in sympathy and walked away. And it was at that moment that I realized I had just achieved the ultimate revenge against Mr. Crab. Mrs. Emm is one of the biggest gossips I know and is probably tapped into the rumor and innuendo stream of the well-to-do crowd of our area more than anyone outside of Mrs. A herself.
Oh, so you don't want anyone to know you dropped a wine glass, Mr. Crab? Well, good luck with that, cause now Mrs. Emm has the play by play and there's no way in hell she's keeping it to herself. It might not have been all that big a deal in the first place, but your actions to cover it up have now assured that it's a small deal being spread to the winds.
After this realization, I had another glass of wine and felt much better about the evening.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Monday, August 25, 2008
Mr. Crab, the Third Grumpiest Great White Hunter in All the World (Moving Days J)
JANUARY 7, 2006
I rarely know anything that goes on in our monthly meeting of the “liberry’s” board of directors and that’s fine with me. What does trickle down to me often pisses me off and I would just get myself in trouble by opening my yap were I there to hear it first hand. This is particularly true when it comes to matters of our proposed new “liberry” building. (And I’ve kept my yap mostly shut about it online for two years now for fear of drawing the wrong attention to myself.) Friday’s meeting of the board was different, though. I might still have been in trouble, had I been there, but it would have been for laughing my fool ass off. My boss, Mrs. A, told the staff about it afterwards and assured us that it was a tale that will be retold for months to come.
Some time before the meeting, Mrs. A received a phone call from our eldest and longest-standing board-member, Mrs. Day. To date, Mrs. Day has not been at all wild about our campaign to build a new library. In fact, she voted against it for quite some time before Mr. Kreskin, our former board president, was able to convince her that it looked bad for one lone board member to keep voting against everything, so she jumped on board to save face.
On Friday morning, Mrs. Day phoned to inform Mrs. A that she had a major and exciting announcement to reveal at the board meeting. She wouldn’t give any indication what it regarded, but said it was something huge. Naturally, Mrs. A’s mind wandered to the possibilities. And while waiting for Mrs. Day to turn up for the meeting, Mrs. A and the other four board members—Mr. Eggs, Mrs. Emm, Mrs. Aitch and Dr. Watson—plus our press officer, Mrs. PR, mused aloud as to what the big news might be. Consensus of hope was that Mrs. Day had found someone to donate the remaining funds we need for the new building (around a cool million), but they found it more likely that she was merely going to take credit for securing a rather large donation a neighbor of hers had recently made that everyone already knew about.
Mrs. Day eventually rolled in for the meeting and after much smiling and excitement on her part, she finally revealed her big news. It seems that Mrs. Day has been in contact with everyone’s favorite cranky patron, annual $200 check-donator, frequent $200-donation revocation threatener, and third grumpiest old man in all the world, Mr. Crab, regarding what he might like to donate to the library’s building campaign. (All together now, “$200!”) Mr. Crab claimed that due to obscure IRS laws, he could not donate any actual money to the project because he had “already donated over a million dollars.” (I assumed when I heard this third-hand quote that Mr. Crab meant he’d already donated a million dollars to the library over the years, in which case he would have to be 5000 years old since he only ever gives us $200 at a pop. Now that I’ve thought about it, though, he probably meant he’d given a million dollars to various charitable contributions over the years—no doubt in $200 increments.) Instead of giving us any money, Mr. Crab said he wished to donate something far more valuable: an extensive antique German train set he’d collected and two, count em two, stuffed animals. And when I say "stuffed animals" I’m not talkin’ about Teddy bears or MonChiChis, I mean actual dead animals from Mr. Crab’s collection of animals he has shot, killed and had stuffed, taxidermy-style. According to Mrs. Day, Mr. Crab specifically wishes to donate two stuffed dead animal heads to be hung above the two fireplaces in the proposed new building.
From the way Mrs. A described it to me later, Mrs. Day couldn’t have been more thrilled about this donation. She beamed at the members of the board as she told them, barely able to contain her joy. This, to me, is merely proof that Mrs. Day's mind automatically defaults to the 1930s and 40s, when men such as Ernest Hemingway went around cheerfully blowing the hides off whatever creatures struck their fancy, for fun, then hung their corpses up for all to see and there were no activist groups to raise a stink about it. (By the way, while I think hunting for sport is abhorrent, I’m all for blowing the hides off of creatures you intend to eat, provided they are in season and/or the ranger isn’t looking. "Yeah, take my pic-a-nic basket again, you f*ckers!”)
The board’s reaction to the news was far more modern. I’m told Mrs. Emm and Mrs. PR began laughing openly at the absurdity of it; Mr. Eggs and Dr. Watson sat dumbfounded—Dr. Watson, particularly so, as this was his very first meeting as a board member; Mrs. A just shook her head in full knowledge of the kind of shit storm that would rain down on us from the local hippie-activist community should these heads actually make their way anywhere near our new building; and Mrs. Aitch was furious, but mostly at Mr. Crab’s assertion that there was some kind of million-dollar lifetime donation cut-off.
Between bursts of laughter, Mrs. Emm managed to ask what kind of heads Mr. Crab wished to give us. Mrs. Day wasn’t certain, but said that Mr. Crab has an elephant head above his own desk so maybe that would be one of them.
(It should be noted that Mr. Crab reportedly also has an elephant-leg golf-bag. You heard me... Elephant. Leg. Golf. Bag. When Mrs. A told me about it, I said, “That’s just awful. I mean, I can see an elephant-foot umbrella stand, and all, but a golf-bag is just excessive.” Mrs. A then said she really wished I had been at the meeting, because that was exactly the kind of running commentary that the board members began making around that time. Go board.)
For her part, Mrs. Day seemed oblivious to the ridicule the rest of the board was heaping on her major announcement. She must have thought their tearful laughter was out of joy at such a golden opportunity to turn our new library into some sort of big-game hunting lodge. She even further suggested that one of the heads might, in fact, be that of a polar bear, which Mr. Crab reportedly also owns.
Eventually, Mrs. Emm was able to compose herself long enough to suggest that we agree to accept the gifts, but only with no restrictions as to their use, so we would be free to sell the items to raise money for the project. Mr. Crab will most likely hate this, grump about it at length, retract his offer of donation and then threaten to withhold his $200 again.
“Well if he doesn’t stop acting so crappy to our staff, it’s going to be his head up above the fireplace cause they’re going to kill him,” Mrs. A reportedly told the board.
Soon the room calmed down a bit and the board began discussing such possibilities as a road trip to Mr. Crab's home in order to view the items proposed for donation. Immediately, various board members began vocally noting that they were likely to be out of town on that day, whatever day that should be, but Mrs. A insisted that such a trip could be delayed until all of them were able to attend.
After Mrs. A finished her tale for me, I advised her that we really did not want to be AT ALL beholden to Mr. Crab or we'd never hear the end of it until the day he died, and even then he'd probably have it set into his will that his heirs must continue to lord it over us until the end of time or be cut off from his reputed massive fortune.
Then I realized that it might be worth accepting Mr. Crab's animal heads, if only to piss off Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, who are among our more vocal militant animal rights types in the area and who have, in the past several months, continued desperately trying to torpedo this new building project using any stray hope they think might float no matter how ludicrous. Seeing an elephant head above our new fireplace might be just the thing to finally remove the remaining Grinchy vestiges of sanity they still possess.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
I rarely know anything that goes on in our monthly meeting of the “liberry’s” board of directors and that’s fine with me. What does trickle down to me often pisses me off and I would just get myself in trouble by opening my yap were I there to hear it first hand. This is particularly true when it comes to matters of our proposed new “liberry” building. (And I’ve kept my yap mostly shut about it online for two years now for fear of drawing the wrong attention to myself.) Friday’s meeting of the board was different, though. I might still have been in trouble, had I been there, but it would have been for laughing my fool ass off. My boss, Mrs. A, told the staff about it afterwards and assured us that it was a tale that will be retold for months to come.
Some time before the meeting, Mrs. A received a phone call from our eldest and longest-standing board-member, Mrs. Day. To date, Mrs. Day has not been at all wild about our campaign to build a new library. In fact, she voted against it for quite some time before Mr. Kreskin, our former board president, was able to convince her that it looked bad for one lone board member to keep voting against everything, so she jumped on board to save face.
On Friday morning, Mrs. Day phoned to inform Mrs. A that she had a major and exciting announcement to reveal at the board meeting. She wouldn’t give any indication what it regarded, but said it was something huge. Naturally, Mrs. A’s mind wandered to the possibilities. And while waiting for Mrs. Day to turn up for the meeting, Mrs. A and the other four board members—Mr. Eggs, Mrs. Emm, Mrs. Aitch and Dr. Watson—plus our press officer, Mrs. PR, mused aloud as to what the big news might be. Consensus of hope was that Mrs. Day had found someone to donate the remaining funds we need for the new building (around a cool million), but they found it more likely that she was merely going to take credit for securing a rather large donation a neighbor of hers had recently made that everyone already knew about.
Mrs. Day eventually rolled in for the meeting and after much smiling and excitement on her part, she finally revealed her big news. It seems that Mrs. Day has been in contact with everyone’s favorite cranky patron, annual $200 check-donator, frequent $200-donation revocation threatener, and third grumpiest old man in all the world, Mr. Crab, regarding what he might like to donate to the library’s building campaign. (All together now, “$200!”) Mr. Crab claimed that due to obscure IRS laws, he could not donate any actual money to the project because he had “already donated over a million dollars.” (I assumed when I heard this third-hand quote that Mr. Crab meant he’d already donated a million dollars to the library over the years, in which case he would have to be 5000 years old since he only ever gives us $200 at a pop. Now that I’ve thought about it, though, he probably meant he’d given a million dollars to various charitable contributions over the years—no doubt in $200 increments.) Instead of giving us any money, Mr. Crab said he wished to donate something far more valuable: an extensive antique German train set he’d collected and two, count em two, stuffed animals. And when I say "stuffed animals" I’m not talkin’ about Teddy bears or MonChiChis, I mean actual dead animals from Mr. Crab’s collection of animals he has shot, killed and had stuffed, taxidermy-style. According to Mrs. Day, Mr. Crab specifically wishes to donate two stuffed dead animal heads to be hung above the two fireplaces in the proposed new building.
From the way Mrs. A described it to me later, Mrs. Day couldn’t have been more thrilled about this donation. She beamed at the members of the board as she told them, barely able to contain her joy. This, to me, is merely proof that Mrs. Day's mind automatically defaults to the 1930s and 40s, when men such as Ernest Hemingway went around cheerfully blowing the hides off whatever creatures struck their fancy, for fun, then hung their corpses up for all to see and there were no activist groups to raise a stink about it. (By the way, while I think hunting for sport is abhorrent, I’m all for blowing the hides off of creatures you intend to eat, provided they are in season and/or the ranger isn’t looking. "Yeah, take my pic-a-nic basket again, you f*ckers!”)
The board’s reaction to the news was far more modern. I’m told Mrs. Emm and Mrs. PR began laughing openly at the absurdity of it; Mr. Eggs and Dr. Watson sat dumbfounded—Dr. Watson, particularly so, as this was his very first meeting as a board member; Mrs. A just shook her head in full knowledge of the kind of shit storm that would rain down on us from the local hippie-activist community should these heads actually make their way anywhere near our new building; and Mrs. Aitch was furious, but mostly at Mr. Crab’s assertion that there was some kind of million-dollar lifetime donation cut-off.
Between bursts of laughter, Mrs. Emm managed to ask what kind of heads Mr. Crab wished to give us. Mrs. Day wasn’t certain, but said that Mr. Crab has an elephant head above his own desk so maybe that would be one of them.
(It should be noted that Mr. Crab reportedly also has an elephant-leg golf-bag. You heard me... Elephant. Leg. Golf. Bag. When Mrs. A told me about it, I said, “That’s just awful. I mean, I can see an elephant-foot umbrella stand, and all, but a golf-bag is just excessive.” Mrs. A then said she really wished I had been at the meeting, because that was exactly the kind of running commentary that the board members began making around that time. Go board.)
For her part, Mrs. Day seemed oblivious to the ridicule the rest of the board was heaping on her major announcement. She must have thought their tearful laughter was out of joy at such a golden opportunity to turn our new library into some sort of big-game hunting lodge. She even further suggested that one of the heads might, in fact, be that of a polar bear, which Mr. Crab reportedly also owns.
Eventually, Mrs. Emm was able to compose herself long enough to suggest that we agree to accept the gifts, but only with no restrictions as to their use, so we would be free to sell the items to raise money for the project. Mr. Crab will most likely hate this, grump about it at length, retract his offer of donation and then threaten to withhold his $200 again.
“Well if he doesn’t stop acting so crappy to our staff, it’s going to be his head up above the fireplace cause they’re going to kill him,” Mrs. A reportedly told the board.
Soon the room calmed down a bit and the board began discussing such possibilities as a road trip to Mr. Crab's home in order to view the items proposed for donation. Immediately, various board members began vocally noting that they were likely to be out of town on that day, whatever day that should be, but Mrs. A insisted that such a trip could be delayed until all of them were able to attend.
After Mrs. A finished her tale for me, I advised her that we really did not want to be AT ALL beholden to Mr. Crab or we'd never hear the end of it until the day he died, and even then he'd probably have it set into his will that his heirs must continue to lord it over us until the end of time or be cut off from his reputed massive fortune.
Then I realized that it might be worth accepting Mr. Crab's animal heads, if only to piss off Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, who are among our more vocal militant animal rights types in the area and who have, in the past several months, continued desperately trying to torpedo this new building project using any stray hope they think might float no matter how ludicrous. Seeing an elephant head above our new fireplace might be just the thing to finally remove the remaining Grinchy vestiges of sanity they still possess.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Friday, August 22, 2008
Either I'm Itching to Tell Another Tale or I've got a Really Bad Case of the Crabs (Moving Days I)
Back in December, I alluded to an incident in which 3rd Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, Mr. Crab, and I nearly came to blows at a wine & cheese reception. I've been itching to tell that story for over a year now but couldn't do so without first explaining the whole bit about us moving into a new library, which I didn't want to have to explain at the time of the occurrence for reasons which I will eventually explain.
However, in order to properly set up the tale of the hurt locker I nearly stuffed Mr. Crab into--which, by the by, would have likely involved cramming a broom handle up his ass, so the one he has up there already would have some company--I will first have to tell a different tale, one which I have also been itching to tell for even longer than the wine & cheese hurt locker one. Fortunately, I had the foresight to write this setup tale back in January of 2006, but for similar reasons as those of the previous omission, never officially published to the blog.
See ya next week.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
However, in order to properly set up the tale of the hurt locker I nearly stuffed Mr. Crab into--which, by the by, would have likely involved cramming a broom handle up his ass, so the one he has up there already would have some company--I will first have to tell a different tale, one which I have also been itching to tell for even longer than the wine & cheese hurt locker one. Fortunately, I had the foresight to write this setup tale back in January of 2006, but for similar reasons as those of the previous omission, never officially published to the blog.
See ya next week.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Final Thursday (Final Day)
I arrived at 1p. Except for Ms. M, everyone else had gone to lunch and she was scheduled to leave when I arrived.
"So I guess I won't see you again?" she said sadly.
"Aw. I'll be back," I said. "I've got some web work still to do, so I'll probably be in next week."
Plus, there's the matter of the going away party that Mrs. A said she wants to throw but which will have to wait a couple weeks, cause she's out of town and I'm moving next week. The wife will still be in the area through the end of the month, though, so it won't be any big deal for me to pop over.
Soon Ms. D returned from lunch. She brought me a bag of coffee beans from a local coffee house.
"I asked the guy if he knew you and what kind of coffee you liked," Ms. D said. "He said he knew you, but had no idea on the coffee, so I got you house blend."
It's perfect.
The rest of my final day on the job went fairly smoothly with cameos by some classic "characters" from the blog.
The Bakers put in an early appearance and I told them it was my final day. They were happy for the wife's opportunity in Borderland, but sad to see me go. I'll miss them too. The kids have all practically grown up in the near 7 years I've been at the library. Oldest daughter, Katherine, is off to college. Middle child Brianna has changed from being a whiny, indecisive middle schooler and has blossomed into quite a stunning young lad. And next time I see little Olive, she'll probably be driving.
Mr. B-Natural came in a couple of times. The computers were glutted on his first visit, but he was able to negotiate with Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine for use of Gene's computer "for five minutes" just to check something, so Gene wouldn't have to get off. Of course, Gene's intense desire for innanet suckling only lasted about three minutes before he decided he would just leave because Mr. B-Natural was taking too long. Later Gene.
Not long after, two members of my other all-time-favorite family, The Asners, came in to pay for a fine and renew a book. It didn't occur to me in the moment, but I really should have told them that they were my favorite family. I've actually told them as much in the past, mentioning that they were a pleasure to deal with every time I saw them, but it would have been a nice parting to mention it again.
Mid-afternoon, after using the excuse of setting up the downstairs multi-purpose room for an upcoming seminar to head downstairs for a bit, Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Ms. D returned with a giant cheese cake variety pack.
"You didn't think you were getting out of here without some sort of celebration, did you?" Mrs. C asked.
"This is awesome!" I said. "Thanks."
And it was quite awesome cheesecake. We all feasted heartily.
The afternoon saw further cameos by the usual innanet crowd, including Mr. W. Perfect, Cleveland, the Hacker Family, Old Man Printer, and Germophobe Gary, who didn't even ask for a Clorox Wipe. I was really hoping for an appearance by Cap'n Crossdresser or maybe even the ghost of the Purple Nun, but at least Parka didn't show up.
And, toward the end of the day, another long lost "liberry" family member turned up in the form of Rif, the formerly high school-aged home school kid who used to hang out in the library with his sister Magenta. Rif's now a junior in college studying sports-management. His sister Magenta graduated college this year.
My duties today included checking the shelves for overdues, one last time; folding up and preparing the overdues for mailing, one last time; stuffing fund-drive envelopes, one last time; processing new magazines, one last time; and rearranging those magazines in our magazine shelf which is, as always, plagued on a daily basis by people who have no concept of putting periodicals back where they found them instead of cramming them in at random.
My final check out of the day was The Calder Game, by Blue Balliett, checked out to my writer friend Linda.
Before I clocked out, I took all of my remaining red shelving slips and pinned them to the staff bulletin board with a note that read "This color is now retired." I then gathered up my satchel ("It's not a manpurse, dammit!"), and my toiletries (toothbrush, tooth paste, bottle of Cetaphil, hair gunk, mouthwash, defunk, etc.) from my locker. I then affixed to my bag my locker's mini-post-it label of JUICE TWO-BELTS. I grabbed the remainder of my cheesecake and headed out the staff workroom door toward my car.
On my way out, I noticed that I'd left my pot of hens & chicks by the back door. I thought of stopping to get them, but I can catch `em next time. I'm not done with this place yet.
I'm also not done with this blog. There are still a few tales left to tell, not to mention a move (or two) to commence.
"So I guess I won't see you again?" she said sadly.
"Aw. I'll be back," I said. "I've got some web work still to do, so I'll probably be in next week."
Plus, there's the matter of the going away party that Mrs. A said she wants to throw but which will have to wait a couple weeks, cause she's out of town and I'm moving next week. The wife will still be in the area through the end of the month, though, so it won't be any big deal for me to pop over.
Soon Ms. D returned from lunch. She brought me a bag of coffee beans from a local coffee house.
"I asked the guy if he knew you and what kind of coffee you liked," Ms. D said. "He said he knew you, but had no idea on the coffee, so I got you house blend."
It's perfect.
The rest of my final day on the job went fairly smoothly with cameos by some classic "characters" from the blog.
The Bakers put in an early appearance and I told them it was my final day. They were happy for the wife's opportunity in Borderland, but sad to see me go. I'll miss them too. The kids have all practically grown up in the near 7 years I've been at the library. Oldest daughter, Katherine, is off to college. Middle child Brianna has changed from being a whiny, indecisive middle schooler and has blossomed into quite a stunning young lad. And next time I see little Olive, she'll probably be driving.
Mr. B-Natural came in a couple of times. The computers were glutted on his first visit, but he was able to negotiate with Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine for use of Gene's computer "for five minutes" just to check something, so Gene wouldn't have to get off. Of course, Gene's intense desire for innanet suckling only lasted about three minutes before he decided he would just leave because Mr. B-Natural was taking too long. Later Gene.
Not long after, two members of my other all-time-favorite family, The Asners, came in to pay for a fine and renew a book. It didn't occur to me in the moment, but I really should have told them that they were my favorite family. I've actually told them as much in the past, mentioning that they were a pleasure to deal with every time I saw them, but it would have been a nice parting to mention it again.
Mid-afternoon, after using the excuse of setting up the downstairs multi-purpose room for an upcoming seminar to head downstairs for a bit, Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Ms. D returned with a giant cheese cake variety pack.
"You didn't think you were getting out of here without some sort of celebration, did you?" Mrs. C asked.
"This is awesome!" I said. "Thanks."
And it was quite awesome cheesecake. We all feasted heartily.
The afternoon saw further cameos by the usual innanet crowd, including Mr. W. Perfect, Cleveland, the Hacker Family, Old Man Printer, and Germophobe Gary, who didn't even ask for a Clorox Wipe. I was really hoping for an appearance by Cap'n Crossdresser or maybe even the ghost of the Purple Nun, but at least Parka didn't show up.
And, toward the end of the day, another long lost "liberry" family member turned up in the form of Rif, the formerly high school-aged home school kid who used to hang out in the library with his sister Magenta. Rif's now a junior in college studying sports-management. His sister Magenta graduated college this year.
My duties today included checking the shelves for overdues, one last time; folding up and preparing the overdues for mailing, one last time; stuffing fund-drive envelopes, one last time; processing new magazines, one last time; and rearranging those magazines in our magazine shelf which is, as always, plagued on a daily basis by people who have no concept of putting periodicals back where they found them instead of cramming them in at random.
My final check out of the day was The Calder Game, by Blue Balliett, checked out to my writer friend Linda.
Before I clocked out, I took all of my remaining red shelving slips and pinned them to the staff bulletin board with a note that read "This color is now retired." I then gathered up my satchel ("It's not a manpurse, dammit!"), and my toiletries (toothbrush, tooth paste, bottle of Cetaphil, hair gunk, mouthwash, defunk, etc.) from my locker. I then affixed to my bag my locker's mini-post-it label of JUICE TWO-BELTS. I grabbed the remainder of my cheesecake and headed out the staff workroom door toward my car.
On my way out, I noticed that I'd left my pot of hens & chicks by the back door. I thought of stopping to get them, but I can catch `em next time. I'm not done with this place yet.
I'm also not done with this blog. There are still a few tales left to tell, not to mention a move (or two) to commence.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Final Wednesday
One of our faithful weekly patrons is a guy named Jeff. I don't know much about Jeff other than he's some sort of skilled laborer (carpenter, I'm imagining), he's the owner and wearer of a ZZ Top beard and train engineer-style hat, he visits us every Wednesday at around 5p like clockwork, and he has pretty good taste in reading material. I know this last bit because I helped shape a minor corner of his taste in books by introducing him to the works of Neil Gaiman.
The way this began is that, years back, Jeff asked me for a recommendation on a book. As is usually the case when people ask me this, I shoved Good Omens at him. He liked it quite a lot, so the next week it was Neverwhere. Then American Gods. Then an ILL for Stardust (which we now own) and then Smoke & Mirrors and then Coraline and then The Wolves in the Walls and, eventually, Anansi Boys. M is for Magic is the latest Neil collection we have, though we also recently picked up the ever-so-excellent unabridged audio adaptation of Neverwhere as read by Neil himself and I must confess the man is now right up there with Jim Dale as far as audio readers go, in my book.
Oddly, I don't think I've mentioned The Sandman to him, which is criminal, really. However, we only have the first couple of trades of that series, so it's always seemed needlessly cruel to get him addicted just to say, "Oh, sorry, we don't have any more for you. But the rest of it is really very good."
So Jeff occasionally asks me what sort of thing Neil has coming out next. I recently reported to him of Neil's new children's book Odd and the Frost Giants as well as The Graveyard Book, coming out later in the year. Meanwhile, he's branched out quite a bit to read all sorts of good things, including Gene Wolfe (a favorite author of Neil's) and, naturally, Douglas Adams (who is the author that lead me to first read Neil in the first place via Neil's Hitchhiker's biography, Don't Panic. Funny story, that--when Neil first began writing comics in this country, one of his earliest efforts for DC in the late 1980s was the Black Orchid mini-series. I'd always liked the Black Orchid character, having read of her in Suicide Squad and the Who's Who directory of the DC Universe and really really wanted to read this prestige format mini-series. Unfortunately, we didn't yet have a comic shop in the town I grew up in, so I had to wait for the eventual trade. However, when I read the press about Black Orchid, I knew I recognized the name Neil Gaiman from something that I owned, I just couldn't place where I'd seen it. So I spent a good hour going through my entire comic collection looking for his name on every cover, trying to figure out why it was so damned familiar. Sitting there on the floor of my high school bedroom, I finished the last box of my then two or three long-box collection, and had not found anything by him. I felt defeated, and allowed my head to fall back on my shoulders, which aimed my gaze up at my bookshelf where I saw the name Neil Gaiman staring down at me from Don't Panic. Within a couple years, I had the Black Orchid trade and began noticing Neil writing smaller stories in places such as Secret Origins, including a fantastic origin for Poison Ivy that I highly recommend and believe is collected in a Neil miscellaneous stories trade put out a few years ago. When I heard he was doing a book called The Sandman, I wondered if this was a new version of either the Golden Age Wesley Dodds Sandman (whom I'd read of in a story called Whatever Happened to The Sandman, which I think was a backup tale in a 1985 issue of All Star Squadron, and which I dearly loved) or the Jack Kirby 1973 Sandman in the red and yellow costume (which I owned a couple of issues of, having special ordered them thinking they were about the Golden Age Sandman, and still liking them well enough). When my friend Gordon began buying the new Sandman book, I asked him which version it was about. He wasn't familiar with either previous character, but said it didn't sound like them. He made me read a couple of issues of The Doll's House, and very quickly I found that the Kirby Sandman did play a role. I was already hooked by then, though, on the story of Morpheus and, more importantly, the supporting cast of the Doll's House story. (And to me Neil's Sandman is always more about the various supporting casts than it is about the Sandman himself.) I was a devout Neil follower from that moment on and have spread this affection/infection to most of my friends.)
But I digress with lots of parentheses...
When Jeff turned up today, I broke the news that I was leaving and would not likely see him next week or, perhaps, for a long time. He congratulated me on the move, but then seemed concerned.
"Where am I going to get my news about the next Neil books?" he asked.
"Oh, I've got `em pretty well trained around here. If they see Neil's name on something, they'll order it."
The way this began is that, years back, Jeff asked me for a recommendation on a book. As is usually the case when people ask me this, I shoved Good Omens at him. He liked it quite a lot, so the next week it was Neverwhere. Then American Gods. Then an ILL for Stardust (which we now own) and then Smoke & Mirrors and then Coraline and then The Wolves in the Walls and, eventually, Anansi Boys. M is for Magic is the latest Neil collection we have, though we also recently picked up the ever-so-excellent unabridged audio adaptation of Neverwhere as read by Neil himself and I must confess the man is now right up there with Jim Dale as far as audio readers go, in my book.
Oddly, I don't think I've mentioned The Sandman to him, which is criminal, really. However, we only have the first couple of trades of that series, so it's always seemed needlessly cruel to get him addicted just to say, "Oh, sorry, we don't have any more for you. But the rest of it is really very good."
So Jeff occasionally asks me what sort of thing Neil has coming out next. I recently reported to him of Neil's new children's book Odd and the Frost Giants as well as The Graveyard Book, coming out later in the year. Meanwhile, he's branched out quite a bit to read all sorts of good things, including Gene Wolfe (a favorite author of Neil's) and, naturally, Douglas Adams (who is the author that lead me to first read Neil in the first place via Neil's Hitchhiker's biography, Don't Panic. Funny story, that--when Neil first began writing comics in this country, one of his earliest efforts for DC in the late 1980s was the Black Orchid mini-series. I'd always liked the Black Orchid character, having read of her in Suicide Squad and the Who's Who directory of the DC Universe and really really wanted to read this prestige format mini-series. Unfortunately, we didn't yet have a comic shop in the town I grew up in, so I had to wait for the eventual trade. However, when I read the press about Black Orchid, I knew I recognized the name Neil Gaiman from something that I owned, I just couldn't place where I'd seen it. So I spent a good hour going through my entire comic collection looking for his name on every cover, trying to figure out why it was so damned familiar. Sitting there on the floor of my high school bedroom, I finished the last box of my then two or three long-box collection, and had not found anything by him. I felt defeated, and allowed my head to fall back on my shoulders, which aimed my gaze up at my bookshelf where I saw the name Neil Gaiman staring down at me from Don't Panic. Within a couple years, I had the Black Orchid trade and began noticing Neil writing smaller stories in places such as Secret Origins, including a fantastic origin for Poison Ivy that I highly recommend and believe is collected in a Neil miscellaneous stories trade put out a few years ago. When I heard he was doing a book called The Sandman, I wondered if this was a new version of either the Golden Age Wesley Dodds Sandman (whom I'd read of in a story called Whatever Happened to The Sandman, which I think was a backup tale in a 1985 issue of All Star Squadron, and which I dearly loved) or the Jack Kirby 1973 Sandman in the red and yellow costume (which I owned a couple of issues of, having special ordered them thinking they were about the Golden Age Sandman, and still liking them well enough). When my friend Gordon began buying the new Sandman book, I asked him which version it was about. He wasn't familiar with either previous character, but said it didn't sound like them. He made me read a couple of issues of The Doll's House, and very quickly I found that the Kirby Sandman did play a role. I was already hooked by then, though, on the story of Morpheus and, more importantly, the supporting cast of the Doll's House story. (And to me Neil's Sandman is always more about the various supporting casts than it is about the Sandman himself.) I was a devout Neil follower from that moment on and have spread this affection/infection to most of my friends.)
But I digress with lots of parentheses...
When Jeff turned up today, I broke the news that I was leaving and would not likely see him next week or, perhaps, for a long time. He congratulated me on the move, but then seemed concerned.
"Where am I going to get my news about the next Neil books?" he asked.
"Oh, I've got `em pretty well trained around here. If they see Neil's name on something, they'll order it."
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Final Tuesday
My final Tuesday was largely uneventful, save for one curious incident.
Mid-afternoon, a fairly stunning college-aged girl approached the desk. She grinned broadly at me and said "Hi, how's it going?" in a very familiar tone. She looked familiar, too, but I couldn't place her.
The girl turned in a book, I checked it in and noted that her last name was familiar, though the first listed was actually her mother. That's when I realized that this girl was the daughter of a patron I also know from church. Ah, so that's where I knew her from, I thought. I probably recognized her from church, back when she was in high school. Now she was off to college and home for the summer. It was only later, after she came to check out that I realized the full nature of her identity. She passed me a book, then a library card. When I scanned the card, it brought up her mother's record again. The girl then mentioned that her own card was linked to her mother's if I wanted to use it instead. I switched over to the linked patrons tab and saw her first name. Then it hit me: this was no mere girl I knew from church, this was Miss K, our former newbie greenhorn, formerly high school-aged weekend warrior who had originally been hired to replace the thieving, dishonest and job-abandoning Miss E. Wow did she grow up!
I later suggested to Mrs. C that if they needed a quick replacement for me, at least for the summer, they could do far worse than to hire Miss K again. She's already partially trained, or at least far moreso than most newbie greenhorns off the street would be.
Now if only Miss E, Ms. S, Miss Temp, Miss F, Mrs. H and Miss Nightranger would come by for a visit, it'd be like old home week at the "liberry."
Mid-afternoon, a fairly stunning college-aged girl approached the desk. She grinned broadly at me and said "Hi, how's it going?" in a very familiar tone. She looked familiar, too, but I couldn't place her.
The girl turned in a book, I checked it in and noted that her last name was familiar, though the first listed was actually her mother. That's when I realized that this girl was the daughter of a patron I also know from church. Ah, so that's where I knew her from, I thought. I probably recognized her from church, back when she was in high school. Now she was off to college and home for the summer. It was only later, after she came to check out that I realized the full nature of her identity. She passed me a book, then a library card. When I scanned the card, it brought up her mother's record again. The girl then mentioned that her own card was linked to her mother's if I wanted to use it instead. I switched over to the linked patrons tab and saw her first name. Then it hit me: this was no mere girl I knew from church, this was Miss K, our former newbie greenhorn, formerly high school-aged weekend warrior who had originally been hired to replace the thieving, dishonest and job-abandoning Miss E. Wow did she grow up!
I later suggested to Mrs. C that if they needed a quick replacement for me, at least for the summer, they could do far worse than to hire Miss K again. She's already partially trained, or at least far moreso than most newbie greenhorns off the street would be.
Now if only Miss E, Ms. S, Miss Temp, Miss F, Mrs. H and Miss Nightranger would come by for a visit, it'd be like old home week at the "liberry."
Monday, July 07, 2008
Final Monday
While at lunch with the wife, today, I mentioned that it was the final Monday I would work at the "liberry." She asked if I was saddened by this fact. I had to admit: not even a little. Cause, as has been well-chronicled here, I hate me some Monday.
What's there to miss?
As Mondays go, today was actually not terribly problematic. Sure, we had the usual Monday Madness, but not infuriatingly so. I tried to just go with the flow and live in the moment and enjoy it as much as I could. The major incident of the day came around 4p, when one of our computer patrons tripped and fell while trying to walk across a level section of floor. In this man's defense, he did suffer a stroke a while back and walks with a pronounced limp. I had just asked him to relinquish his computer for a new patron and he had been in the process of walking toward the circ desk when he fell. I was looking right at him as he dropped like a sack of dead, wet, marmosets, but I was powerless to do anything about it beyond giving off a sympathetic yelp. He fell hard, right on his arm and I was sure it would probably be broken, or dislocated or otherwise in need of an ambulance.
I rushed around the desk and over to where he'd fallen. Mr. B-Natural, who'd been seated at the computer directly beside the place where he fell also rushed over. The man was writhing on the floor, clutching at his arm. Quite intelligently, I asked, "Are you all right?"
The man looked up at me and then at Mr. B-Natural and, through a very painful-looking expression, said he was indeed all right. Mr. B-Natural began trying to help him sit up, but the man waived him off, saying, "I'm all right. I'm all right."
"Well, here's your glasses," Mr. B-Natural said, gathering them up and handing them over.
"I'll get them. I'm all right!" the man said.
"Well here's your hat," Mr. B-Natural added.
"I'll get them! I'm all right!" the man said, now practically screaming. "Please! I'm all right. I'll get them!"
"Can I help you up?" I asked.
"No! I'm all right!"
The more we tried to help, the angrier he got. But it felt very odd not trying to help him, particularly with everyone across the main floor was staring at us. I think, though, that the attention being directed at him was the problem. The man was embarrassed at having fallen and didn't want any more attention than he'd already caused himself. Slowly, Mr. B-Natural and I backed away, but not too far. This was good, because as soon as the man had clambered to his feet, he tipped over again and Mr. B-Natural was near enough to catch him.
"I'm all right!" the man hissed as Mr. B set up upright again. "I'll be fine, as soon as I can sit down for a minute," he said. Then, as though he needed further explanation for being annoyed with us, he added, "The physical therapists say it helps to do everything for myself."
"Do you need a chair?" I offered, looking for the nearest one.
"No! I'm all right! I'll get it! I'll be fine!"
So I walked away and the man hobbled over to the circ desk and leaned there for a moment. He left his hat and glasses there, then hobbled back over to Mr. B-Natural to apologize for being so gruff. I thought, if only you knew you were apologizing to the grumpiest old man in all the world, dude. Then the man hobbled off to the bathroom, where he stayed, in a seated position (if you get my drift) for quite a while.
"That guy really needs a cane," I told Mrs. B.
She agreed.
What's there to miss?
- The incessant banging on and repeatedly trying of the handles of the doors to see if we're open yet despite the obvious sign clearly stating otherwise? Gone from my life.
- The annoyed expressions when we at last do unlock the doors? Gone from my life.
- The mad rushes by innanet crowders to get to the computers before they all fill up? Gone from my life.
- The endless procession of extraordinarily needy patrons, many of whom have questions that can only be answered by a person of authority, on a day when the people in authority are NEVER present? Gone from my life.
- Long time innanet crowders who have used the computers nearly every single day for the past couple of years yet still cannot get it through their head that we close at 5 on Mondays and act all shocked and amazed every week when we tell them they don't actually have another four hours at their disposal, but have to get off in ten minutes; or patrons who walk in the building at ten til 5 with the same expectations and literally smack themselves in the head because once again their poor, swiss-cheesed memory has failed them? Gone. From. My. Life.
As Mondays go, today was actually not terribly problematic. Sure, we had the usual Monday Madness, but not infuriatingly so. I tried to just go with the flow and live in the moment and enjoy it as much as I could. The major incident of the day came around 4p, when one of our computer patrons tripped and fell while trying to walk across a level section of floor. In this man's defense, he did suffer a stroke a while back and walks with a pronounced limp. I had just asked him to relinquish his computer for a new patron and he had been in the process of walking toward the circ desk when he fell. I was looking right at him as he dropped like a sack of dead, wet, marmosets, but I was powerless to do anything about it beyond giving off a sympathetic yelp. He fell hard, right on his arm and I was sure it would probably be broken, or dislocated or otherwise in need of an ambulance.
I rushed around the desk and over to where he'd fallen. Mr. B-Natural, who'd been seated at the computer directly beside the place where he fell also rushed over. The man was writhing on the floor, clutching at his arm. Quite intelligently, I asked, "Are you all right?"
The man looked up at me and then at Mr. B-Natural and, through a very painful-looking expression, said he was indeed all right. Mr. B-Natural began trying to help him sit up, but the man waived him off, saying, "I'm all right. I'm all right."
"Well, here's your glasses," Mr. B-Natural said, gathering them up and handing them over.
"I'll get them. I'm all right!" the man said.
"Well here's your hat," Mr. B-Natural added.
"I'll get them! I'm all right!" the man said, now practically screaming. "Please! I'm all right. I'll get them!"
"Can I help you up?" I asked.
"No! I'm all right!"
The more we tried to help, the angrier he got. But it felt very odd not trying to help him, particularly with everyone across the main floor was staring at us. I think, though, that the attention being directed at him was the problem. The man was embarrassed at having fallen and didn't want any more attention than he'd already caused himself. Slowly, Mr. B-Natural and I backed away, but not too far. This was good, because as soon as the man had clambered to his feet, he tipped over again and Mr. B-Natural was near enough to catch him.
"I'm all right!" the man hissed as Mr. B set up upright again. "I'll be fine, as soon as I can sit down for a minute," he said. Then, as though he needed further explanation for being annoyed with us, he added, "The physical therapists say it helps to do everything for myself."
"Do you need a chair?" I offered, looking for the nearest one.
"No! I'm all right! I'll get it! I'll be fine!"
So I walked away and the man hobbled over to the circ desk and leaned there for a moment. He left his hat and glasses there, then hobbled back over to Mr. B-Natural to apologize for being so gruff. I thought, if only you knew you were apologizing to the grumpiest old man in all the world, dude. Then the man hobbled off to the bathroom, where he stayed, in a seated position (if you get my drift) for quite a while.
"That guy really needs a cane," I told Mrs. B.
She agreed.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Final Friday
My final week on the job has officially begun. My last day will be next Thursday, so today is my final Friday as a "liberry" ass.
Fridays are usually very busy at the "liberry" even nigh unto as busy as a Monday. However, we usually have enough staff on Friday to carry the load, at least until 5p when everyone abandons the official Friday closer and flees to their weekends two hours earlier than I get to. Fridays also are especially busy because it's our weekly amnesty day and is when all the basket cases bring in their kids' long-overdue books to turn in for free, glutting the book cart even beyond the usual busy Friday turn in. Now, as an experienced Friday closer, I know that it's imperative to getting that book cart cleared out before 5p because after 5 shelving becomes problematic with no one else to run the desk. Imagine my horror, therefore, at arriving today to find every single shelf of the book cart not only completely packed, but packed with other books laying on top of the packed books and then stacks of books laying on the nearby circ-desk itself. I very nearly said, "Uh, sorry, but, no, I'm done."
Mrs. B explained that because our new nonfiction section has recently overgrown to the point that it has begun encroaching upon the territory of mystery fiction, Mrs. A had told Mrs. J to go through every book there and remove the ones with any 2007 date as the first due date. Mrs. A said that she and Mrs. C would then go through those books and decide what they wanted to put back in new NF and what they wanted to shelve in the stacks. Trouble was, it had been a while and neither of our bosses was coming to sort through any of it. Meanwhile, the usual Friday crowd was still turning in all their books, which were the ones piling up on the desk. And meanwhile meanwhile, Mrs. C was in her office furiously cataloging stacks of new books to process and put out as well. And as the guy who would likely wind up processing them, too, this disturbed me. I wanted to say, "No! Stop making more work for me! I've got plenty up there as it stands. Please, come and look through some of it so I can start making a dent in the pile I already have, cause it ain't like the Friday crowd incoming books are slowing down."
Instead, I said a more respectful version of the above and eventually, Mrs. C came and went through the nonfiction on the cart, allowing me and Mrs. J to finally start shelving.
The remainder of my final Friday passed with little incident.
Fridays are usually very busy at the "liberry" even nigh unto as busy as a Monday. However, we usually have enough staff on Friday to carry the load, at least until 5p when everyone abandons the official Friday closer and flees to their weekends two hours earlier than I get to. Fridays also are especially busy because it's our weekly amnesty day and is when all the basket cases bring in their kids' long-overdue books to turn in for free, glutting the book cart even beyond the usual busy Friday turn in. Now, as an experienced Friday closer, I know that it's imperative to getting that book cart cleared out before 5p because after 5 shelving becomes problematic with no one else to run the desk. Imagine my horror, therefore, at arriving today to find every single shelf of the book cart not only completely packed, but packed with other books laying on top of the packed books and then stacks of books laying on the nearby circ-desk itself. I very nearly said, "Uh, sorry, but, no, I'm done."
Mrs. B explained that because our new nonfiction section has recently overgrown to the point that it has begun encroaching upon the territory of mystery fiction, Mrs. A had told Mrs. J to go through every book there and remove the ones with any 2007 date as the first due date. Mrs. A said that she and Mrs. C would then go through those books and decide what they wanted to put back in new NF and what they wanted to shelve in the stacks. Trouble was, it had been a while and neither of our bosses was coming to sort through any of it. Meanwhile, the usual Friday crowd was still turning in all their books, which were the ones piling up on the desk. And meanwhile meanwhile, Mrs. C was in her office furiously cataloging stacks of new books to process and put out as well. And as the guy who would likely wind up processing them, too, this disturbed me. I wanted to say, "No! Stop making more work for me! I've got plenty up there as it stands. Please, come and look through some of it so I can start making a dent in the pile I already have, cause it ain't like the Friday crowd incoming books are slowing down."
Instead, I said a more respectful version of the above and eventually, Mrs. C came and went through the nonfiction on the cart, allowing me and Mrs. J to finally start shelving.
The remainder of my final Friday passed with little incident.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
"Liberry" Glossary: Lag Time
Lag Time
-noun- The amount of time that passes between the moment a patron arrives at the circ desk to check out to the moment they remember that they need their library card in order to check out to the moment they actually fish said card from whatever walletular orifice they last stuffed it into. Average Lag Time: 30 seconds.
- The amount of time that passes between the moment we inform a patron their "innanet" time is officially up and we need their computer for someone else and the actual moment they relinquish it. Average Lag Time: 3 minutes.
- The amount of time that passes from the moment a properly noise-polution-aware patron's cell phone ringtone has gone of in a blaringly loud fashion to the moment they actually make it into our less-than-soundproof breezeway to take the call. Average Lag Time: 15 seconds.
- The amount of time that passes from the moment a patron who couldn't give less of a damn about talking loudly on their cell phone in front of God and everybody receives a blaringly loud cell phone call and the moment I make it over to them to banish them from the building: Average Lag Time: 30 seconds.
- The amount of time it takes for us to reboot said computer from the ground up in order for it to be fresh and clean and history-wiped for the next user. Average Lag Time: 1 minute.
- The amount of time it takes for my blood pressure to rise once I discover that our filtering and security software has failed us once again and a completely different patron's email account has automatically popped up on our screens, fully logged in, and that patron hasn't visited us in days. Average Lag Time: .03 seconds.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Last Minute Rogue Addition PART II (a.k.a. "Fifth Grumpiest Old Man in All the World Located At Last!")
Mrs. A, still mystified that our patron William Shatner would think she would intentionally move his position on a hold list due to some perceived but as-yet-unrevealed conflict between them, decided to do something about it.
The first thing she did was to call the patron who'd had Wililam Shatner's hold book out for two months and tell them to bring it back immediately. And, perhaps oddly, they actually obeyed and brought it back within a day. Soon it was waiting on the hold shelf for William Shatner and Ms. M had left a message on his machine to this effect.
Next up, Mrs. A gave William Shatner himself a call. I have no idea of the actual dialog of the call, but damn I wish I did. Instead, I have to rely on the bits of it Mrs. A later told me about. Mrs. A said she started out, as usual, by being very friendly to William Shatner and explaining that she thought there had been some sort of misunderstanding. Unspoken in this was how he was clearly operating on some sort of odd idea of how libraries and their hold systems are run, not to mention that he seemed to have some ideas about Mrs. A's personal operating procedure that were at the very least uncharacteristic of her reality. Oh, no, William Shatner said, there was no misunderstanding. None at all. He knew exactly how Mrs. A ran things down at the "liberry" and he knew she had moved him on the hold list for two months to keep him from getting the book. Furthermore, he really shouldn't even be talking to her at all on advice of his lawyer.
"His lawyer?" I exclaimed at this point in the retelling.
"Yeah," Mrs. A said. She then reported that William Shatner continued to ignore his lawyer's advice by telling her that he had inside information on how she ran our library and he didn't like it one bit. In fact, he'd spoken with a former employee of our library who had given him the skinny and he knew that Mrs. A ran things like a complete dictator and frequently moved patrons on the hold list when she didn't like them. No, sirree, she had not heard the last of this by any means. He'd been consulting with his lawyer and was going to have her job for this. He was going to take this straight to the board of directors. Mrs. A attempted to explain the actual situation, but he would hear none of it. And with that, William Shatner hung up.
Now, beyond the astounding nature of his claims and beyond the clearly unstable nature of his personality, the most surprising thing about his beef is the unnamed source he listed for his inside information. The way I immediately saw it, which turns out to be exactly the way Mrs. A saw it too, there's really only one person who fits the criteria to be both a disgruntled former employee and vengeful enough to spread such lies in order to create trouble like this.
"MS. S! It has to be MS. S!" I said.
Yes, Eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S, she who was let go without actually being fired nearly a year ago now. She's the only former employee bitter enough to pull off something like this. (Even former weekend warrior Miss E wouldn't bear this kind of hatred for us--after all SHE's the one who walked off the job without a word to us as to why.) Adding to the evidence was that Ms. S always worked weekends and was reportedly pretty chummy with William Shatner, who visits almost exclusively on weekends. My guess was that he'd run into her at her fast food job and struck up a conversation, at which point he might have mentioned that he was put out about not receiving his hold giving Ms. S the perfect opportunity to sew discord.
Mrs. A was just dumbfounded and kept saying she'd never been yelled at like that by a patron in many years. There was just no talking to him. No matter what she tried to say, he had already made up his mind that she was the devil and would hear nothing from her. Mrs. A wasn't angry about it herself, just mystified that someone could go off the rails as completely as William Shatner seemed to have done.
The whole situation made me angry. Again, here was someone who'd never given us problems who had completely lost his shit with us for mostly fictional reasons. For a bit, I considered phoning up William Shatner myself and trying to explain to him that he truly was off base in what he thought he knew. I wanted to tell him that he should consider that there might have been very good reasons his former-employee source was indeed a former employee and that he should further consider how this might cloud her objectivity in the matter and give her reason to tell him something other than the truth.
I did not do this, however. If he was determined to make a fool of himself and throw his lot in with Ms. S, let him have at it.
Mrs. A immediately phoned the president of the board, Mr. Hooter, and told him what was going on and to expect some contact from William Shatner.
To give Mrs. A actual evidence that she'd done no wrong, I went into the record for the book William Shatner wanted and printed out the detailed history of its brief time in our collection. It clearly showed when the book was added to the collection, the names of the people who'd been on hold for it, when they had been added to the hold list, how long each of the first two had kept the book, including the two months for hold #2, etc. Nowhere did it show any list order manipulation because there'd not been any.
The board of directors had a look at this, noted that William Shatner had failed to pick up his long anticipated book within the requisite number of days we'd informed him we'd hold it, asked Mrs. A to extend his hold time for five more days, and then Mr. Hooter wrote William Shatner a letter explaining that we'd not only extended the time but had also extensively looked into the matter, examined the records that had been concerning him and had found no wrongdoing whatsoever. As of this writing, we've neither heard nor seen anything more from William Shatner himself. He never picked up his book and, from what we're told, has been patronizing other area libraries, complaining to them about how mean we all are.
As for Ms. S, she's still working in fast food and, from what the vine tells us, will likely not be rehired in the fall for her private school teaching position due to there not being enough students for the class to make. Maybe I should tell her that we'll have a position open here by the end of next week.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Last Minute Rogue Addition PART I (a.k.a. "Fifth Grumpiest Old Man in All the World Located At Last!")
It's an odd sensation when a person you have known for years, who you have maybe even been friendly toward, suddenly turns on you and gives you a good solid bite. This has happened to me on a few occasions and I don't typically deal with it very well. Fortunately the viper bite the "liberry" collectively received recently wasn't directed at me specifically.
A long time regular patron of ours is a fellow I shall call William Shatner, for no good reason at all. William Shatner has never before distinguished himself enough to merit inclusion in the blog as either a good patron or a rogue patron. Mostly I know William Shatner as a patron who is almost always in our hold system. Like many others among his hold-patron brethren, William Shatner is usually on hold for whatever the latest new hot book is in release. William Shatner has always been very friendly toward me, and rightly so as I'm usually the guy who phones to tell him the hot new book he's been wanting to read is ready for him to pick up and he usually rolls by late on Friday or early on Saturday to do so.
In January, William Shatner put on hold the latest book by a certain southern lawyer type whose books came to wild popularity in the early 1990s and continue to be best sellers today. He did so on the day the book was scheduled to be released. Unfortunately for William Shatner--and, as it turns out, the rest of us--two other people had already put themselves on hold for this book in advance of him. Also quite unfortunate, the first person on hold kept the book a week or two past its due date, prolonging the wait for the next person. The second person on the hold list, once the book was in their hands, wound up keeping it for the better part of two months. I only know this because I did the research into it after what happened next.
William Shatner, understandably unhappy about waiting so long, occasionally would ask whoever was working the desk on the weekends (usually Ms. M) about the book and his place on the list. Each time he would be told that it was still out and he was still third on the waiting list. Now, I don't know if the weekend warriors he was talking to ever phoned the person with the book to tell them to bring it back. If not, they really should have. I and the rest of the weekday staff, however, had no way to know about it because our system doesn't generate overdue notices until a given book is three months overdue.
After two months of waiting, William Shatner was, again understandably, pissed. Anyone would be justifiably pissed at having to wait two months, but as it turns out that was not the primary reason that William Shatner was pissed. He marched in one Saturday, asked for his book, was told by Ms. M that it was still out and, upon hearing that, William Shatner informed Ms. M that he was sick of waiting and, more importantly, he knew good and well that our director, Mrs. A, had been moving his position on the hold list in order to keep him from getting the book at all. Ms. M, in her retelling, stressed that he mentioned this theory on several occasions during their conversation.
Mrs. A was astounded at the accusation. She'd never moved anyone on a hold list and had no reason to move William Shatner. She had no beef with William Shatner. She hadn't even set eyes on the man in over a year. Beyond all of that, though, was the small matter of her having no idea how to even bring up the section of our circulation software dedicated to showing exactly who is holding for a particular book, let alone know how to shuffle that list in any manner, in the first place. (In point of fact, the two people on our staff who would know how to do that are Mrs. C and myself, and I only knew about it because I recently moved a lady to the front of a completely different book list. Normally, I don't care where people are on a given list, but she had been the one to request a given book that we didn't yet own and couldn't ILL due to its extreme newness. In fact, she requested it on more than one occasion, prompting me to recommend its purchase. She was pretty much the whole reason we eventually ordered said book for our collection only to have four people jump on the list ahead of her because by then Oprah had endorsed the book. Was moving her fair? Ehhh, debatable. But I did it anyway and everyone knows you can't fight the power of Oprah.)
Mrs. A polled the staff and none of us could come up with any reason William Shatner might be so upset or make such accusations, other than his book was late. It seemed to all of us who were familiar with him to be somewhat out of character, because most patrons who entertain paranoid fantasies tend to drag them out for display earlier than this. No, though we didn't realize it then, there was an X-Factor at play that we could not yet see. As we were to learn, however, this particular X-Factor had a name and a history with our "liberry."
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
"Liberry" Glossary: Needy Patron
Needy Patron
-noun
- A patron incapable of helping themselves with even the most minor of tasks, but who is usually intent on accomplishing the most major of tasks and will often require your help over the course of a period of hours to make this a reality. This might take the form of having no knowledge whatsoever about how to operate a computer, yet need to fill out extensive forms online. Other times, they might need to do complicated legal research on a deadline, yet have no actual idea what they are looking for, or, worse yet, merely some random numbers and letters written on a piece of paper by a possibly mentally-challenged third party all of which they expect you to not only recognize but immediately spew forth the requisite information those random characters are supposed to correspond to. Often the desired tasks of the needy patron are impossible to achieve given our limited resources, but communicating this to them is often impossible in direct proportion to their neediness. The neediness of the needy patron is also often in direct proportion to how utterly swamped you already are with other pressing tasks or other needy patrons--in other words, they love to appear on Mondays.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Dammit, this is a library, you're supposed to be yelling!
There are some foolish people in the world who still believe that libraries are supposed to be places of quiet study, where you must never talk above a whisper or you go to hell, or something. One of those people visited us today along with her six-year-old daughter.
I noticed them in the children's section as the mother was reading to the daughter. Though there were other kids and parents in the area making the usual kid and parent noises, Mom-Low-Talker, however, was reading to her daughter in a mouse-whisper. I wanted to stop and tell her it was okay to actually engage her vocal cords, but decided to let her handle her parenting her own way. Maybe she was teaching by example.
Soon enough, they came to the circ desk to check out, but Mom-Low-Talker didn't get any louder. She whispered that she wanted to check out and then whispered that she didn't have her daughter's card because her husband had possession of it. I explained that we did require a card to check out and asked if she herself had a card. She whispered that she did not. Keep in mind, after 7 years of wearing headphones as a radio DJ, my hearing isn't what it once was when I was young and spry and I often have difficulty hearing people if there's other ambient noise around--which, with the innanet crowd banging away at their keyboards twenty feet away, there was plenty. I was pretty much reading her lips and intuiting her answers. So I passed her a form to fill out and she set to it.
Despite the fact that our form requires a driver's license number, she had not listed one. She had also not listed a full first or middle name, putting initials in both places.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we need a driver's license, here," I said, pointing to the blank on the form. Before I could mention the initials, she began whispering something to me that I couldn't understand.
"Excuse me?" I said, cupping my hand to my ear.
She whispered something again, not raising her volume at all. Now I was getting annoyed.
"Ma'am, you can actually speak out out in here. I can't hear what you're saying."
She pointed to the form and in a slightly audible voice said, "Do I have to put it on there? Do you keep these secure?"
Well, if you call a tall pile hidden out of reach of the public secure, then, yes.
"I guess I can just take it from your license if you don't want to include it," I said. "But I will
need your full first and middle names. We can't use initials."
She whispered something at me.
"I'm sorry?"
Returning to almost audible, she said, "I didn't want to spell out my name, because it's so long and complicated." She took the form and began writing out her name. I waited for her to finish, breathlessly anticipating the spelling of so complicated and long a first name that one would be hesitant to include it on forms that require it. I imagined it had to be something in the neighborhood of Romanadvoratrelundar.
She passed the form back to me. In the blank for the first name she'd written "Cathleen." Well, no wonder.
Once I began entering her information in the computer, Cathleen Low-Talker turned out to already have a card from 2005. She didn't believe me when I told her this, of course, but there it was with her contact information already plugged in, plus a note saying that she needed to supply us with her drivers license number. In the end, Cathleen Low-Talker realized that if she'd gone this long without supplying a driver's license number (hell, without even knowing she had a card at all), she could probably continue to do so with no real affect on her life. So she announced that she didn't want to pay for a replacement card for herself but instead would pay for one for the daughter. Whatever.
Just after I passed the new card over and explained that they could throw away the old card cause it would no longer work, Cathleen Low Talker leaned over and whispered to her daughter that now she would have two cards they could use.
"Uh, no," I said. "The old card will no longer work. At all. You can throw it away."
I tell you, I'm not going to miss people like her when I soon shuffle on out of here.
I noticed them in the children's section as the mother was reading to the daughter. Though there were other kids and parents in the area making the usual kid and parent noises, Mom-Low-Talker, however, was reading to her daughter in a mouse-whisper. I wanted to stop and tell her it was okay to actually engage her vocal cords, but decided to let her handle her parenting her own way. Maybe she was teaching by example.
Soon enough, they came to the circ desk to check out, but Mom-Low-Talker didn't get any louder. She whispered that she wanted to check out and then whispered that she didn't have her daughter's card because her husband had possession of it. I explained that we did require a card to check out and asked if she herself had a card. She whispered that she did not. Keep in mind, after 7 years of wearing headphones as a radio DJ, my hearing isn't what it once was when I was young and spry and I often have difficulty hearing people if there's other ambient noise around--which, with the innanet crowd banging away at their keyboards twenty feet away, there was plenty. I was pretty much reading her lips and intuiting her answers. So I passed her a form to fill out and she set to it.
Despite the fact that our form requires a driver's license number, she had not listed one. She had also not listed a full first or middle name, putting initials in both places.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we need a driver's license, here," I said, pointing to the blank on the form. Before I could mention the initials, she began whispering something to me that I couldn't understand.
"Excuse me?" I said, cupping my hand to my ear.
She whispered something again, not raising her volume at all. Now I was getting annoyed.
"Ma'am, you can actually speak out out in here. I can't hear what you're saying."
She pointed to the form and in a slightly audible voice said, "Do I have to put it on there? Do you keep these secure?"
Well, if you call a tall pile hidden out of reach of the public secure, then, yes.
"I guess I can just take it from your license if you don't want to include it," I said. "But I will
need your full first and middle names. We can't use initials."
She whispered something at me.
"I'm sorry?"
Returning to almost audible, she said, "I didn't want to spell out my name, because it's so long and complicated." She took the form and began writing out her name. I waited for her to finish, breathlessly anticipating the spelling of so complicated and long a first name that one would be hesitant to include it on forms that require it. I imagined it had to be something in the neighborhood of Romanadvoratrelundar.
She passed the form back to me. In the blank for the first name she'd written "Cathleen." Well, no wonder.
Once I began entering her information in the computer, Cathleen Low-Talker turned out to already have a card from 2005. She didn't believe me when I told her this, of course, but there it was with her contact information already plugged in, plus a note saying that she needed to supply us with her drivers license number. In the end, Cathleen Low-Talker realized that if she'd gone this long without supplying a driver's license number (hell, without even knowing she had a card at all), she could probably continue to do so with no real affect on her life. So she announced that she didn't want to pay for a replacement card for herself but instead would pay for one for the daughter. Whatever.
Just after I passed the new card over and explained that they could throw away the old card cause it would no longer work, Cathleen Low Talker leaned over and whispered to her daughter that now she would have two cards they could use.
"Uh, no," I said. "The old card will no longer work. At all. You can throw it away."
I tell you, I'm not going to miss people like her when I soon shuffle on out of here.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
"Liberry" Glossary: Repeat Offender
Repeat Offender
-noun phrase
- A member of the innanet crowd who signs in for computer time, stays for while, leaves, returns to sign up for more, leaves again, returns to sign up for more again, etc., repeat cycle until closing time. Repeat Offenders are not always rogue patrons, but often are. The offense inherent in their title stems from the fact that, due to our usual bad attitudes, the staff becomes completely sick of dealing with these people since we have to go out and log them onto a computer with each successive visit and we wish they would just get what they're doing done the first time and go away. We're particularly annoyed with patrons such as Germophobe Gary, who not only leave and return repeatedly throughout the day, but demand a new Clorox Disinfecting Wipe with each visit so that our keyboards might be rendered safe for him to touch. (We can't really blame him, but it is still a very annoying extra step for us.) Very often, Repeat Offenders are also the patrons who do the most amount of printing from the computers and are constantly pestering us to look at their prints, compounding our bad attitude toward them. Usual suspects among the current Repeat Offenders crowd include: Germaphobe Gary, Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, Mr. B-Natural, Mr. W. Perfect, The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, Johnny Hacker, Mr. Little Stupid. Former Repeat Offenders include: Parka, Crusty the Patron, Stoner Lad.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #129
SETTING: My "liberry" on a very busy Monday, shortly after we open when we're at our busiest.
*RING*
ME— Tri-Metro County Library.
MS. GREEN— Hey, this is MS. GREEN. Are you busy? Is it busy there right now?
ME— Yeah. Actually, we're quite busy right now.
MS. GREEN— Oh, okay. Well, I had a couple of questions. Do you have a public fax machine?
ME— Yes.
MS. GREEN— And I'd just pay you for it?
ME— Yes.
MS. GREEN— Okay. I'll have to come up and do that. The other question was... well, someone told me that YOU do computer classes.
(And by the intonation of her voice when she said "YOU" I took it to mean that she had heard that I personally conducted computer classes, not the library in general, not that the library does either.)
ME— No, that is incorrect.
MS. GREEN— That is incorrect?
ME— Yes.
MS. GREEN— So, it's correct that it's incorrect?
(WTF?)
ME— Its... I do not do computer classes and we do not do computer classes here at this time.
MS. GREEN— Oh, okay. Well, do you have any recommendations for somewhere I could take them?
ME— I don't know of anything in the area. I know that LIBRARY IN NEXT COUNTY OVER THAT HAS THEIR OWN COMPUTER LAB DEDICATED TO THE TASK AND DOESN'T HAVE TO FIGHT WITH INNANET CROWDERS OVER THE USE OF THEM LIKE WE WOULD does them, but I don't know about anywhere around TRI-METRO.
MS. GREEN— But the community college does them?
ME— I don't know.
MS. GREEN— You don't know?
ME— I don't know. I am unaware of them doing them.
MS. GREEN— You're unaware of them doing them? (Pause) So what you're saying is that you don't know if the community college does them?
ME— (How many &%*#ing ways must I spell this out?) What I am saying is that I, JUICE AARON, am not personally aware of anyone conducting computer classes in the area. That said, I am also not personally aware that anyone is not conducting them, either. So the community college may well be teaching computer classes, I am just not aware of it and could not tell you authoritatively one way or the other. You might give them a call.
(Pause)
MS. GREEN— So you're saying that you don't know of any?
ME— That is what I'm saying.
MS. GREEN— But that you don't know that they're not?
ME— That is what I'm saying.
(You know, if Verizon were to develop a feature whereby I could set fire to other people over the telephone, I'd pay extra to have that as part of my monthly service.)
*RING*
ME— Tri-Metro County Library.
MS. GREEN— Hey, this is MS. GREEN. Are you busy? Is it busy there right now?
ME— Yeah. Actually, we're quite busy right now.
MS. GREEN— Oh, okay. Well, I had a couple of questions. Do you have a public fax machine?
ME— Yes.
MS. GREEN— And I'd just pay you for it?
ME— Yes.
MS. GREEN— Okay. I'll have to come up and do that. The other question was... well, someone told me that YOU do computer classes.
(And by the intonation of her voice when she said "YOU" I took it to mean that she had heard that I personally conducted computer classes, not the library in general, not that the library does either.)
ME— No, that is incorrect.
MS. GREEN— That is incorrect?
ME— Yes.
MS. GREEN— So, it's correct that it's incorrect?
(WTF?)
ME— Its... I do not do computer classes and we do not do computer classes here at this time.
MS. GREEN— Oh, okay. Well, do you have any recommendations for somewhere I could take them?
ME— I don't know of anything in the area. I know that LIBRARY IN NEXT COUNTY OVER THAT HAS THEIR OWN COMPUTER LAB DEDICATED TO THE TASK AND DOESN'T HAVE TO FIGHT WITH INNANET CROWDERS OVER THE USE OF THEM LIKE WE WOULD does them, but I don't know about anywhere around TRI-METRO.
MS. GREEN— But the community college does them?
ME— I don't know.
MS. GREEN— You don't know?
ME— I don't know. I am unaware of them doing them.
MS. GREEN— You're unaware of them doing them? (Pause) So what you're saying is that you don't know if the community college does them?
ME— (How many &%*#ing ways must I spell this out?) What I am saying is that I, JUICE AARON, am not personally aware of anyone conducting computer classes in the area. That said, I am also not personally aware that anyone is not conducting them, either. So the community college may well be teaching computer classes, I am just not aware of it and could not tell you authoritatively one way or the other. You might give them a call.
(Pause)
MS. GREEN— So you're saying that you don't know of any?
ME— That is what I'm saying.
MS. GREEN— But that you don't know that they're not?
ME— That is what I'm saying.
(You know, if Verizon were to develop a feature whereby I could set fire to other people over the telephone, I'd pay extra to have that as part of my monthly service.)
Friday, May 02, 2008
"...and the librarian never saw those books again. The end."
I arrived at work to find Mrs. A on the phone, talking semi-heatedly with someone about overdue books. From the sound of it, the books were quite overdue. There also seemed to be some issue of whether or not the person on the other end of the line had checked them out in the first place, or whether her husband had. More disagreements seemed to ensue, until Mrs. A at last told the woman that none of the overdues would be removed from her card, nor would our note concerning the overdues she had from us and those she had from Town-C's library unless all library books were returned to their proper libraries or otherwise paid for. This was starting to sound familiar, and with good reason, for the person on the other end of the line was none other than our old one time rogue, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit.
I soon received the skinny from Mrs. C and Mrs. A, for they knew of my previous involvement in the case due to the fact that I was the author of the very patron record note Mrs. Sackashit had called to complain about. It's a note which reads: "7/15/05 Patron has 9 items out from TRI-METRO COUNTY from 1998 and 2000. May not check out anything further until these have been paid for. Patron claims never to have had a card with TOWN-C nor to have checked out any of the items overdue there since May, nor to have actually been in TOWN-C's library since MRS. V was there. Husband, BLOATED SACKASHIT, has a card and has checked out the items she wished to get today. -TMCL"
It seems that after Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit's previous visit--during which it was determined that not only DID she already have a library card complete with driver's license despite her many claims otherwise, and already HAD several items from Town-C's library checked out on it which were then overdue from three months previous, not to mention Seefiles with our library for both her and her daughter left over from our previous computer circulation software--she had also failed to return any of the books she had forced her husband to check out for her in order to get around our rules. I know, shocking. It also seems that she'd been to another library branch recently and had attempted to check out more books. That branch, in Town-H, had quickly noted that Mrs. Sackashit already had a card and explained this to her.
According to Mrs. A, who had by then spoken with Town-H's branch, Mrs. Sackashit had then calmly claimed to them that she did not have a card in the library system at all, had never even set foot in Town-C's branch and furthermore did not have any books checked out from either Town-C or Town-A. Town-H's branch, seeing the exact same claims spelled out in my note in her patron record, pointed this fact out to her, including the note itself. Didn't matter to Mrs. Sackashit. She's perfectly capable of continuing to calmly lie in the face of all claims to the contrary. She told them she'd never set foot in either Town-A or Town-C's libraries and didn't have a card at all. Nevermind that the contact information and driver's license number on her application with Town-H were exactly the same as in her pre-existing patron record, she still would not admit to having a card at any library. Wisely, Town-H declined to check anything out to her. And, having no more family members on hand to press into service, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit had then left empty-handed.
We figure, not long after that, she'd decided to call our branch to find out what this note business was all about. So Mrs. A read it to her, then listened to Mrs. Sackashit's claims that she was not even the same person that this note concerned, again despite the fact that she lived at the exact same address and had the exact same driver's license number as the person that note concerned. Furthermore, her husband, Bloated, was also not the same Bloated Sackashit mentioned in the note, nor had he checked out any of the materials we claimed he had on her behalf. In other words, as much as it is possible to display one's shiny, polished pair of "brass-ones" over a telephone, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit certainly had them out on two silk-covered orthopedic pillows with a WWII anti-aircraft spot trained on `em.
There was also some question raised about wildly overdue books that had been checked out by a Jessica Sackashit who appeared to live at the same address as Lying and Bloated Sackashit. Mrs. Sackashit said she didn't even know anyone named Jessica Sackashit and was of no relation to her and, therefore, didn't have any of her books. Mrs. A countered that according to Town-C's librarian, who she'd been in contact with, Jessica Sackashit was Lying and Bloated's daughter (the very daughter, in point of fact, for whom Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit had originally come to our library back in 2005 to find books) and it seemed quite curious that they wouldn't know her.
Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit then gave the equivalent of: "Ohhhhhh, you mean JESSICA Sackashit. Come to think of it, she IS our daughter." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist according to Mrs. A.
Lie after lie after lie after lie, spat out as calmly as could be.
Mrs. A told Mrs. Sackashit that we would not be removing the note from her record until such a time as she paid for her books, because clearly this patron record WAS hers, as were those of Bloated and Jessica theirs. Mrs. Sackashit would also need to take up the matter of the books and/or money she owed to Town-C's library with them before any sort of service would resume. Mrs. Sackashit very calmly accepted this and politely hung up.
Afterward, Mrs. A said noted that she'd not had so many lies spat in her face at once since the patron with the Dick Francis problem the other day.
I soon received the skinny from Mrs. C and Mrs. A, for they knew of my previous involvement in the case due to the fact that I was the author of the very patron record note Mrs. Sackashit had called to complain about. It's a note which reads: "7/15/05 Patron has 9 items out from TRI-METRO COUNTY from 1998 and 2000. May not check out anything further until these have been paid for. Patron claims never to have had a card with TOWN-C nor to have checked out any of the items overdue there since May, nor to have actually been in TOWN-C's library since MRS. V was there. Husband, BLOATED SACKASHIT, has a card and has checked out the items she wished to get today. -TMCL"
It seems that after Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit's previous visit--during which it was determined that not only DID she already have a library card complete with driver's license despite her many claims otherwise, and already HAD several items from Town-C's library checked out on it which were then overdue from three months previous, not to mention Seefiles with our library for both her and her daughter left over from our previous computer circulation software--she had also failed to return any of the books she had forced her husband to check out for her in order to get around our rules. I know, shocking. It also seems that she'd been to another library branch recently and had attempted to check out more books. That branch, in Town-H, had quickly noted that Mrs. Sackashit already had a card and explained this to her.
According to Mrs. A, who had by then spoken with Town-H's branch, Mrs. Sackashit had then calmly claimed to them that she did not have a card in the library system at all, had never even set foot in Town-C's branch and furthermore did not have any books checked out from either Town-C or Town-A. Town-H's branch, seeing the exact same claims spelled out in my note in her patron record, pointed this fact out to her, including the note itself. Didn't matter to Mrs. Sackashit. She's perfectly capable of continuing to calmly lie in the face of all claims to the contrary. She told them she'd never set foot in either Town-A or Town-C's libraries and didn't have a card at all. Nevermind that the contact information and driver's license number on her application with Town-H were exactly the same as in her pre-existing patron record, she still would not admit to having a card at any library. Wisely, Town-H declined to check anything out to her. And, having no more family members on hand to press into service, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit had then left empty-handed.
We figure, not long after that, she'd decided to call our branch to find out what this note business was all about. So Mrs. A read it to her, then listened to Mrs. Sackashit's claims that she was not even the same person that this note concerned, again despite the fact that she lived at the exact same address and had the exact same driver's license number as the person that note concerned. Furthermore, her husband, Bloated, was also not the same Bloated Sackashit mentioned in the note, nor had he checked out any of the materials we claimed he had on her behalf. In other words, as much as it is possible to display one's shiny, polished pair of "brass-ones" over a telephone, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit certainly had them out on two silk-covered orthopedic pillows with a WWII anti-aircraft spot trained on `em.
There was also some question raised about wildly overdue books that had been checked out by a Jessica Sackashit who appeared to live at the same address as Lying and Bloated Sackashit. Mrs. Sackashit said she didn't even know anyone named Jessica Sackashit and was of no relation to her and, therefore, didn't have any of her books. Mrs. A countered that according to Town-C's librarian, who she'd been in contact with, Jessica Sackashit was Lying and Bloated's daughter (the very daughter, in point of fact, for whom Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit had originally come to our library back in 2005 to find books) and it seemed quite curious that they wouldn't know her.
Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit then gave the equivalent of: "Ohhhhhh, you mean JESSICA Sackashit. Come to think of it, she IS our daughter." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist according to Mrs. A.
Lie after lie after lie after lie, spat out as calmly as could be.
Mrs. A told Mrs. Sackashit that we would not be removing the note from her record until such a time as she paid for her books, because clearly this patron record WAS hers, as were those of Bloated and Jessica theirs. Mrs. Sackashit would also need to take up the matter of the books and/or money she owed to Town-C's library with them before any sort of service would resume. Mrs. Sackashit very calmly accepted this and politely hung up.
Afterward, Mrs. A said noted that she'd not had so many lies spat in her face at once since the patron with the Dick Francis problem the other day.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Actual Semi-Paraphrased, Second-Hand Information Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #128
SETTING: My "liberry" some hours before my arrival, though reported in detail later on. A male patron approaches the circ-desk, turns in five Dick Francis novels and marches off to the mystery section, presumably for more. Mrs. A checks them in and notices that the man has a sixth Dick Francis book still out. She steps out toward the mystery shelves where the patron is browsing through the Dick Francis section.
MRS. A— Excuse me, sir, but I just wanted to let you know that you still have 0dds Against by Dick Francis checked out and overdue.
MAN— 0dds Against? No, I don't have that book.
MRS. A— You brought it back?
MAN— I never had it. I never checked it out.
MRS. A— Are you sure?
MAN— Yes. I don't read Dick Francis.
MRS. A— (Glancing at the other books in our Dick Francis collection on the shelf in front of which the man is directly standing) Uh... Didn't you just bring back five Dick Francis books?
(Pause)
MAN— Yes... But I never had 0dds Against.
MRS. A— You're sure?
MAN— Yes. I brought that back last week.
MRS. A— You never had it... but you brought it back last week?
MAN— I saw it on the shelf here today.
MRS. A— (Glancing again at the Dick Francis shelf where 0dds Against is clearly NOT located) It's not here now, sir.
MAN— (Stares blankly at her)
MRS. A— Do you think you could have a look at home?
MAN— All right.
MRS. A— Excuse me, sir, but I just wanted to let you know that you still have 0dds Against by Dick Francis checked out and overdue.
MAN— 0dds Against? No, I don't have that book.
MRS. A— You brought it back?
MAN— I never had it. I never checked it out.
MRS. A— Are you sure?
MAN— Yes. I don't read Dick Francis.
MRS. A— (Glancing at the other books in our Dick Francis collection on the shelf in front of which the man is directly standing) Uh... Didn't you just bring back five Dick Francis books?
(Pause)
MAN— Yes... But I never had 0dds Against.
MRS. A— You're sure?
MAN— Yes. I brought that back last week.
MRS. A— You never had it... but you brought it back last week?
MAN— I saw it on the shelf here today.
MRS. A— (Glancing again at the Dick Francis shelf where 0dds Against is clearly NOT located) It's not here now, sir.
MAN— (Stares blankly at her)
MRS. A— Do you think you could have a look at home?
MAN— All right.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Winston
I started to write a detailed account of Winston’s passing here, but it just turned into the saddest thing I've ever written. When I come back and read this stuff in the future, I’d prefer it that I didn’t have to see the details of the last hours of Winston's life. I don't think I will ever forget them, but I sure don't want to relive them. Plus, it won't do any of you any good for me to ruin your day, too.
The short version is that Winston had congestive heart-failure. She's been slowly declining in health over the past year, but seemed spry enough that I felt certain she would at least make it with us to the new house. My wife, who as a physician has a finer-tuned sense of health-decline than my rose-colored glasses will allow, wasn't as optimistic. Her stated belief that the decline was more rapid than I was willing to admit stuck with me, though. In fact, one of the last times I bought cat food, I had been about to choose a whole case of Friskies canned when something clicked in my head that perhaps a case was more catfood than we would be needing.
The wife's concern was not without merit. We've known that Winston has had a heart murmur for over a year now. She'd had a handful of seizures that we know about, which can be caused by a sudden burst of cardiac activity, among many other things. Around a year ago, she passed out in front of us while lying on the bed and seemed to stop breathing for a while. We took her in for tests, which were largely inconclusive, but that's when we learned of the murmur. We hoped it wouldn’t lead to heart failure, but that if it did we hoped she would go quickly. I guess in the grand scheme of things, she did. But, Lord, it sure didn’t feel like it.
When we came back from Borderland, Sunday night, we found Winston struggling for breath, with crackling and wheezing in her lungs. She'd barely touched her food. A puff from an Albuterol inhaler, wedged into the mouth of a spacer made out of half a plastic water bottle, helped her out in the short term and soon she was breathing more or less normally.
I thought it best to get a medical opinion, so Monday morning I dug out the cat crate to head to the vet.
"Get your Crayons, kitty, we have to go to the vet," I told her.
"Get her Crayons?" the wife asked.
"Yeah," I said. "So she'll have something to do while she waits."
The vet checked her out and said that her symptoms likely stemmed from either pneumonia or congestive heart failure. We put our chips on pneumonia and loaded her up on antibiotics, hoping to fight it off.
At 2:30 Tuesday morning we found out we were wrong.
The night before, she'd turned up her nose at both tuna and water. The vet had said she would need to stay hydrated and fed, but our attempts to force feed her seemed needlessly cruel. Plus, the vet had already given her fluids by injection to help hydrate her. In retrospect, it was likely those very fluids that provided the liquid that settled in her lungs due to the heart failure. She began gasping for air at 2:30 Tuesday morning and Albuterol was of no more help.
After a very long and horrible night, during which we tried to keep her as comfortable as we could and petted her and sang her kitty songs, we took her to the vet and asked them to put her to sleep. She went with both Ashley and I there to pet her, tell her we loved her and see her out. And she went very quickly. At that point, we would have paid any amount of money to have her pain ended. The vet didn't charge us a thing. Afterward we just stood in the parking lot, hugging one another, shaking with tears.
Winston died just 7 days shy of her 16th birthday.
I could go on about how much I'll miss her and how broken hearted I am over what happened to her at the end, but really I'm just glad she's no longer suffering. I'm also extremely thankful to have had nearly two extra years with her that I might not have had were it not for a miracle that occurred in the face of my own stupidity. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go check out Winston’s Story. It's a tale with a far happier ending than today's. (Having read over it again myself, now, I'm pleased to inform you that the even happier ending, and possibly larger miracle, is that my stepmother, Myra--who I mention in the account--is in complete remission from her cancer. That's an epilogue, a praise and an answer to prayer I've neglected to add to the tale until now.)
When I got back home and took Winston's body out of the car, still wrapped in its towel, she looked so incredibly peaceful. The wife had told me I could pet her if I wanted to, but I'd said I wasn't going to do that. Seeing her body, though, she looked exactly as if she was asleep, and I reached out, stroked her warm fur and told her goodbye again. She looked so sweet.
We're donating her remaining food, litterbox, shampoo, brushes, treats, cat-crate, feeders and Crayons to the local humane society. And this weekend, we'll carry Winston with us to the new house and bury her in a spot with a nice sun-beam.
The short version is that Winston had congestive heart-failure. She's been slowly declining in health over the past year, but seemed spry enough that I felt certain she would at least make it with us to the new house. My wife, who as a physician has a finer-tuned sense of health-decline than my rose-colored glasses will allow, wasn't as optimistic. Her stated belief that the decline was more rapid than I was willing to admit stuck with me, though. In fact, one of the last times I bought cat food, I had been about to choose a whole case of Friskies canned when something clicked in my head that perhaps a case was more catfood than we would be needing.
The wife's concern was not without merit. We've known that Winston has had a heart murmur for over a year now. She'd had a handful of seizures that we know about, which can be caused by a sudden burst of cardiac activity, among many other things. Around a year ago, she passed out in front of us while lying on the bed and seemed to stop breathing for a while. We took her in for tests, which were largely inconclusive, but that's when we learned of the murmur. We hoped it wouldn’t lead to heart failure, but that if it did we hoped she would go quickly. I guess in the grand scheme of things, she did. But, Lord, it sure didn’t feel like it.
When we came back from Borderland, Sunday night, we found Winston struggling for breath, with crackling and wheezing in her lungs. She'd barely touched her food. A puff from an Albuterol inhaler, wedged into the mouth of a spacer made out of half a plastic water bottle, helped her out in the short term and soon she was breathing more or less normally.
I thought it best to get a medical opinion, so Monday morning I dug out the cat crate to head to the vet.
"Get your Crayons, kitty, we have to go to the vet," I told her.
"Get her Crayons?" the wife asked.
"Yeah," I said. "So she'll have something to do while she waits."
The vet checked her out and said that her symptoms likely stemmed from either pneumonia or congestive heart failure. We put our chips on pneumonia and loaded her up on antibiotics, hoping to fight it off.
At 2:30 Tuesday morning we found out we were wrong.
The night before, she'd turned up her nose at both tuna and water. The vet had said she would need to stay hydrated and fed, but our attempts to force feed her seemed needlessly cruel. Plus, the vet had already given her fluids by injection to help hydrate her. In retrospect, it was likely those very fluids that provided the liquid that settled in her lungs due to the heart failure. She began gasping for air at 2:30 Tuesday morning and Albuterol was of no more help.
After a very long and horrible night, during which we tried to keep her as comfortable as we could and petted her and sang her kitty songs, we took her to the vet and asked them to put her to sleep. She went with both Ashley and I there to pet her, tell her we loved her and see her out. And she went very quickly. At that point, we would have paid any amount of money to have her pain ended. The vet didn't charge us a thing. Afterward we just stood in the parking lot, hugging one another, shaking with tears.
Winston died just 7 days shy of her 16th birthday.
I could go on about how much I'll miss her and how broken hearted I am over what happened to her at the end, but really I'm just glad she's no longer suffering. I'm also extremely thankful to have had nearly two extra years with her that I might not have had were it not for a miracle that occurred in the face of my own stupidity. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go check out Winston’s Story. It's a tale with a far happier ending than today's. (Having read over it again myself, now, I'm pleased to inform you that the even happier ending, and possibly larger miracle, is that my stepmother, Myra--who I mention in the account--is in complete remission from her cancer. That's an epilogue, a praise and an answer to prayer I've neglected to add to the tale until now.)
When I got back home and took Winston's body out of the car, still wrapped in its towel, she looked so incredibly peaceful. The wife had told me I could pet her if I wanted to, but I'd said I wasn't going to do that. Seeing her body, though, she looked exactly as if she was asleep, and I reached out, stroked her warm fur and told her goodbye again. She looked so sweet.
We're donating her remaining food, litterbox, shampoo, brushes, treats, cat-crate, feeders and Crayons to the local humane society. And this weekend, we'll carry Winston with us to the new house and bury her in a spot with a nice sun-beam.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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