It was standard afternoon shift. I had been going about my day and things were actually turning out fairly well. Then I saw Mr. Big Stupid coming out of the men's restroom and my view on the day fell. I can't say for sure that Mr. Big Stupid was smirking upon his exit, but something about his manner sounded alarm bells in my head. I was also reminded that I hadn't checked the men's restroom for cleanliness since my arrival at work.
Sure enough, as soon as I walked in the door, bucket of cleaning products already in hand, I saw the dreaded sight and knew what Mr. Big Stupid had been smirking about. I marched back out the door, over to the circ desk and retrieved our temporary-signage folder from its hiding place. Seeing that my boss, Mrs. A, was standing nearby, I held up my "RESTROOM CLOSED, PLEASE USE DOWNSTAIRS RESTROOM" sign for her to see.
"What is it?" she said.
"Two words," I said. "Standing Urine."
"Oh, no."
Yes, indeedy, there was a wide puddle of urine covering much of the floor in front of the urinal. For the record, Mr. Big Stupid was not even a suspect, as he had been not present for the previous standing urine incident and had likely only been smirking at the knowledge that someone else would have to clean up what he'd just seen on the floor. Most likely the person responsible for the urine was one of our regular mentally handicapped patients from Unobstructed Doors.
After a brief search, I found our mop and mop bucket in housekeeping, filled the bucket with warm water, grabbed the Comet, affixed my sign to the bathroom door (if you don't put a sign on the door, patrons wander on in and, despite your obvious efforts to mop up the urine, they track through it anyway to leave some of their own) and headed in to do battle. Unfortunately, after using most of the Comet during the previous incident, there was less than half a tablespoon left in the container, so I then had to go back out and fetch our jug of bleach. Much diluting and sloshing ensued, followed by mopping, cursing under breath and vows to find the culprit and visit unspeakable punishments upon them. Soon the room was filled with bleach fumes. I began to suspect this wasn't a safe thing, so I went over to the restroom's window, intending to open it and help disperse the fumes.
First, a note about the restroom windows: I've mentioned recently how our architect had some rather dangerous ideas about how public buildings should operate and our new restrooms were a major part of that. When he designed the restrooms for our main floor, he included in them the exact same windows that had been installed in the rest of the building, which are very tall, sliding pane windows that allow in the greatest amount of light possible by being very very clear, with no window screens, but which also had venetian blinds in case, I presume, it got too bright to poop. Yes, that's right, the architect installed large, crystal clear windows in ground level restrooms both of which were in direct view of the parking lot. Now, granted, because of the way the interior of the restrooms were arranged, people on the outside would not be able to view people on the inside actually using toilets nor urinals through those windows, but they could certainly see people walking around and washing their hands (hopefully) after using said facilities. Regardless, the presence of those windows made the restrooms feel extremely non-private in a way the vast majority of public restrooms I've been in--including all of the ones I used in Central America, some of which were quite terrifying in other respects--don't. We also had to consider the unsavory possibility of someone like Chester setting up a damned chair outside the ladies' room and having himself an oggle-party. So, shortly before we opened, Mrs. A had Ms. D install some opaque window film over the lower section of both public restroom windows and that solved that.
So, seeking to release the bleach fumes from my particular restroom, I went to the window, raised the blinds and was about to unlatch the lower window pane when I discovered that someone had already unlatched it for my convenience. With barely any effort, I was able to raise the window to the full, open and unscreened position without having to unlatch it first.
"Oh, shit," I said. I then ran to find Mrs. A.
"We have a major problem in there," I said. "Beyond the urine," I added.
"What?" Mrs. A said.
I told her about the window and about my brand new theory that this very unlatched window was how our recent thieves could have gained after hours access to the building. All they had to do was unlatch the window during normal operating hours then come back later and hop on through. The only other possible excuse for it being unlatched, that I could think of, was if Mrs. J had unlatched it to let bleach fumes disperse the last time she'd mopped. The trouble is, Mrs. J is far too short to have reached the latches and has no sense of smell to alert her to the presence of fumes in the first place--which is why she often cannot smell if a mop is moldy and will just go right ahead and use these "ass mops" to do the floors, rendering the building equally assy.
Mrs. A was quite irritated, as windows that patrons can unlatch was a point she'd already raised with the architect back when the building was in the planning stages, a point he'd not been able to fathom. (That was also the same meeting where she raised the point about it being a bad idea to have crystal clear windows into said ground level bathrooms, a point that also went unfathomed.)
Now, here's where our "liberry" clubhouse junior detective skills went off the rails. While we immediately made it policy to check the latches on this and all other ground-level windows as part of normal closing duties, at no point did it occur to us to have the police come round to dust the window for possible prints. Granted, there's a good chance that the latches would only have contained the prints of either the staff or the shitty sub-contractors (a.k.a. the true criminals in this story), but there's a chance it could have nabbed the prints of the cash-box thieves as well. Instead, we just changed our closing policy and, within a few days, Mrs. A had Ms. D go around the building and seal all the ground-level windows shut with L-brackets to prevent this sort of thing in the future.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Showing posts with label Chester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chester. Show all posts
Friday, September 05, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Grand Opening (Moving Days L)
After nearly three blissful, patron-free weeks of preparation, it was at long last time to stop stalling and open the doors on The New "Liberry." Opening day was scheduled for a Sunday afternoon and the "liberry" went all out with a ribbon cutting ceremony followed by a cookie and leftover cheese from the wine & cheese reception reception. State officials came by, speeches were made, the Board of Directors and Mrs. A were thanked for all their work in making it happen, we the staff were thanked for helping them, and the man who'd spearheaded the whole project for so many years, Mr. Kreskin was mentioned and honored as well. To further cement this, the previously unnamed street which the new library building had been built above was named after him.
We opened the doors and the public began piling in.
A good many books circulated on opening day, but by and large people were there to see the place and get a whiff of that new "liberry" smell. For our part, we were doing double-duty running around making sure the cookie and cheese tables were full and also running the circ desk. The desk was only running at half capacity because despite the fact that we now had two circ desk computers we still only had one barcode scanner and none of us felt like typing 14 digit barcode numbers all afternoon.
The coming week brought lots of business as word spread that we were at last open and the usual suspects began to trickle in. It was a pretty major time of transition for the patrons but especially for the staff, as we not only had our regular duties to attend to but also some new roles as defacto tour guides. Because the placement of library materials on the shelves was still somewhat in flux, we didn't want to put up any sort of permanent signage denoting where things were located. Actually, our architect was dead set against signage of any sort because it just offended him for some reason. Mrs. A tried to explain that our patrons needed to know where things were and signage was the most efficient way to convey that information, but he was unmoved. (He had some other odd and dangerous ideas about how public spaces should be run, which I'll get to later.) Now, we all understood that it wasn't his decision to make and Mrs. A did declare that we would eventually put up some sort of signage, but we couldn't even stick temporary paper signs to the wooden shelf ends (even the shitty ones) because tape allegedly would ruin their finish. (Never mind that I'd affixed Post-Its and masking tape to most of them already to denote their shittiness.) Mrs. A's decision was to treat it like a study and see what sort of signage our patrons truly needed. After all, from years of experience, we already know that patrons NEVER read signs.
So we got to play tour guides, which wasn't bad because with the new building came more hours for the staff so we'd always have at least two people on the desk in addition to any directors who were present. (And who on the board that brought the new building to fruition was the person who insisted we always have two people on the desk? Why, Mrs. Day, oddly enough--the very woman who always complained bitterly that we had too many people working whenever she visited us before.)
One of the major misconceptions we had to combat, primarily over the course of the first few weeks, but occasionally beyond, was the misconception that the new library meant everyone had to get new library cards. Uh, no, cause we did that four years ago and it suuuuucked.
Another major misconception is that because we had a brand new library, we therefore must also have purchased brand new books. Some patrons were downright offended to browse our shelves and find the same books from the old library staring back at them.
And a third major misconception was over the layout of the building itself. Our new building, you see, was built into the side of a hill with the main floor and entrance on the upper level. However, for months, patrons would come to the desk and earnestly ask, "What's upstairs?"
"There is no upstairs," we would respond.
(Blank look. Blank look.)
"This IS upstairs," we would clarify. "We have a downstairs, but there are no other floors above us."
(Blank look. Blank look.)
Initially after the grand opening, we let people pretty much have a free run of both floors of the building. This was because we had plenty of patrons who (after we'd explained to them the whole upstairs/downstairs thing) really wanted to see the downstairs portion. Fine. Go. Knock yourselves out. But after a month or so of this, we decided everyone had seen the downstairs who needed to see it and everyone should stay the hell out of it unless they were otherwise renting the space. This may seem like a bad thing for a public library to do with what is ostensibly public space, but it was not set up to be a public area to begin with. It's a big empty room, a kitchen-like area, a story hour room and mechanical rooms and storage with nary a book to be found and no comfy chairs to sit in. More importantly, it's not under the observation of the staff. We were frankly of the opinion that anyone who wanted to be down there was probably up to no good. And often they were.
We tried to keep the lower floor policed as best we could, and though the elevator and stairwell to get downstairs was within sight of the circulation desk, it wasn't always possible to catch everyone. Oh, it was easy enough to catch the lazy ones who didn't want to take the stairs because our elevator has a loud and annoying chime that sounds whenever the door opens (which we thought was a real nice feature for a library elevator to have). But if we were away from the desk and didn't hear the stairwell door slam closed, they could get past us. Usually, the offenders were simply people who "wanted to see what was down there." Sometimes, though, they were repeat offenders, like the skatepunks I had to bust on two consecutive days who claimed they thought I only meant they couldn't go down there on that first day, but it was okay to head down there (and skate) on other days. Uh huh.
My major fear was that someone like Chester the (potential) Molester would realize there were places in the building he could not be easily seen and do something horrifying down there. No one had seen him in months and that was a very good thing, but we didn't know how long that would last. And, indeed, it didn't. One afternoon, I spied him coming up the walk through the glass of our front door.
"Aw hell," I said in a low voice that only Mrs. B could hear. She looked up and saw him too. I began preparing my face for some serious stink-eye beamage.
Chester walked in and gazed about at the expansive room. Oddly, he didn't cast a second glance at the family approaching the desk, featuring pre-teen girls. He just stood and looked around. Then he looked over and noticed me.
"It's a nice place," he said.
I didn't respond verbally, but continued to stare death at him. As usual, he seem unaware of it. Then, as quickly as he'd arrived, he left and didn't return for many more months. And even in the two other appearances he's made in the past year, we've had none of the previous problems we've had from him at all.
And then, of course, there was the innanet crowd to deal with...
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
We opened the doors and the public began piling in.
A good many books circulated on opening day, but by and large people were there to see the place and get a whiff of that new "liberry" smell. For our part, we were doing double-duty running around making sure the cookie and cheese tables were full and also running the circ desk. The desk was only running at half capacity because despite the fact that we now had two circ desk computers we still only had one barcode scanner and none of us felt like typing 14 digit barcode numbers all afternoon.
The coming week brought lots of business as word spread that we were at last open and the usual suspects began to trickle in. It was a pretty major time of transition for the patrons but especially for the staff, as we not only had our regular duties to attend to but also some new roles as defacto tour guides. Because the placement of library materials on the shelves was still somewhat in flux, we didn't want to put up any sort of permanent signage denoting where things were located. Actually, our architect was dead set against signage of any sort because it just offended him for some reason. Mrs. A tried to explain that our patrons needed to know where things were and signage was the most efficient way to convey that information, but he was unmoved. (He had some other odd and dangerous ideas about how public spaces should be run, which I'll get to later.) Now, we all understood that it wasn't his decision to make and Mrs. A did declare that we would eventually put up some sort of signage, but we couldn't even stick temporary paper signs to the wooden shelf ends (even the shitty ones) because tape allegedly would ruin their finish. (Never mind that I'd affixed Post-Its and masking tape to most of them already to denote their shittiness.) Mrs. A's decision was to treat it like a study and see what sort of signage our patrons truly needed. After all, from years of experience, we already know that patrons NEVER read signs.
So we got to play tour guides, which wasn't bad because with the new building came more hours for the staff so we'd always have at least two people on the desk in addition to any directors who were present. (And who on the board that brought the new building to fruition was the person who insisted we always have two people on the desk? Why, Mrs. Day, oddly enough--the very woman who always complained bitterly that we had too many people working whenever she visited us before.)
One of the major misconceptions we had to combat, primarily over the course of the first few weeks, but occasionally beyond, was the misconception that the new library meant everyone had to get new library cards. Uh, no, cause we did that four years ago and it suuuuucked.
Another major misconception is that because we had a brand new library, we therefore must also have purchased brand new books. Some patrons were downright offended to browse our shelves and find the same books from the old library staring back at them.
And a third major misconception was over the layout of the building itself. Our new building, you see, was built into the side of a hill with the main floor and entrance on the upper level. However, for months, patrons would come to the desk and earnestly ask, "What's upstairs?"
"There is no upstairs," we would respond.
(Blank look. Blank look.)
"This IS upstairs," we would clarify. "We have a downstairs, but there are no other floors above us."
(Blank look. Blank look.)
Initially after the grand opening, we let people pretty much have a free run of both floors of the building. This was because we had plenty of patrons who (after we'd explained to them the whole upstairs/downstairs thing) really wanted to see the downstairs portion. Fine. Go. Knock yourselves out. But after a month or so of this, we decided everyone had seen the downstairs who needed to see it and everyone should stay the hell out of it unless they were otherwise renting the space. This may seem like a bad thing for a public library to do with what is ostensibly public space, but it was not set up to be a public area to begin with. It's a big empty room, a kitchen-like area, a story hour room and mechanical rooms and storage with nary a book to be found and no comfy chairs to sit in. More importantly, it's not under the observation of the staff. We were frankly of the opinion that anyone who wanted to be down there was probably up to no good. And often they were.
We tried to keep the lower floor policed as best we could, and though the elevator and stairwell to get downstairs was within sight of the circulation desk, it wasn't always possible to catch everyone. Oh, it was easy enough to catch the lazy ones who didn't want to take the stairs because our elevator has a loud and annoying chime that sounds whenever the door opens (which we thought was a real nice feature for a library elevator to have). But if we were away from the desk and didn't hear the stairwell door slam closed, they could get past us. Usually, the offenders were simply people who "wanted to see what was down there." Sometimes, though, they were repeat offenders, like the skatepunks I had to bust on two consecutive days who claimed they thought I only meant they couldn't go down there on that first day, but it was okay to head down there (and skate) on other days. Uh huh.
My major fear was that someone like Chester the (potential) Molester would realize there were places in the building he could not be easily seen and do something horrifying down there. No one had seen him in months and that was a very good thing, but we didn't know how long that would last. And, indeed, it didn't. One afternoon, I spied him coming up the walk through the glass of our front door.
"Aw hell," I said in a low voice that only Mrs. B could hear. She looked up and saw him too. I began preparing my face for some serious stink-eye beamage.
Chester walked in and gazed about at the expansive room. Oddly, he didn't cast a second glance at the family approaching the desk, featuring pre-teen girls. He just stood and looked around. Then he looked over and noticed me.
"It's a nice place," he said.
I didn't respond verbally, but continued to stare death at him. As usual, he seem unaware of it. Then, as quickly as he'd arrived, he left and didn't return for many more months. And even in the two other appearances he's made in the past year, we've had none of the previous problems we've had from him at all.
And then, of course, there was the innanet crowd to deal with...
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Monday, March 24, 2008
"Liberry" Glossary: The Look of Doom
The Look of Doom
-noun phrase
-noun phrase
- The expression adopted by our most-frequent innanet crowd patrons when they come to realize that their hour of time is up, that all other computers are full, that they themselves are next in line to be booted off, and that someone, ANYONE, has entered the building and come within proximity of the computer sign in sheet. It's a potent mixture of frustration, anger and fear--emotions which, when combined, evidently cause patrons to become extraordinarily slow in the process of disengaging from our computers, perhaps in the belief that the longer they take "wrapping up" the more likely another computer patron will abandon their own machine allowing them to keep theirs. This expression is most frequently seen on Monday afternoons when we have the greatest concentration of hungry innanet crowders in house, all competing for machines.
- The expression I adopt upon seeing the patron who must not be named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester, in the belief that it will convey to him how much hatred I have for him in my heart and how much pleasure I would derive upon hypothetically learning that he was decapitated in a car accident or that someone had gone all Rorschach on his ass. This expression has yet to have any observable effect whatsoever.
- The expression I adopt upon emerging from our men's restroom, having witnessed what our dear patrons have left there for me to clean up. Often this look is beamed in the direction of our male computer patrons who, being the very souls who have spent the past seven hours in the building and have therefore had more opportunity than most to relieve themselves, no doubt doing a very sloppy job of it in their haste to return to their computer station before we can give it to someone else, and are therefore the most likely candidates to be the patrons after whom I've just had to clean up. Frankly, they deserve worse than anything Rorschach might do to them.
Friday, March 14, 2008
(Potential) Problem
At 7p, just as Ms. D was about to depart, leaving me alone for the long slog to 9p, who should walk in the door but "Liberry" Rogue #1, Chester the (Potential) Molester, a.k.a. the Patron Who Must Not Be Named.
We've spent the past few months not mentioning Chester's name and, until last night, Chester has held up his end of the contract by not magically appearing at the sound of it. But there he stood, ratty knit cap afixed atop his head, vaguely greasy and unwashed of appearance, with layers of vests and shirts.
Chester said, "mumblemumblemumble," which is what he usually says. I took from his glance at the computer sign in sheet that a computer was what he wanted. As we had no children in the building and since we had one open, I would grant his request. At least if he was at the computers he would be in sight of the desk. As I walked around to go log him on, he made a slightly less mumbled comment about "the computers down there" being full. By this he had to have meant the community college library, where he has been known to lurk, particularly back when he had a job as a janitor in the building. I'm pretty sure that job is no more.
Before Ms. D could leave, I told her to go out and get a good gander at the guy on computer #3 because he was a (potential) child molester and must be watched at all times when he's about. "I once had to kick him out for it," I added.
Ms. D peered around the corner of the staff workroom, took a good gander and said, "Ah, yes." Even someone who's never seen the man before can instantly recognize the inaudible claxon wail of DANGER-DANGER-DANGER that radiates from his person at all times.
Chester computed only a few minutes more, then left the building.
We've spent the past few months not mentioning Chester's name and, until last night, Chester has held up his end of the contract by not magically appearing at the sound of it. But there he stood, ratty knit cap afixed atop his head, vaguely greasy and unwashed of appearance, with layers of vests and shirts.
Chester said, "mumblemumblemumble," which is what he usually says. I took from his glance at the computer sign in sheet that a computer was what he wanted. As we had no children in the building and since we had one open, I would grant his request. At least if he was at the computers he would be in sight of the desk. As I walked around to go log him on, he made a slightly less mumbled comment about "the computers down there" being full. By this he had to have meant the community college library, where he has been known to lurk, particularly back when he had a job as a janitor in the building. I'm pretty sure that job is no more.
Before Ms. D could leave, I told her to go out and get a good gander at the guy on computer #3 because he was a (potential) child molester and must be watched at all times when he's about. "I once had to kick him out for it," I added.
Ms. D peered around the corner of the staff workroom, took a good gander and said, "Ah, yes." Even someone who's never seen the man before can instantly recognize the inaudible claxon wail of DANGER-DANGER-DANGER that radiates from his person at all times.
Chester computed only a few minutes more, then left the building.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
More information about my bowels than is absolutely necessary!
Riddle me this: How is it possible to have a shitty day and a non-shitty day at the same time?
Easy... Just get really, really constipated and head to K-Mart!
It all started Monday evening when I began to feel crampy about my mid-section. After listening to my gut with her stethoscope, my physician wife diagnosed me as being full of shit. I've received this diagnosis often enough, but not in the literal sense for quite a while now. Nothing was moving inside and my guts were bound up tighter than two S&M Christmas turkeys awaiting a jolly good beating by their dominatrix. I tried to think about what I'd eaten that might have caused my condition, but other than that block of extra sharp cheddar, I couldn't come up with a single thing. So, after a fitful, gas-pain-filled night, and an empty toilet sort of morning, I decided to head out to K-Mart for mass-quantities of toilet paper and enemas.
Let me just say, I really hate the local K-Mart. It's one of the most irritating places a person can go around here. It's a big store, but only has about 1/4 of the employees of a normal K-Mart of the same size to help stave off bankruptsy, I suppose. With so few employees, some sections of the store, particularly the office supply area, have been allowed to become a wild-west no mans' land where chaos rules and you can't find a damn thing. You can also never find anyone to help you if, say, you want to try on clothing and need the dressing rooms unlocked or if you need to put something on layaway. In those instances, there are buttons you can press that summon employees to help you by sending automated messages out over the loudspeaker calling them to you. But, K-Mart does tend to have cheap toilet paper and since my fondest wish was to use some, that's where I went to buy it.
So, there I was, rolling through the aisles of K-Mart, cart packed high with Scott 16-packs, soothing Christmas music over the speaker system interrupted twice a minute by a very loud monotone recording saying "SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY! SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY!" Soon, other shoppers began to encroach upon my personal space and get in my way. And then the loudspeakers began to play Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which I hate, and hate even more when it's continually interrupted by "SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY! SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY!" and I came to the decision that I'm fed up with the place and it's time to go. I took my cart full of butt-paper and enemas to check out, only to find that the only two open checkout lanes were clogged even worse than my colon.
Each checkout line contained three people and from the brimming contents of their carts, they were apparently doing all of their Christmas shopping for this year, plus shopping retroactively backward in time for seven generations. The cashiers were, naturally, not the speediest of transactionists either and this was compounded by the fact that both lines seemed to have some sort of pricing issue, which brought the whole shebang to a halt. I was irritated enough by this, but then I saw that one of the tabloids this week was picking on poor Suzanne Plechette. What did Bob Newhart's TV wife ever do to them? Jackals!
"SERVICE IS NEEDED AT THE FITTING ROOMS! SERVICE IS NEEDED AT THE FITTING ROOMS!"
Meanwhile, my stomach blazed with gas pains and cramping and at that moment I wanted nothing more than to buy my TP, escape this hellish place and, oh, maybe go home and bust a poo.
Then I sensed a presence lurking up beside me, to the right. It siddled up closer and closer, then stoped a few feet away and paused in what felt like an expectant manner. I turned expecting to see someone I knew coming over to say hi. I was right, but not in a good way, for standing there was Chester the (Potential) Molester. What's worse, Chester was smiling at me as though I were somehow his friend.
In the years I've known Chester, I've done everything short of punching him full in the face to alert him to the fact that I hate his guts. When he visits us at the library, I stare daggers at him and give him the most rage-filled spiteful face I possibly can, hoping the message will communicate that he is an unwelcome presence. (I actually told him this to his face on one occasion, but it didn't take.) Yet, every time I see him anywhere, his first reaction is to smile and wave as though I am a dear friend. This drives me nucking futs! If only I had been capable of defecating at that moment, perhaps I could have delivered unto him a violently-applied turd across the face to help him remember not to attempt friendliness at me in the future. Instead, though, I just stood there cramping and firing as much ire at him as my face could muster.
"Uh, hey," Chester said, ignoring my expression yet again. "Is the library open today?"
I continued tearing him into little shreds with my gaze for a long moment.
"I'm afraid it is," I said very slowly and with what I hoped was threat in my tone. Then I turned away from him entirely and refused to look back. Chester stood there for a moment, then wandered off, oblivious to how despised he is.
When I arrived at work, a poopless hour later, I warned my coworkers of Chester's potential to appear. Fortunately, he never showed up.
Meanwhile, I'm downing mineral oil (which tastes exactly like drinking a Crayon) and anything with fiber I can find in the hopes of busting the clog before it busts me. So far, no go.
Easy... Just get really, really constipated and head to K-Mart!
It all started Monday evening when I began to feel crampy about my mid-section. After listening to my gut with her stethoscope, my physician wife diagnosed me as being full of shit. I've received this diagnosis often enough, but not in the literal sense for quite a while now. Nothing was moving inside and my guts were bound up tighter than two S&M Christmas turkeys awaiting a jolly good beating by their dominatrix. I tried to think about what I'd eaten that might have caused my condition, but other than that block of extra sharp cheddar, I couldn't come up with a single thing. So, after a fitful, gas-pain-filled night, and an empty toilet sort of morning, I decided to head out to K-Mart for mass-quantities of toilet paper and enemas.
Let me just say, I really hate the local K-Mart. It's one of the most irritating places a person can go around here. It's a big store, but only has about 1/4 of the employees of a normal K-Mart of the same size to help stave off bankruptsy, I suppose. With so few employees, some sections of the store, particularly the office supply area, have been allowed to become a wild-west no mans' land where chaos rules and you can't find a damn thing. You can also never find anyone to help you if, say, you want to try on clothing and need the dressing rooms unlocked or if you need to put something on layaway. In those instances, there are buttons you can press that summon employees to help you by sending automated messages out over the loudspeaker calling them to you. But, K-Mart does tend to have cheap toilet paper and since my fondest wish was to use some, that's where I went to buy it.
So, there I was, rolling through the aisles of K-Mart, cart packed high with Scott 16-packs, soothing Christmas music over the speaker system interrupted twice a minute by a very loud monotone recording saying "SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY! SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY!" Soon, other shoppers began to encroach upon my personal space and get in my way. And then the loudspeakers began to play Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which I hate, and hate even more when it's continually interrupted by "SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY! SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY!" and I came to the decision that I'm fed up with the place and it's time to go. I took my cart full of butt-paper and enemas to check out, only to find that the only two open checkout lanes were clogged even worse than my colon.
Each checkout line contained three people and from the brimming contents of their carts, they were apparently doing all of their Christmas shopping for this year, plus shopping retroactively backward in time for seven generations. The cashiers were, naturally, not the speediest of transactionists either and this was compounded by the fact that both lines seemed to have some sort of pricing issue, which brought the whole shebang to a halt. I was irritated enough by this, but then I saw that one of the tabloids this week was picking on poor Suzanne Plechette. What did Bob Newhart's TV wife ever do to them? Jackals!
"SERVICE IS NEEDED AT THE FITTING ROOMS! SERVICE IS NEEDED AT THE FITTING ROOMS!"
Meanwhile, my stomach blazed with gas pains and cramping and at that moment I wanted nothing more than to buy my TP, escape this hellish place and, oh, maybe go home and bust a poo.
Then I sensed a presence lurking up beside me, to the right. It siddled up closer and closer, then stoped a few feet away and paused in what felt like an expectant manner. I turned expecting to see someone I knew coming over to say hi. I was right, but not in a good way, for standing there was Chester the (Potential) Molester. What's worse, Chester was smiling at me as though I were somehow his friend.
In the years I've known Chester, I've done everything short of punching him full in the face to alert him to the fact that I hate his guts. When he visits us at the library, I stare daggers at him and give him the most rage-filled spiteful face I possibly can, hoping the message will communicate that he is an unwelcome presence. (I actually told him this to his face on one occasion, but it didn't take.) Yet, every time I see him anywhere, his first reaction is to smile and wave as though I am a dear friend. This drives me nucking futs! If only I had been capable of defecating at that moment, perhaps I could have delivered unto him a violently-applied turd across the face to help him remember not to attempt friendliness at me in the future. Instead, though, I just stood there cramping and firing as much ire at him as my face could muster.
"Uh, hey," Chester said, ignoring my expression yet again. "Is the library open today?"
I continued tearing him into little shreds with my gaze for a long moment.
"I'm afraid it is," I said very slowly and with what I hoped was threat in my tone. Then I turned away from him entirely and refused to look back. Chester stood there for a moment, then wandered off, oblivious to how despised he is.
When I arrived at work, a poopless hour later, I warned my coworkers of Chester's potential to appear. Fortunately, he never showed up.
Meanwhile, I'm downing mineral oil (which tastes exactly like drinking a Crayon) and anything with fiber I can find in the hopes of busting the clog before it busts me. So far, no go.
Monday, October 08, 2007
My Ass: Fate Gives in to Temptation and Takes a Second Bite
It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives... or, at least, sanity.
I tangentially referred to Chester the (Potential) Molester in my post on Friday morning. Not even a name check, but a link to a name check. So, naturally, he had to turn up at the "liberry" later in the day. Since this rarely fails to happen when he is referred to in any way, I should probably just make it a rule to stop referring to him in any way. Now that the spell has been cast and completed, however, here's what happened...
Chester strolled in shortly after 5, when I was the only staff member on duty and thus unavailable to shadow his every move throughout the building. Fortunately, he didn't start casing the joint for underage girls and came right over to me at the circ desk, moving with ease and fluidity despite the unconcealed look of hatred and death I was beaming in his direction. (Others have withered beneath the power of my gaze, but Chester has been infuriatingly immune to it.)
Care to take a guess what Chester asked me for?
Why, yes, you are correct: Yet another #%$&ing FAFSA form!
Course, it took me a couple of tries to actually understand what he was asking for, because of his traditional low mumbling and general refusal to speak up and enunciate, but a FAFSA form it was.
I told him we didn't have any and that I hadn't seen any for months. This was completely true. And it's not that we don't like having FAFSA forms available for our patrons, it's just that our lack of forms is almost entirely due to Chester having taken ALL of them during previous visits. (I suspect he's making an underage papier-mâché sex doll out of them.)
Chester mumbled something about the community college library being closed for the evening, hence why he sought them from us. Then he asked for a computer.
My major dilemma in giving him a computer was that the only two available computers were near another one being used by a high school-aged girl. My choice was to either seat him diagonally across from her, where he'd have a good line of sight on her, or I could seat him directly next to her where he'd be directly next to her. I opted to put him across from her.
I lurked at the desk, watching him like a hawk—albeit a hawk who's seriously considering becoming a vegetarian, cause the prey around here is unappetizingly bloated and gamey-looking and tends to wear ratty knit hats. During my surveillance, I never saw Chester at the girl at all. And from what little I could see, his web-surfing seemed to be limited to sports-related sites and nothing Chris Hanson might be able to bust him for. (Now there's an episode of Dateline I would love to see!)
Chester left after around 10 minutes without further incident and without his precious FAFSA form. And while I will now shut up talking about him, so as to avoid repeat visits, I suspect he might make another appearance soon because his arrival reminds me that we need to warn Ms. D about him and he will no doubt be summoned by the forthcoming mention of his name.
I tangentially referred to Chester the (Potential) Molester in my post on Friday morning. Not even a name check, but a link to a name check. So, naturally, he had to turn up at the "liberry" later in the day. Since this rarely fails to happen when he is referred to in any way, I should probably just make it a rule to stop referring to him in any way. Now that the spell has been cast and completed, however, here's what happened...
Chester strolled in shortly after 5, when I was the only staff member on duty and thus unavailable to shadow his every move throughout the building. Fortunately, he didn't start casing the joint for underage girls and came right over to me at the circ desk, moving with ease and fluidity despite the unconcealed look of hatred and death I was beaming in his direction. (Others have withered beneath the power of my gaze, but Chester has been infuriatingly immune to it.)
Care to take a guess what Chester asked me for?
Why, yes, you are correct: Yet another #%$&ing FAFSA form!
Course, it took me a couple of tries to actually understand what he was asking for, because of his traditional low mumbling and general refusal to speak up and enunciate, but a FAFSA form it was.
I told him we didn't have any and that I hadn't seen any for months. This was completely true. And it's not that we don't like having FAFSA forms available for our patrons, it's just that our lack of forms is almost entirely due to Chester having taken ALL of them during previous visits. (I suspect he's making an underage papier-mâché sex doll out of them.)
Chester mumbled something about the community college library being closed for the evening, hence why he sought them from us. Then he asked for a computer.
My major dilemma in giving him a computer was that the only two available computers were near another one being used by a high school-aged girl. My choice was to either seat him diagonally across from her, where he'd have a good line of sight on her, or I could seat him directly next to her where he'd be directly next to her. I opted to put him across from her.
I lurked at the desk, watching him like a hawk—albeit a hawk who's seriously considering becoming a vegetarian, cause the prey around here is unappetizingly bloated and gamey-looking and tends to wear ratty knit hats. During my surveillance, I never saw Chester at the girl at all. And from what little I could see, his web-surfing seemed to be limited to sports-related sites and nothing Chris Hanson might be able to bust him for. (Now there's an episode of Dateline I would love to see!)
Chester left after around 10 minutes without further incident and without his precious FAFSA form. And while I will now shut up talking about him, so as to avoid repeat visits, I suspect he might make another appearance soon because his arrival reminds me that we need to warn Ms. D about him and he will no doubt be summoned by the forthcoming mention of his name.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
First Day Back
Today was my first day back in the "liberry" saddle following our two-week trip to Guatemala and El Salvador. It was largely
uneventful as far as the usual "liberry" madness goes, but eventful in
other respects. I popped in at 1p, laden with souvenirs for the library
staff. Mrs. C and Mrs. B were the only ones in the front room, and they
immediately asked how my trip went.
"Fantastic!" I said.
"I've got big news too," Mrs. C whispered.
"Yeah?"
She nodded furiously, then whispered, "I'm expecting."
This is huge news for Mrs. C. She and Mr. C have been trying to have a child for the past year and it's not been a fun time. Well, I'm sure it's been a fun time in some respects, but the results have not been what they've wanted. So congrats to Mr. and Mrs. C!
The staff, of course, had plenty of questions concerning my trip. Unfortunately, giving any kind of overview of a two-week mission trip in a short period of time is a very difficult thing to do. We had such an amazing time, saw and heard of such harrowing and heart-warming things and had so many mini-adventures in the process that you can't really Cliff's Notes it effectively. But I gave them a few highlights and lowlights. And once Mrs. A and Mrs. J came downstairs too, I gave everyone their souvenirs.
I bought five colorful pottery sun-faces at an Indian market in Antigua. They're essentially the same little ornamental sculpture, painted in different shades. Unfortunately, three of them were slightly chipped in a horribly true Continental Airlines-related incident at the Houston International Airport on the way home. (The chipping was actually getting off light in this case, as Ashley had part of a much larger pottery piece broken during the same incident.) Still, these were only chipped on the edges of a couple of the sun rays, so they’re still nice to display. I apologized for bringing them broken pottery, but gave them over anyway.
I also brought them each their own bag of fried plantain chips. These are plantains sliced lengthwise, salted and fried like potato chips. They’re just some of the most tasty fried chips you could ever want, though I doubt they are much better for you than potato chips. Sweet and salty all at once, they’re just tasty and good. Everyone broke open their bags and began sampling.
I asked what sort of incidents had occurred at the library in my absence? I fully expected them to relate something that I would fully regret having missed—like Chester and Parka having a shootout in the parking lot or something. Nope. The only notable incident they could recall was Mr. Stanky putting in an appearance yesterday and being particularly stinky even for him.
“You know,” I began, “I smelled a pretty wide array of B.O. when I was in Guatemala, but none of it came anywhere close to touching his.”
The only other possible incident was reported on our circ-desk note-pad. Our weekender, Miss K, noted that one of our long-time patrons, Mr. Crab, (who is also a long-time library donor and not afraid to let you know that should anything not go quite his way) had been in on Saturday and was completely pissed off that he couldn't use his old library card from the old nearly year-gone VTLS system. Mind you, Mr. Crab has a new library card on the new nearly year-old system, but he still carries his old card with him and is insulted that he can't use it. Miss K reported that Mr. Crab said he thought the way we had set up the new system was done in an unintelligent fashion and he insisted that we put his old barcode number from his old card in the new patron record so he could use it instead of his new card. I’m still not entirely sure what this man’s beef truly is, but even on his best days Mr. Crab could give Mr. B-Natural and Mr. Smiley a run for their Grumpiest and Second Grumpiest Old Man in all the World titles. Ms. K reported that she wasn’t sure what to do so she added the man’s old barcode to his patron record in addition to his new one just to shut him up. She indicated which barcode we should delete in case this was wrong. Mrs. A then had a note at the end of the account telling us to delete the old barcode.
I'm somehow sure this won't be the end of it.
"Fantastic!" I said.
"I've got big news too," Mrs. C whispered.
"Yeah?"
She nodded furiously, then whispered, "I'm expecting."
This is huge news for Mrs. C. She and Mr. C have been trying to have a child for the past year and it's not been a fun time. Well, I'm sure it's been a fun time in some respects, but the results have not been what they've wanted. So congrats to Mr. and Mrs. C!
The staff, of course, had plenty of questions concerning my trip. Unfortunately, giving any kind of overview of a two-week mission trip in a short period of time is a very difficult thing to do. We had such an amazing time, saw and heard of such harrowing and heart-warming things and had so many mini-adventures in the process that you can't really Cliff's Notes it effectively. But I gave them a few highlights and lowlights. And once Mrs. A and Mrs. J came downstairs too, I gave everyone their souvenirs.
I bought five colorful pottery sun-faces at an Indian market in Antigua. They're essentially the same little ornamental sculpture, painted in different shades. Unfortunately, three of them were slightly chipped in a horribly true Continental Airlines-related incident at the Houston International Airport on the way home. (The chipping was actually getting off light in this case, as Ashley had part of a much larger pottery piece broken during the same incident.) Still, these were only chipped on the edges of a couple of the sun rays, so they’re still nice to display. I apologized for bringing them broken pottery, but gave them over anyway.
I also brought them each their own bag of fried plantain chips. These are plantains sliced lengthwise, salted and fried like potato chips. They’re just some of the most tasty fried chips you could ever want, though I doubt they are much better for you than potato chips. Sweet and salty all at once, they’re just tasty and good. Everyone broke open their bags and began sampling.
I asked what sort of incidents had occurred at the library in my absence? I fully expected them to relate something that I would fully regret having missed—like Chester and Parka having a shootout in the parking lot or something. Nope. The only notable incident they could recall was Mr. Stanky putting in an appearance yesterday and being particularly stinky even for him.
“You know,” I began, “I smelled a pretty wide array of B.O. when I was in Guatemala, but none of it came anywhere close to touching his.”
The only other possible incident was reported on our circ-desk note-pad. Our weekender, Miss K, noted that one of our long-time patrons, Mr. Crab, (who is also a long-time library donor and not afraid to let you know that should anything not go quite his way) had been in on Saturday and was completely pissed off that he couldn't use his old library card from the old nearly year-gone VTLS system. Mind you, Mr. Crab has a new library card on the new nearly year-old system, but he still carries his old card with him and is insulted that he can't use it. Miss K reported that Mr. Crab said he thought the way we had set up the new system was done in an unintelligent fashion and he insisted that we put his old barcode number from his old card in the new patron record so he could use it instead of his new card. I’m still not entirely sure what this man’s beef truly is, but even on his best days Mr. Crab could give Mr. B-Natural and Mr. Smiley a run for their Grumpiest and Second Grumpiest Old Man in all the World titles. Ms. K reported that she wasn’t sure what to do so she added the man’s old barcode to his patron record in addition to his new one just to shut him up. She indicated which barcode we should delete in case this was wrong. Mrs. A then had a note at the end of the account telling us to delete the old barcode.
I'm somehow sure this won't be the end of it.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
And on that Rogue related note...
...I nearly saw Chester get run over yesterday.
He was inside his Fugly at the time, but if he'd been two seconds quicker he would have gotten schmacked in the driver's side door.
I was on my way to the comic shop when I had to stop at our most hectic intersection to wait to cross the street. While there, a north bound car tried to make a last second left turn through the yellow light they had. They had assumed that the approaching south bound car (i.e. Chester in his Fugly) was going to stop and let them do this. Chester, however, didn't even look at them and decided to make a last second right turn on the yellow light before it could change to red, at which point he would have been legally bound to pay attention to the "DO NOT TURN RIGHT ON RED AT THIS INTERSECTION" signs hanging everywhere. He had nearly made his turn when he glanced up and noticed that the north bound car was about to crunk him a good one and he slammed on his brakes. He looked quite put out about it.
I'm actually glad he didn't get hit, though. As a witness to the incident, I would have been obligated to stick around and tell the police what I'd seen and I wasn't entirely sure if Chester was at fault. I would really have hated to lend his dumb ass any support. It might have lead to yet another sad attempt on his part to get me to shake his paw.
He was inside his Fugly at the time, but if he'd been two seconds quicker he would have gotten schmacked in the driver's side door.
I was on my way to the comic shop when I had to stop at our most hectic intersection to wait to cross the street. While there, a north bound car tried to make a last second left turn through the yellow light they had. They had assumed that the approaching south bound car (i.e. Chester in his Fugly) was going to stop and let them do this. Chester, however, didn't even look at them and decided to make a last second right turn on the yellow light before it could change to red, at which point he would have been legally bound to pay attention to the "DO NOT TURN RIGHT ON RED AT THIS INTERSECTION" signs hanging everywhere. He had nearly made his turn when he glanced up and noticed that the north bound car was about to crunk him a good one and he slammed on his brakes. He looked quite put out about it.
I'm actually glad he didn't get hit, though. As a witness to the incident, I would have been obligated to stick around and tell the police what I'd seen and I wasn't entirely sure if Chester was at fault. I would really have hated to lend his dumb ass any support. It might have lead to yet another sad attempt on his part to get me to shake his paw.
Rogue Rumors & Confirmations
Been a lot of news on the Rogue Rumor front this week.
According to Mr. Rob, the librarian over at the local community college, The Patron Who Must Not Be Named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester/Community College Janitor, has been ordered by his superiors that he is not to set foot on the grounds of the community college unless he's actually scheduled to work that day and actually working. Another way to put this is that all of Chester's off-hours are to be spent ogling women elsewhere rather than on community college grounds. I suppose by inference this means that he's free to ogle-away provided he's on the clock, but they don't want to see his face otherwise.
That's actually the rumor portion of the message, as Mr. Rob is uncertain as to whether the janitor in question is one in the same as our Chester. We know it has to be, as we have other sources who've confirmed that Chester's employed there. If the janitor Mr. Rob has mentioned isn't Chester, then they seem to have something of a pervert-hiring policy.
The other pervert sighting came Monday, when Parka stopped by (clad, of course, in his namesake big puffy white parka) to look at as much porn as our internet filters will allow him to. It's apparently more than we'd usually care for and has caused me to wonder whether the filters are working properly on the new patron computers we recently purchased.
Parka was in there for a couple of hours that afternoon. During this time, a 20-something woman who looked very familiar to me came in and used a computer too. After about 15 minutes, she came up to the circ-desk, smiled and in a low voice said, "The, uh, `gentleman' on the middle computer back there..."
"Uh huuuuh?" I said, adopting my best I know what's coming next tone.
"He's, um, well... I don't know what your policy is about this, or if you have one, but he's back there looking at... well, pornography."
"Uh huh."
"I know he's doing that because he's been asked to leave the ORNATHOLOGICAL COFFEE SHOP (Not Its Real Name) for doing that on our computers. I know. I work there."
"Uh huhhhh," I said, both at the revelation of Parka getting kicked out of one of our local coffee shops and from the revelation that that's where I knew this girl from. I told her, "Well, we don't really have any policy against it, but we are well aware of what he does back there."
She smiled knowingly, nodded and then departed.
It somehow warms my heart to know that we're not the only folks in town that are annoyed by Parka.
I think Parka's still out of work. Maybe I should tell him the community college is hiring.
According to Mr. Rob, the librarian over at the local community college, The Patron Who Must Not Be Named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester/Community College Janitor, has been ordered by his superiors that he is not to set foot on the grounds of the community college unless he's actually scheduled to work that day and actually working. Another way to put this is that all of Chester's off-hours are to be spent ogling women elsewhere rather than on community college grounds. I suppose by inference this means that he's free to ogle-away provided he's on the clock, but they don't want to see his face otherwise.
That's actually the rumor portion of the message, as Mr. Rob is uncertain as to whether the janitor in question is one in the same as our Chester. We know it has to be, as we have other sources who've confirmed that Chester's employed there. If the janitor Mr. Rob has mentioned isn't Chester, then they seem to have something of a pervert-hiring policy.
The other pervert sighting came Monday, when Parka stopped by (clad, of course, in his namesake big puffy white parka) to look at as much porn as our internet filters will allow him to. It's apparently more than we'd usually care for and has caused me to wonder whether the filters are working properly on the new patron computers we recently purchased.
Parka was in there for a couple of hours that afternoon. During this time, a 20-something woman who looked very familiar to me came in and used a computer too. After about 15 minutes, she came up to the circ-desk, smiled and in a low voice said, "The, uh, `gentleman' on the middle computer back there..."
"Uh huuuuh?" I said, adopting my best I know what's coming next tone.
"He's, um, well... I don't know what your policy is about this, or if you have one, but he's back there looking at... well, pornography."
"Uh huh."
"I know he's doing that because he's been asked to leave the ORNATHOLOGICAL COFFEE SHOP (Not Its Real Name) for doing that on our computers. I know. I work there."
"Uh huhhhh," I said, both at the revelation of Parka getting kicked out of one of our local coffee shops and from the revelation that that's where I knew this girl from. I told her, "Well, we don't really have any policy against it, but we are well aware of what he does back there."
She smiled knowingly, nodded and then departed.
It somehow warms my heart to know that we're not the only folks in town that are annoyed by Parka.
I think Parka's still out of work. Maybe I should tell him the community college is hiring.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Disturbing Behavior
Mrs. C told me the other day that she was her local health club a week or so back when she once again saw Chester the (Potential) Molester doing his usual half-assed job at working out, his little knit cap perched on his head all the while.
Later, in another part of the health club well out of Chester's earshot, Mrs. C and her husband were discussing whether or not Chester EVER takes off that stupid hat.
"No, he doesn't," one of the health-club employees reportedly said.
The three of them then entered into a discussion about Chester and just how unbelievably creepy he is. During this, the health club employee mentioned that he knows for a fact that Chester has memberships at EVERY health club in town and goes to them specifically so he can girl-watch, only attempting a cursory workout for himself so he'll at least have an excuse to hang around. (Granted, there are only, like, three other health-clubs in town, but memberships to those places tend toward the expensive.)
And so the list of people who cannot stand the sight of that man continues to grow.
Later, in another part of the health club well out of Chester's earshot, Mrs. C and her husband were discussing whether or not Chester EVER takes off that stupid hat.
"No, he doesn't," one of the health-club employees reportedly said.
The three of them then entered into a discussion about Chester and just how unbelievably creepy he is. During this, the health club employee mentioned that he knows for a fact that Chester has memberships at EVERY health club in town and goes to them specifically so he can girl-watch, only attempting a cursory workout for himself so he'll at least have an excuse to hang around. (Granted, there are only, like, three other health-clubs in town, but memberships to those places tend toward the expensive.)
And so the list of people who cannot stand the sight of that man continues to grow.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Chester the (Potential) Janitor
Rif,
our teenage, home-schooled long-time "liberry" ally, who also takes a
class or two at the local community college, dropped a bombshell of
wonderment on us yesterday.
According to him, Chester the (Potential) Molester has somehow secured a job as a janitor at said community college. So now he has an official excuse to stand around ogling the young ladies who attend. And, also according to Rif, since standing around ogling is pretty much all Chester does when he's on the job, he's a spectacularly shitty janitor.
Now, being as how it's technically Chester's job to keep that place clean and being as how he technically might get fired for NOT keeping it clean, I suddenly find myself overwhelmed by a deep sense of kinsmanship with all the people who've been tracking ice, mud, salt and gravel through our library. In fact, I have a great urge to go buy some hip waders, find a large quantity of mud and go on a stroll down the halls of the community college. After all, if he's going to work there, he ought to be kept busy.
Barring that, and since most of the mud around here is frozen, I do know where I can get my hands on a copious and so far ever-replenishing supply of cat shit. I could use it to undertake a private study of just how accurately I could recreate the fecal-carpet-staining scene from Drop Dead Fred.
"Dog poo, dog poo, smelly smelly dog poo!"
According to him, Chester the (Potential) Molester has somehow secured a job as a janitor at said community college. So now he has an official excuse to stand around ogling the young ladies who attend. And, also according to Rif, since standing around ogling is pretty much all Chester does when he's on the job, he's a spectacularly shitty janitor.
Now, being as how it's technically Chester's job to keep that place clean and being as how he technically might get fired for NOT keeping it clean, I suddenly find myself overwhelmed by a deep sense of kinsmanship with all the people who've been tracking ice, mud, salt and gravel through our library. In fact, I have a great urge to go buy some hip waders, find a large quantity of mud and go on a stroll down the halls of the community college. After all, if he's going to work there, he ought to be kept busy.
Barring that, and since most of the mud around here is frozen, I do know where I can get my hands on a copious and so far ever-replenishing supply of cat shit. I could use it to undertake a private study of just how accurately I could recreate the fecal-carpet-staining scene from Drop Dead Fred.
"Dog poo, dog poo, smelly smelly dog poo!"
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
The Fatty Fatty Two By Four Appearance (or "More Titles Originally Rejected by Robert Ludlum")
Bout mid afternoon, Chester the (Potential) Molester
came through the door. He was wearing his typical little gray knit cap,
though not the one with all the holes in it. Similarly, he wore a less
ratty-looking vest.
As usual, the first place his eyes went (being as how there were no preteens immediately in the room) was to the top of the mysteries floor shelf where we USED to keep FAFSA forms. The only thing there at the moment are Christmas books and tomorrow, after we put them away, the only thing that will be there are tax forms. Chester looked disappointed, then approached the desk. I made sure to give him my standard and patented monstrous glare of hatred and ire.
Chester's looking pretty fat these days. I'm not saying this judgmentally, as I myself have done nothing but eat since Thanksgiving and I can no longer quite fit into my size 34's and my size 38's are unsettlingly comfortable. I think Chester must have eaten twice as much as me, though, cause he's quite the plump goose. We see him so irregularly, that he might have been gaining for a while now, but the last time I got a good look at him, he seemed to be getting into some form of better shape. He's still a bloated sack of crap no matter how thin he gets, but today he embodied that term far more accurately than in recent memory.
"Uhm... uh... rthere anycmprtrsopn?" Chester mumbled.
"Come again?"
"Uhmm are there any computers open," he repeated.
Normally when Chester comes in, the computers are full, albeit with patrons whose time has run out. In such cases I should technically ask one of them to leave and relinquish their computer to him. However, since Chester only asks if computers are open and not if he can use one, I almost always get to tell him, "No, they're all full." At that moment, though, there was only one computer being used so I had no way to manipulate the truth.
"Yeah," I grumbled, marching back to log him on. I passed a completely different patron and had to make sure to alter the expression of loathing on my face so she didn't think it was directed at her.
After Chester took his place at the computer and I'd returned to the desk, I noticed that his Fugly, parked out front in half hour parking, still had its lights on. Even though a dead battery in it might mean Chester would have to hang around the library to wait for AAA or something, I just couldn't bring myself to be so nice as to actually alert him to it. Mrs. C returned a few minutes later, and wore a similar expression of hatred and ire to my own, having noticed the Fugly out front.
"Is he here?" she said.
"Yup."
"Does he know his lights are on?"
"Nope."
Neither of us made a move to tell him.
"I do have a FAFSA form for him, though, in case he asks," I said, brandishing one of the forms I'd pulled from the huge pile of them we still have behind the desk. "Can I go ahead and fill it out for him? `CHESTER THE EFF-ING MOLESTER'" I pretended to write, substituting Chester's real name to bookend the EFF-ING.
We laughed.
We've had some interesting though not surprising news about Chester recently. One of the local home-school students, Rif, who's been a regular at our "liberry" since he was a tiny kid, is now taking classes at the community college across the road. I was recently regaling him with the tale of arranging for Chester to get a parking ticket for hogging up an hour and a half of our half-hour parking time when he gave me a curious look and asked me to describe Chester for him. I'd assumed he knew who I was talking about, as Chester is the same guy who used to regularly creep out his sister, Magenta, by driving by her repeatedly when she was waiting outside the local dance studio for her ride home. I described Chester's sack-of-Chris-Penn-gone-to-seed-crap appearance for Rif.
"I know who you're talking about," he said, grinning. "That guy is creeeepy! He hangs out at the community college all the time."
According to Rif, Chester likes to hang out in the commons area of the community college where he enjoys casually leaning against walls and garbage cans pretending to read a newspaper while ogling the girls (at least there they're of age) and grinning from ear to ear while he does it. Rif says everyone knows about him and sees him for the creep that he is. We still don't know if he's actually taking classes there or if he's just pretending to be a college student for the girl-watching opportunities. I'd love to know for sure.
Chester left without asking for a FAFSA form, nor did he have any opportunities for ogling.
Hours passed.
Around 6:45, Mrs. C phoned me on her cell phone. She was calling from the local health club down the street where she and Mr. C work out on a daily basis.
"Guess who's working out here tonight?" Mrs. C said.
I knew it immediately. "No!"
"Yes!" she said. "He's wearing his little gray hat and everything."
"Oh, Lord!" I said, trying and failing to stop myself from imagining Chester in workout attire.
Mrs. C seemed to sense this and said, "Yeah, it's pretty disgusting. He's hardly working up a sweat, but at least he's trying. I haven't seen him staring at anyone yet either. Just thought you'd want to know."
I guess Chester's trying to work off some holiday pounds, just like the rest of us.
As usual, the first place his eyes went (being as how there were no preteens immediately in the room) was to the top of the mysteries floor shelf where we USED to keep FAFSA forms. The only thing there at the moment are Christmas books and tomorrow, after we put them away, the only thing that will be there are tax forms. Chester looked disappointed, then approached the desk. I made sure to give him my standard and patented monstrous glare of hatred and ire.
Chester's looking pretty fat these days. I'm not saying this judgmentally, as I myself have done nothing but eat since Thanksgiving and I can no longer quite fit into my size 34's and my size 38's are unsettlingly comfortable. I think Chester must have eaten twice as much as me, though, cause he's quite the plump goose. We see him so irregularly, that he might have been gaining for a while now, but the last time I got a good look at him, he seemed to be getting into some form of better shape. He's still a bloated sack of crap no matter how thin he gets, but today he embodied that term far more accurately than in recent memory.
"Uhm... uh... rthere anycmprtrsopn?" Chester mumbled.
"Come again?"
"Uhmm are there any computers open," he repeated.
Normally when Chester comes in, the computers are full, albeit with patrons whose time has run out. In such cases I should technically ask one of them to leave and relinquish their computer to him. However, since Chester only asks if computers are open and not if he can use one, I almost always get to tell him, "No, they're all full." At that moment, though, there was only one computer being used so I had no way to manipulate the truth.
"Yeah," I grumbled, marching back to log him on. I passed a completely different patron and had to make sure to alter the expression of loathing on my face so she didn't think it was directed at her.
After Chester took his place at the computer and I'd returned to the desk, I noticed that his Fugly, parked out front in half hour parking, still had its lights on. Even though a dead battery in it might mean Chester would have to hang around the library to wait for AAA or something, I just couldn't bring myself to be so nice as to actually alert him to it. Mrs. C returned a few minutes later, and wore a similar expression of hatred and ire to my own, having noticed the Fugly out front.
"Is he here?" she said.
"Yup."
"Does he know his lights are on?"
"Nope."
Neither of us made a move to tell him.
"I do have a FAFSA form for him, though, in case he asks," I said, brandishing one of the forms I'd pulled from the huge pile of them we still have behind the desk. "Can I go ahead and fill it out for him? `CHESTER THE EFF-ING MOLESTER'" I pretended to write, substituting Chester's real name to bookend the EFF-ING.
We laughed.
We've had some interesting though not surprising news about Chester recently. One of the local home-school students, Rif, who's been a regular at our "liberry" since he was a tiny kid, is now taking classes at the community college across the road. I was recently regaling him with the tale of arranging for Chester to get a parking ticket for hogging up an hour and a half of our half-hour parking time when he gave me a curious look and asked me to describe Chester for him. I'd assumed he knew who I was talking about, as Chester is the same guy who used to regularly creep out his sister, Magenta, by driving by her repeatedly when she was waiting outside the local dance studio for her ride home. I described Chester's sack-of-Chris-Penn-gone-to-seed-crap appearance for Rif.
"I know who you're talking about," he said, grinning. "That guy is creeeepy! He hangs out at the community college all the time."
According to Rif, Chester likes to hang out in the commons area of the community college where he enjoys casually leaning against walls and garbage cans pretending to read a newspaper while ogling the girls (at least there they're of age) and grinning from ear to ear while he does it. Rif says everyone knows about him and sees him for the creep that he is. We still don't know if he's actually taking classes there or if he's just pretending to be a college student for the girl-watching opportunities. I'd love to know for sure.
Chester left without asking for a FAFSA form, nor did he have any opportunities for ogling.
Hours passed.
Around 6:45, Mrs. C phoned me on her cell phone. She was calling from the local health club down the street where she and Mr. C work out on a daily basis.
"Guess who's working out here tonight?" Mrs. C said.
I knew it immediately. "No!"
"Yes!" she said. "He's wearing his little gray hat and everything."
"Oh, Lord!" I said, trying and failing to stop myself from imagining Chester in workout attire.
Mrs. C seemed to sense this and said, "Yeah, it's pretty disgusting. He's hardly working up a sweat, but at least he's trying. I haven't seen him staring at anyone yet either. Just thought you'd want to know."
I guess Chester's trying to work off some holiday pounds, just like the rest of us.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Loud Nedd: the Obnoxious Drifter Who Talks in ALL CAPS!
I was at the library today, just minding my own.
Around 4:30 p, Mrs. C came up and said, "Oh, did MRS. A tell you about the man who came in this morning?"
"No."
Mrs. C sighed in a way that suggested she didn't want to be the bearer of bad news for me. She told me that soon after they opened, a man came in who suffers from HAS NO INSIDE VOICE syndrome--a tragic condition in which a person shouts nearly everything they say because their parents neglected to teach them proper inside voice technique. (Either that or they're just hard of hearing and shout a lot.)
The man, who I'm calling Loud Nedd, came to the circ desk where Mrs. C and Mrs. A were standing and shouted, "DO EITHER OF YOU GO TO CHURCH?"
Upon hearing this it was my turn to sigh. I was afraid Loud Nedd was one of the wandering, hitchhiker, Fire & Brimstone preachers who used to visit Mississippi State's campus on a semi-annual basis, stand in the "free speech area" and rail against the evils of sororities. (And, no, I'm not making up the part about MSU's Free Speech Area. It exists and the guy would have had to fill out a lengthy form in order to use it.) In this assumption, though, I was wrong.
Turns out that Loud Nedd, while indeed drifting through the area on foot, wasn't so much a preacher as a guy looking for a warm place to sleep and possibly a meal, since it's butt ass cold here right now. From his experience, local churches often provided this, so he wanted to know where the nearest churches were.
"Well, there are three or four in this area of town. If you like I can call one and see what they can do," Mrs. C reportedly offered. Loud Nedd loudly accepted so she called the Methodist church down the street. They told her they could indeed help, but needed Loud Nedd to first go speak to the police department, let them check him out (I presume to make sure he has no outstanding warrants for any 12 state hitchhiking killing sprees he might be in the middle of) and then they would be happy to help him out. Mrs. C put Loud Nedd on the phone and let them explain this to him too. This, however, did not set well with Loud Nedd. Loud Nedd became very loud indeed and began shouting above and beyond his apparent usual loudness at the minister on the phone.
Mrs. C said he began screaming about how it was the Lord's money and who were they to say who could and couldn't use it. He screamed that he didn't want to have to deal with the police and seemed to indicate that he'd had prior bad experiences with the law which somehow involved a jacket of his being stolen and a highway patrolman hassling him because of it. He then screamed threats that if the police gave him any guff at all he would sue everyone involved.
When Loud Nedd had finished his rant and hung up, he asked Mrs. C how to get to the police department. She gladly told him and he left.
We've had trouble with crazy drifters before. One man a couple of years ago--who, naturally, came in on my day off--stood on one of the benches outside and did some kind of strange calisthenics before coming inside whereupon he began behaving in a very threatening manner toward our staff. Mrs. C told him he had to leave and when he did she locked all the doors and called the cops. They came and picked him up and found out he had a number of outstanding warrants on him from Florida, so off to the jail he went.
Loud Nedd came back an hour or so later. He seemed to have calmed down a lot and loudly explained to Mrs. C that he had indeed spoken with the police and the chief seemed like a decent enough guy. They were going to check him out and he would go back later to see what they could do for him. At the moment he wanted to use a computer. Mrs. C logged him on, he stayed for a while and then was all set to leave when he asked the dreaded question that would affect me: What are your hours? Mrs. C told him we were open until 7 at which point he said he would be back.
It was 4:30 then and he had not yet been back so his threat could only continue into the future. Mrs. C just wanted to warn me about him. She gave me his name and description, as a middle aged man with a thick mustache and a ski-coat. She said if nothing else I would know him because he was very loud and very obnoxious.
"He tells bad bad jokes," she said. "Like `Why was 6 afraid of 7? ... Cause 7, 8, 9.' "
"Aw no," I said.
I could just imagine this guy coming back on my watch and have nothing better to do than torment me with bad jokes all the way until closing time. Worse yet, what if he came back and he'd been checked out by the cops and rejected on non-arrest-worthy grounds. What if he had NO PLACE to stay in this freezing weather and now needed me to broker him a deal with some other church. Oh, sure, he'd probably come back right near closing time too, so I'd have to stay late. And tonight of all nights would be the worst because my writers group is having their annual Christmas party which is one of the highlights of my year and I'm supposed to be there at 7. But I wouldn't be able to just turn the man out into the cold.
I thought about writing up this blog entry on him, just in case he did come back. Then I decided that was a very bad idea. I didn't even want to THINK about this man. He might be on the same mental channel that Chester, the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, is on and would magically turn up at the mere thought of him. ("They know when you're thinking about `em, so doooooon't even think about `em!") Yep, the less mental energy I exerted in his direction the better off we'd all be.
At exactly 11 minutes until close a man who mostly matched Loud Nedd's description walked through the front door and shouted, "AHH HAH! CAUGHT YOU NEARLY AT CLOSING! I GOT, WHAT, ELEVEN MINUTES LEFT?!"
Shit!
"Yeah, looks like it," I told him.
"CAN I USE A COMPUTER?"
"Sure. Just sign in at the front desk." He did. Sure enough, his name matched that of Loud Nedd.
Loud Nedd only stayed for about 8 of his allotted minutes. Then he came back up to the circ desk where I was cowering in fear of what he might next say.
"HEY, CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE THE NEAREST CONVENIENCE STORE IS THAT WOULD SELL LOTTERY TICKETS?! YOU KNOW, SCRATCH OFF TICKETS?!"
"Um... that would probably be the Stop-Mart."
"WHERE'S THAT?"
I told him how to get to Stop-Mart, which was at least a mile and a half away.
"NAH, THAT'S TOO FAR AND IT'S TOO COLD! I'M ON FOOT!"
"Well the next nearest one would be about the same distance in the other direction," I told him.
He paused for a moment and I was afraid he was about to try and bum a ride to one. I would have no trouble refusing that, because I don't view lottery tickets as something I need to go out of my way for.
"AH, WELL! IT'LL WAIT TIL TOMORROW" Loud Nedd said, and thankfully disappeared into the night.
(CONTINUED...)
Around 4:30 p, Mrs. C came up and said, "Oh, did MRS. A tell you about the man who came in this morning?"
"No."
Mrs. C sighed in a way that suggested she didn't want to be the bearer of bad news for me. She told me that soon after they opened, a man came in who suffers from HAS NO INSIDE VOICE syndrome--a tragic condition in which a person shouts nearly everything they say because their parents neglected to teach them proper inside voice technique. (Either that or they're just hard of hearing and shout a lot.)
The man, who I'm calling Loud Nedd, came to the circ desk where Mrs. C and Mrs. A were standing and shouted, "DO EITHER OF YOU GO TO CHURCH?"
Upon hearing this it was my turn to sigh. I was afraid Loud Nedd was one of the wandering, hitchhiker, Fire & Brimstone preachers who used to visit Mississippi State's campus on a semi-annual basis, stand in the "free speech area" and rail against the evils of sororities. (And, no, I'm not making up the part about MSU's Free Speech Area. It exists and the guy would have had to fill out a lengthy form in order to use it.) In this assumption, though, I was wrong.
Turns out that Loud Nedd, while indeed drifting through the area on foot, wasn't so much a preacher as a guy looking for a warm place to sleep and possibly a meal, since it's butt ass cold here right now. From his experience, local churches often provided this, so he wanted to know where the nearest churches were.
"Well, there are three or four in this area of town. If you like I can call one and see what they can do," Mrs. C reportedly offered. Loud Nedd loudly accepted so she called the Methodist church down the street. They told her they could indeed help, but needed Loud Nedd to first go speak to the police department, let them check him out (I presume to make sure he has no outstanding warrants for any 12 state hitchhiking killing sprees he might be in the middle of) and then they would be happy to help him out. Mrs. C put Loud Nedd on the phone and let them explain this to him too. This, however, did not set well with Loud Nedd. Loud Nedd became very loud indeed and began shouting above and beyond his apparent usual loudness at the minister on the phone.
Mrs. C said he began screaming about how it was the Lord's money and who were they to say who could and couldn't use it. He screamed that he didn't want to have to deal with the police and seemed to indicate that he'd had prior bad experiences with the law which somehow involved a jacket of his being stolen and a highway patrolman hassling him because of it. He then screamed threats that if the police gave him any guff at all he would sue everyone involved.
When Loud Nedd had finished his rant and hung up, he asked Mrs. C how to get to the police department. She gladly told him and he left.
We've had trouble with crazy drifters before. One man a couple of years ago--who, naturally, came in on my day off--stood on one of the benches outside and did some kind of strange calisthenics before coming inside whereupon he began behaving in a very threatening manner toward our staff. Mrs. C told him he had to leave and when he did she locked all the doors and called the cops. They came and picked him up and found out he had a number of outstanding warrants on him from Florida, so off to the jail he went.
Loud Nedd came back an hour or so later. He seemed to have calmed down a lot and loudly explained to Mrs. C that he had indeed spoken with the police and the chief seemed like a decent enough guy. They were going to check him out and he would go back later to see what they could do for him. At the moment he wanted to use a computer. Mrs. C logged him on, he stayed for a while and then was all set to leave when he asked the dreaded question that would affect me: What are your hours? Mrs. C told him we were open until 7 at which point he said he would be back.
It was 4:30 then and he had not yet been back so his threat could only continue into the future. Mrs. C just wanted to warn me about him. She gave me his name and description, as a middle aged man with a thick mustache and a ski-coat. She said if nothing else I would know him because he was very loud and very obnoxious.
"He tells bad bad jokes," she said. "Like `Why was 6 afraid of 7? ... Cause 7, 8, 9.' "
"Aw no," I said.
I could just imagine this guy coming back on my watch and have nothing better to do than torment me with bad jokes all the way until closing time. Worse yet, what if he came back and he'd been checked out by the cops and rejected on non-arrest-worthy grounds. What if he had NO PLACE to stay in this freezing weather and now needed me to broker him a deal with some other church. Oh, sure, he'd probably come back right near closing time too, so I'd have to stay late. And tonight of all nights would be the worst because my writers group is having their annual Christmas party which is one of the highlights of my year and I'm supposed to be there at 7. But I wouldn't be able to just turn the man out into the cold.
I thought about writing up this blog entry on him, just in case he did come back. Then I decided that was a very bad idea. I didn't even want to THINK about this man. He might be on the same mental channel that Chester, the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, is on and would magically turn up at the mere thought of him. ("They know when you're thinking about `em, so doooooon't even think about `em!") Yep, the less mental energy I exerted in his direction the better off we'd all be.
At exactly 11 minutes until close a man who mostly matched Loud Nedd's description walked through the front door and shouted, "AHH HAH! CAUGHT YOU NEARLY AT CLOSING! I GOT, WHAT, ELEVEN MINUTES LEFT?!"
Shit!
"Yeah, looks like it," I told him.
"CAN I USE A COMPUTER?"
"Sure. Just sign in at the front desk." He did. Sure enough, his name matched that of Loud Nedd.
Loud Nedd only stayed for about 8 of his allotted minutes. Then he came back up to the circ desk where I was cowering in fear of what he might next say.
"HEY, CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE THE NEAREST CONVENIENCE STORE IS THAT WOULD SELL LOTTERY TICKETS?! YOU KNOW, SCRATCH OFF TICKETS?!"
"Um... that would probably be the Stop-Mart."
"WHERE'S THAT?"
I told him how to get to Stop-Mart, which was at least a mile and a half away.
"NAH, THAT'S TOO FAR AND IT'S TOO COLD! I'M ON FOOT!"
"Well the next nearest one would be about the same distance in the other direction," I told him.
He paused for a moment and I was afraid he was about to try and bum a ride to one. I would have no trouble refusing that, because I don't view lottery tickets as something I need to go out of my way for.
"AH, WELL! IT'LL WAIT TIL TOMORROW" Loud Nedd said, and thankfully disappeared into the night.
(CONTINUED...)
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Message Received
It appears Chester did eventually notice his ticket. On my way back from break, I saw Chester's Fugly parked down the street on the next block.
That's nice.
It's still in front of the community college, but the less proximity he has to the "liberry" the better off we all are.
That's nice.
It's still in front of the community college, but the less proximity he has to the "liberry" the better off we all are.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
The Ignorance Opposition (or, "More Crazy Fun with Robert Ludlum Titles")
I was having a perfectly nice conversation with Mrs. C and Mrs. H today when I happened to glance out the window and see Chester the (potential) Molester getting out of his car and looking for all the world like the stupid sack of crap he is. As usual, he had parked in the half-hour parking. If history was any teacher, though, the car would be there for at least two hours.
Chester locked his vehicle, checked the door, walked away a few paces then came back and checked the door again before slinking off into the daylight. No doubt he was on his way over to the community college in search of FAFSA forms.
Mrs. C, who had not seen him, instead saw the snarl of disgust on my face and said, "Let me guess."
“Yup.”
“Thought so.”
I glanced up at the clock, then announced, "All right, it's 1:30. At 2 p.m., I'm calling the cops."
Two o’clock rolled around soon enough and I still hadn’t called the cops, though. During the intervening half hour the staff had discussed the probability that even if we did call the police and they actually did send the meter maid up the hill, our word would likely not be proof enough. She would probably have to mark the parking space with a chalk time notation then come back a half hour later to issue the ticket. Sure, Chester's car would probably still be there, but it seemed like a whole lot of effort.
Mrs. C suggested we call the police and offer to mark the parking space with our own chalk so they would be saved the grueling walk up the hill--which is the core reason why no one ever gets a ticket for parking beyond their limit in our half hour parking. I then suggested that we should abandon that idea in favor of just going down and cramming a hundred FAFSA forms under Chester's windshield wipers. We didn't do that either, though, and in the end I didn’t call the cops at 2 p.m.
At 2:30, however, Chester’s car was still taking up a valuable space, so I changed my mind. With Mrs. A, C, H and J as my audience, I called the cops on Chester for the second time ever.
THE COPS: Hello, TRI METRO police department.
ME: Hi, this is JUICE at the TRI-METRO county library. We have a guy parked in the half hour parking out front here who’s been there for an hour now. He does this nearly every day and he’s not one of our patrons. We’ve left notes for him on his car asking him not to do this, but he does it anyway. And I don’t think he’s ever been issued a ticket.
(All of this was completely true.)
THE COPS: (Sighing at having her time wasted, as well she probably should) What kind of car?
ME: A Ford FUGLY.
THE COPS: (Sighing yet again) Okay. I’ll let one of the officers know.
Nine minutes later, one of TRI METRO’s finest rolled up in an SUV cop-wagon and parked in front of Chester’s car.
“Cheese it, the fuzz,” I said.
The officer got out, walked around Chester’s Fugly, then came in the library.
“That blue FUGLY him?” the officer asked.
“Yup.”
“How long’s he been there?”
“One hour, ten minutes.”
The officer brandished a bright yellow ticket. “I’m going to leave him something.”
“Very good.”
Mrs. C and I gathered around the window to watch the officer deposit Chester’s ticket under the driver’s side wiper. It gleamed yellowy in the sun. I wanted to clap.
“Damn, I wish I’d brought my camera today,” I said. Why? Why hadn’t I? I’d even thought about it before I left the house. I should have! ARGH!
Forty minutes passed during which I was never far from the window. I was intent on being there to see Chester return and discover his ticket. I wanted to personally witness the emotional cocktail of confusion, realization and anger spread across his meaty puss. Then I was going to dance.
“Do you want to go on break?” Mrs. A asked.
"Yeah, I’d like to, but I can’t risk it. As soon as I'm gone, he'll show up and I'll miss it."
Instead of leaving for break, I just played on Mrs. C's computer, checking out my auctions while Mrs. A stood guard at the circ desk. A mere five minutes into my break, Mrs. A said, "Yep, there he is." She had seen him through the glass front door as he was walking along the sidewalk out front headed down the hill to his car. We quickly gathered at the window where we had a nice view of Chester just as he arrived at his car.
What I expected was for Chester to reach to unlock his car then do a double take at the ticket, gleaming there in plain sight. He unlocked his door, all right, but he failed to notice the ticket. He climbed in and started the engine. And from within the car he still couldn't see the ticket because this bloated goiter of a human had blocked his own view of it by piling loads and loads of paper and crap and probably FAFSA forms across his dashboard!
"Nooooo!!!!" Mrs. A and I raged as he pulled out of the space and drove away, completely unaware of the bright yellow justice we'd laid on him. And now that we thought about it, this was probably the same thing he did back when Mrs. A put that note on his car warning him about parking in our half hour spaces, two months ago. Our victory was crushed.
"Well, at least if he loses it the cops will have an outstanding ticket to get him on," Mrs. A offered. I somehow couldn't celebrate.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Back in the Saddle
It actually felt good to be back at the library after a week and a half away.
Everyone had had a great Thanksgiving and were glad to see me, particularly since Mrs. B is out for surgery and recovery for most of this month and I'm nearly the only guy left who can run the desk.
On my way back for water, I found Parka chatting away on the computer (a privilege he should really appreciate considering how some libraries have banned it). He had slung his giant white Michelin Man parka over the screen by the bathroom. As I filled my water bottle at the fountain, I got a good close look at it. It is filthy! It's practically gray. It looks like he'd been truck-sneezed while walking along the side of a muddy road on a rainy day.
[Truck-Sneeze (truk sneez) n. A sudden rush of dirty road-water that is violently deposited upon your car or upon you after an 18-wheeler passes by at great speed on a rainy day.]
Back at the circulation desk, I noticed an enormous stack of FAFSA forms behind the desk. Chester will be overjoyed to see them.
"You think that'll be enough for him?" Mrs. C asked, sensing what I was thinking.
"Yeah. If I wrap a rubber band around them and chunk them at his head."
We decided we should ration the FAFSA forms out to Chester, only allowing him one per day and always keeping them behind the desk so he will have no excuse to go upstairs and search for one while ogling the pre-teens or steal our Teen People magazines.
Did I mention it was good to be back?
Everyone had had a great Thanksgiving and were glad to see me, particularly since Mrs. B is out for surgery and recovery for most of this month and I'm nearly the only guy left who can run the desk.
On my way back for water, I found Parka chatting away on the computer (a privilege he should really appreciate considering how some libraries have banned it). He had slung his giant white Michelin Man parka over the screen by the bathroom. As I filled my water bottle at the fountain, I got a good close look at it. It is filthy! It's practically gray. It looks like he'd been truck-sneezed while walking along the side of a muddy road on a rainy day.
[Truck-Sneeze (truk sneez) n. A sudden rush of dirty road-water that is violently deposited upon your car or upon you after an 18-wheeler passes by at great speed on a rainy day.]
Back at the circulation desk, I noticed an enormous stack of FAFSA forms behind the desk. Chester will be overjoyed to see them.
"You think that'll be enough for him?" Mrs. C asked, sensing what I was thinking.
"Yeah. If I wrap a rubber band around them and chunk them at his head."
We decided we should ration the FAFSA forms out to Chester, only allowing him one per day and always keeping them behind the desk so he will have no excuse to go upstairs and search for one while ogling the pre-teens or steal our Teen People magazines.
Did I mention it was good to be back?
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Running tally
Much "liberry" craziness did ensue today during my 10 hour shift.
The short version: Today we were seiged by two computer neophytes at the same time, both of whom were determined to write highly detailed last minute research papers and/or work-related reports with precise spacing requirements, and neither of them had brought a clue as to how to operate a word processor. In an act of service-oriented chivalry, I helped them both, showed them how to accomplish their goals and made them happy, all the while manning the circ-desk and answering the ever-ringing phone solo. I didn't even resent them once. I rule!
We were also paid typical though unexceptional visits by both Wal-Mart Jesus and Chester the (Potential) Molester. Wal-Mart Jesus wanted copies made. Chester ostensibly came in for more FAFSA forms, but then asked if we had any computers free. I told him they were all full, which was true. Chester failed to ask, however, if any of the computer users were out of time so he was SOL on that front and left.
And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C out of the building we were, of course, phoned by Mr. Kreskin.
Then, just when I thought I would go completely mad from hunger and sore legs, my sweet wife dropped by unexpectedly with take-out and we were able to dine together. I was so calm and at ease that I even let Brice use the computer. (Hey, he paid for his copies; that's all I really ask.)
All in all, though, it was an okay day and frankly could have been a lot worse. But I got it all done, pretty much by myself.
However, if I hear another phone ring it's getting lobbed in the road.
The short version: Today we were seiged by two computer neophytes at the same time, both of whom were determined to write highly detailed last minute research papers and/or work-related reports with precise spacing requirements, and neither of them had brought a clue as to how to operate a word processor. In an act of service-oriented chivalry, I helped them both, showed them how to accomplish their goals and made them happy, all the while manning the circ-desk and answering the ever-ringing phone solo. I didn't even resent them once. I rule!
We were also paid typical though unexceptional visits by both Wal-Mart Jesus and Chester the (Potential) Molester. Wal-Mart Jesus wanted copies made. Chester ostensibly came in for more FAFSA forms, but then asked if we had any computers free. I told him they were all full, which was true. Chester failed to ask, however, if any of the computer users were out of time so he was SOL on that front and left.
And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C out of the building we were, of course, phoned by Mr. Kreskin.
Then, just when I thought I would go completely mad from hunger and sore legs, my sweet wife dropped by unexpectedly with take-out and we were able to dine together. I was so calm and at ease that I even let Brice use the computer. (Hey, he paid for his copies; that's all I really ask.)
All in all, though, it was an okay day and frankly could have been a lot worse. But I got it all done, pretty much by myself.
However, if I hear another phone ring it's getting lobbed in the road.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Conference Week: Day 1
(Reconstruction of Eaten Blog Entry, with a big thanks to Phil
and Sam for sending me the original pre-chewed feed which I've now
reincorporated)
Today is the first day of our state's "liberry" association conference, taking place in a resort hotel up in the northern part of the state somewhere.
Am I going? No.
Do I want to go? No.
Are me and Mrs. J the only staff members in house today? Yes.
Am I wearing shoes appropriate to a 10 hour shift? No. (These Skechers tend to start biting after about four hours. My feet are screwed, but it's my own fault.)
Am I anticipating "liberry" goodness/badness to shortly ensue? Hey, it's 10 hours in the crazy house here. Of course there's going to be standard issue "liberry" activity, both good and bad.
8:54 a.m.-- a full six minutes before we open, I get a phone call asking to speak to Mrs. C. I have a feeling that the phrase "I'm sorry, she's out of town at a conference for the rest of the week" will leave my mouth several thousand times today.
9:24-- Yet another call, this time for Mrs. A.
9:44-- And we have our first Rogue sighting of the day as Mr. Smiley comes in. He brings Mrs. Smiley with him. Mmm, that's some grumpy old people goodness for your ass.
9:58-- More people phoning for Mrs. A.
10:06-- We get our first computer patrons of the day. Two at once. Unrelated.
10:10-- Mrs. J informs me that some mischief-minded turd-blossom has removed the bolts that hold the back guard-rail portion of our rolling step-ladder in place. As a result, she nearly tumbled ass over teakettle off the top of it while trying to shelve a book. That's right, Mrs. J might have been killed because some asshat kid thought it would be funny to use his dad's leatherman to unscrew the bolts. The culprit seems to have stolen the bolts as well. Now I have to go put a sign on it telling patrons to stay the hell off of it before someone else tries to take a header.
10:11-- Someone comes in looking for Mrs. A.
10:15-- One of our board of directors, Mrs. Day, calls to say she's going to come in to sign checks and is on her way. This doesn't actually mean she's on her way. This means at some point during business hours today she'll roll in, probably at an inopportune moment, and will likely give me shit about having to come in and sign the paychecks two full days early, like I'm twisting her arm and forcing her to come in. SHE CALLED ME!
10:22-- A patron asks if we're closed tomorrow because of Toyota. I say, "No, it's Veteran's Day. What about Toyota?" He explains that Toyota will be filming a car commercial along mainstreet in Town-A, just down the hill from the library. They're apparently going to close off the entire area for traffic throughout the day. Good thing we won't be open.
11:34--Mrs. Day comes in to sign checks, several hours earlier than I expected. She doesn't even give me any crap, though she does have an ILL request for a book that does not exist in the entire state system.
12:40 p.m.-- I see a crabby looking lady trying unsuccessfully to put her books into our locked after hours book drop box out front. She must know that books that actually make it into the box are considered fine free, because when she finally brings them in I see that they are 89 days overdue.
12:51-- We're having surprisingly low traffic today. We did 169 checkouts yesterday, which is a busy day for us. I was expecting a patron flood since I'm the only guy manning the building. We've actually been able to search the shelves for overdues and mail the notices out, though. Ooh, that reminds me to remove Mrs. 89 Days overdue notice from the pile before we waste 37 cents on her.
12:55-- Parka makes his first appearance of the day. Oddly, he's not clad in his namesake parka despite how cold it actually is outside.
12:56-- I go to sign Parka on a computer. I have to wait for it to reboot from the ground up, cause the last user shut it down rather than just logging off. While I wait, two clients from the Unobstructed Doors Mental Health Assistance Organization come in and their aid heads them right for the restroom. One of them cuts a fart that is impossible to ignore. (*I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped... I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped* )
1:45-- After nearly half an hour of circulation silence, I attempt to eat my lunch. Staff lunches are an odd phenomenon here. No matter what time we decide to eat, as soon as food is unwrapped and begun to be consumed, the patron floodgates open up and we're suddenly swamped. Food presence also tends to act as a magnet for one or more of our board members to come in—usually the one who thinks it's just horrible that the staff eats at the circulation desk in front of God and everybody. Hey, once we get the new library built and actually have a break room we can move the party somewhere else. Right now it's either the picnic table outside in the cold or Mrs. A's tiny office or the restroom. Of course, the moment I unburped the lid of my salad container today, the front door started swingin'.
1:50-- Parka comes up to complain that the internet is slow. He's enlisted the testimony of a fellow internet crowd member to back up his claim. Naturally, he assumes I have the power to do something about it. I don't, but I go reboot his computer for him anyway. He's lucky I don't go into a diatribe about how slow things USED to be a year and a half ago, back when we had dialup speed instead of cushy DSL.
2:18-- The Toyota crew evidently thinks our nearly post-Autumn town isn't foliated enough for them. Patrons have come in and mentioned that the crew is downtown in a cherry picker attaching leaves to the bare trees in front of city hall. From our side window, I can see them doing this.
2:43-- A female patron returns eight John Grisham and Patty Cornhole books on tape all of which are in horrible condition, are 61 days late and some of which are missing tapes. The cardboard cases look as though she sat on them repeatedly. She fesses up to one of the tapes being missing, but I detect others. Her husband—who looks exactly like you'd imagine Hagrid's younger brother might—unleashes two very loud open-mouthed sneezes with barely an "excuse me."
2:55-- Parka returns for his second appearance. He's evidently waiting for a specific e-mail.
3:00-- Like a big ol' coward who is only scheduled to work til 3p, Mrs. J flees the building leaving me by myself for the rest of the day.
3:25-- Blogger EATS this entry and I have to reconstruct it from the ground up. Thanks guys.
3:27-- Shortly after discovering this, the circ desk becomes awash in patrons. A lady is irritated that she can't seem to log on from home into the practice test service we offer on our website. The community college library has told her she needs to come to us for the password. I explain that we don't have a password for it. The old testing system used to use the patron's library card number for it, but I don't think that's how it works anymore. She claims she's tried that, but can't actually demonstrate for me how poorly this works for her because she has—all together now—forgotten her library card. She's fed up with the site and with me. Her attitude and the fact that blog entry was just eaten, is pissing me off. I tell her that Mrs. A and Mrs. C, the two people with definitive answers for her, are out until Monday.
"So, what, I'm out of luck until next week?" she says.
"Not if I can figure it out for you now," I say.
She starts ranting at me again. While she's busy with that, I load the practice test site on the circ computer and see that it clearly does NOT require a library card to access, but simply and clearly asks the patron to choose a username and password of their own. Once I've told her this, she suddenly remembers what her username and password are, logs into the system and is now in love with me that I've solved her problem.
3:37-- Someone phones for Mrs. A. Turns out the caller was already fully aware that Mrs. A is out of town at the library conference, she just thought she'd call anyway. In fact, the phones will NOT. STOP. RINGING. I can't even hang it up from the two calls I've just taken back to back without another coming in.
4:15-- Dadgum, I wish I had a big stool to sit on. Stupid Skechers!
4:34-- Our first call of the day asking what time we close. Whoo hooo, take a drink!
5:05-- And the world comes to the library. For 20 minutes straight, we're slammed. And when does the circ computer decide that it's going to take a break and completely freeze up? Oh, only when there's suddenly a line four patrons deep, two of whom want new library cards. I beat the computer into submission.
5:30-- Man my legs are hurting. Okay. Fine. I'll sit down.
5:48-- I call a patron about a book she has on hold. Unfortunately, she had just been in half an hour earlier so I should have given it to her then. I hate it when I do that.
6:03-- By pure chance, I spy Chester the (Potential) Molester parking in our half-hour parking and then lurking into the darkness toward the community college. From what we're told by the college's librarian, Mr. Rob, Chester's been racking up quite the reputation around there too. The only good thing about that is that at least the girls there are of consenting age.
6:32-- Half an hour to go. We've had very little traffic at all for the past thirty minutes. I think I'll vacuum.
6:51-- Already finished my end of the day duties. One last patron (who I like) is left to go. My 10 hour shift is nearly over. I plan to go home, eat whatever delicious meal my wife has prepared, and completely skip church choir practice. (The choir director is just gonna make me stand up.)
Shite! I hear a car!
Ahhh... False alarm.
6:59-- That's a wrap. Wow... a whole day with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C gone and no call from Mr. Kreskin. I would have had money riding on that one if there was anyone around to bet with.
7:00 p.m.-- I don my coat and exit stage right. (After craftily deleting my saved reconstruction file and browser history, of course.)
Today is the first day of our state's "liberry" association conference, taking place in a resort hotel up in the northern part of the state somewhere.
Am I going? No.
Do I want to go? No.
Are me and Mrs. J the only staff members in house today? Yes.
Am I wearing shoes appropriate to a 10 hour shift? No. (These Skechers tend to start biting after about four hours. My feet are screwed, but it's my own fault.)
Am I anticipating "liberry" goodness/badness to shortly ensue? Hey, it's 10 hours in the crazy house here. Of course there's going to be standard issue "liberry" activity, both good and bad.
8:54 a.m.-- a full six minutes before we open, I get a phone call asking to speak to Mrs. C. I have a feeling that the phrase "I'm sorry, she's out of town at a conference for the rest of the week" will leave my mouth several thousand times today.
9:24-- Yet another call, this time for Mrs. A.
9:44-- And we have our first Rogue sighting of the day as Mr. Smiley comes in. He brings Mrs. Smiley with him. Mmm, that's some grumpy old people goodness for your ass.
9:58-- More people phoning for Mrs. A.
10:06-- We get our first computer patrons of the day. Two at once. Unrelated.
10:10-- Mrs. J informs me that some mischief-minded turd-blossom has removed the bolts that hold the back guard-rail portion of our rolling step-ladder in place. As a result, she nearly tumbled ass over teakettle off the top of it while trying to shelve a book. That's right, Mrs. J might have been killed because some asshat kid thought it would be funny to use his dad's leatherman to unscrew the bolts. The culprit seems to have stolen the bolts as well. Now I have to go put a sign on it telling patrons to stay the hell off of it before someone else tries to take a header.
10:11-- Someone comes in looking for Mrs. A.
10:15-- One of our board of directors, Mrs. Day, calls to say she's going to come in to sign checks and is on her way. This doesn't actually mean she's on her way. This means at some point during business hours today she'll roll in, probably at an inopportune moment, and will likely give me shit about having to come in and sign the paychecks two full days early, like I'm twisting her arm and forcing her to come in. SHE CALLED ME!
10:22-- A patron asks if we're closed tomorrow because of Toyota. I say, "No, it's Veteran's Day. What about Toyota?" He explains that Toyota will be filming a car commercial along mainstreet in Town-A, just down the hill from the library. They're apparently going to close off the entire area for traffic throughout the day. Good thing we won't be open.
11:34--Mrs. Day comes in to sign checks, several hours earlier than I expected. She doesn't even give me any crap, though she does have an ILL request for a book that does not exist in the entire state system.
12:40 p.m.-- I see a crabby looking lady trying unsuccessfully to put her books into our locked after hours book drop box out front. She must know that books that actually make it into the box are considered fine free, because when she finally brings them in I see that they are 89 days overdue.
12:51-- We're having surprisingly low traffic today. We did 169 checkouts yesterday, which is a busy day for us. I was expecting a patron flood since I'm the only guy manning the building. We've actually been able to search the shelves for overdues and mail the notices out, though. Ooh, that reminds me to remove Mrs. 89 Days overdue notice from the pile before we waste 37 cents on her.
12:55-- Parka makes his first appearance of the day. Oddly, he's not clad in his namesake parka despite how cold it actually is outside.
12:56-- I go to sign Parka on a computer. I have to wait for it to reboot from the ground up, cause the last user shut it down rather than just logging off. While I wait, two clients from the Unobstructed Doors Mental Health Assistance Organization come in and their aid heads them right for the restroom. One of them cuts a fart that is impossible to ignore. (*I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped... I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped* )
1:45-- After nearly half an hour of circulation silence, I attempt to eat my lunch. Staff lunches are an odd phenomenon here. No matter what time we decide to eat, as soon as food is unwrapped and begun to be consumed, the patron floodgates open up and we're suddenly swamped. Food presence also tends to act as a magnet for one or more of our board members to come in—usually the one who thinks it's just horrible that the staff eats at the circulation desk in front of God and everybody. Hey, once we get the new library built and actually have a break room we can move the party somewhere else. Right now it's either the picnic table outside in the cold or Mrs. A's tiny office or the restroom. Of course, the moment I unburped the lid of my salad container today, the front door started swingin'.
1:50-- Parka comes up to complain that the internet is slow. He's enlisted the testimony of a fellow internet crowd member to back up his claim. Naturally, he assumes I have the power to do something about it. I don't, but I go reboot his computer for him anyway. He's lucky I don't go into a diatribe about how slow things USED to be a year and a half ago, back when we had dialup speed instead of cushy DSL.
2:18-- The Toyota crew evidently thinks our nearly post-Autumn town isn't foliated enough for them. Patrons have come in and mentioned that the crew is downtown in a cherry picker attaching leaves to the bare trees in front of city hall. From our side window, I can see them doing this.
2:43-- A female patron returns eight John Grisham and Patty Cornhole books on tape all of which are in horrible condition, are 61 days late and some of which are missing tapes. The cardboard cases look as though she sat on them repeatedly. She fesses up to one of the tapes being missing, but I detect others. Her husband—who looks exactly like you'd imagine Hagrid's younger brother might—unleashes two very loud open-mouthed sneezes with barely an "excuse me."
2:55-- Parka returns for his second appearance. He's evidently waiting for a specific e-mail.
3:00-- Like a big ol' coward who is only scheduled to work til 3p, Mrs. J flees the building leaving me by myself for the rest of the day.
3:25-- Blogger EATS this entry and I have to reconstruct it from the ground up. Thanks guys.
3:27-- Shortly after discovering this, the circ desk becomes awash in patrons. A lady is irritated that she can't seem to log on from home into the practice test service we offer on our website. The community college library has told her she needs to come to us for the password. I explain that we don't have a password for it. The old testing system used to use the patron's library card number for it, but I don't think that's how it works anymore. She claims she's tried that, but can't actually demonstrate for me how poorly this works for her because she has—all together now—forgotten her library card. She's fed up with the site and with me. Her attitude and the fact that blog entry was just eaten, is pissing me off. I tell her that Mrs. A and Mrs. C, the two people with definitive answers for her, are out until Monday.
"So, what, I'm out of luck until next week?" she says.
"Not if I can figure it out for you now," I say.
She starts ranting at me again. While she's busy with that, I load the practice test site on the circ computer and see that it clearly does NOT require a library card to access, but simply and clearly asks the patron to choose a username and password of their own. Once I've told her this, she suddenly remembers what her username and password are, logs into the system and is now in love with me that I've solved her problem.
3:37-- Someone phones for Mrs. A. Turns out the caller was already fully aware that Mrs. A is out of town at the library conference, she just thought she'd call anyway. In fact, the phones will NOT. STOP. RINGING. I can't even hang it up from the two calls I've just taken back to back without another coming in.
4:15-- Dadgum, I wish I had a big stool to sit on. Stupid Skechers!
4:34-- Our first call of the day asking what time we close. Whoo hooo, take a drink!
5:05-- And the world comes to the library. For 20 minutes straight, we're slammed. And when does the circ computer decide that it's going to take a break and completely freeze up? Oh, only when there's suddenly a line four patrons deep, two of whom want new library cards. I beat the computer into submission.
5:30-- Man my legs are hurting. Okay. Fine. I'll sit down.
5:48-- I call a patron about a book she has on hold. Unfortunately, she had just been in half an hour earlier so I should have given it to her then. I hate it when I do that.
6:03-- By pure chance, I spy Chester the (Potential) Molester parking in our half-hour parking and then lurking into the darkness toward the community college. From what we're told by the college's librarian, Mr. Rob, Chester's been racking up quite the reputation around there too. The only good thing about that is that at least the girls there are of consenting age.
6:32-- Half an hour to go. We've had very little traffic at all for the past thirty minutes. I think I'll vacuum.
6:51-- Already finished my end of the day duties. One last patron (who I like) is left to go. My 10 hour shift is nearly over. I plan to go home, eat whatever delicious meal my wife has prepared, and completely skip church choir practice. (The choir director is just gonna make me stand up.)
Shite! I hear a car!
Ahhh... False alarm.
6:59-- That's a wrap. Wow... a whole day with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C gone and no call from Mr. Kreskin. I would have had money riding on that one if there was anyone around to bet with.
7:00 p.m.-- I don my coat and exit stage right. (After craftily deleting my saved reconstruction file and browser history, of course.)
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Prediction...
I predict that my Sunday shift will contain more than the usual suckage. How do I know this? Oh, maybe it's that the state
office techs are taking their servers offline to do some work, so we
will have no internet access and will be unable to use our
internet-reliant circulation system. (Allegedly there's a mode to set it
to that allows us to continue circulating without the net, but we've
not really explored how to do any of that.)
What does this mean for me? Well, normally it would mean having to write out patron barcode numbers along with those on their books, on paper. And with the 14 digit barcodes we're using, that would be a royal pain. However, I came up with the novel idea of just using our barcode scanner to put the numbers directly into a Word document, saving them for later cutting and pasting. Nice.
The big worry, though, will be that our internet addict patrons are going to be royally pissed off at me that they can't get their fix. I tried to head this off by putting up signs to this effect several days ago. I've even confirmed that Parka's already read one, cause he commented on it Saturday before asking about our hours.
"Are you going to be open on Monday?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Are you sure? It's a holiday."
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
I glared at him. "Well, we don't have any signs up that say otherwise. So, Yes, we're sure we'll be open on Monday."
Probably won't see much of him, but he's hardly the only net-addict who'll drop by.
Maybe it would be more fun to just take down all the signs and watch the flames shoot out of their ears as they try and try and try and try to get the net to work for them. I could keep moving them from computer to computer to let them try again, then shrug and scratch my ass when it doesn't work. If I were a real bastard, that's what I'd do. I probably won't do that, though. Not unless Chester comes in. Frankly, though, I'm not sure if he'd notice any difference.
What does this mean for me? Well, normally it would mean having to write out patron barcode numbers along with those on their books, on paper. And with the 14 digit barcodes we're using, that would be a royal pain. However, I came up with the novel idea of just using our barcode scanner to put the numbers directly into a Word document, saving them for later cutting and pasting. Nice.
The big worry, though, will be that our internet addict patrons are going to be royally pissed off at me that they can't get their fix. I tried to head this off by putting up signs to this effect several days ago. I've even confirmed that Parka's already read one, cause he commented on it Saturday before asking about our hours.
"Are you going to be open on Monday?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Are you sure? It's a holiday."
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
I glared at him. "Well, we don't have any signs up that say otherwise. So, Yes, we're sure we'll be open on Monday."
Probably won't see much of him, but he's hardly the only net-addict who'll drop by.
Maybe it would be more fun to just take down all the signs and watch the flames shoot out of their ears as they try and try and try and try to get the net to work for them. I could keep moving them from computer to computer to let them try again, then shrug and scratch my ass when it doesn't work. If I were a real bastard, that's what I'd do. I probably won't do that, though. Not unless Chester comes in. Frankly, though, I'm not sure if he'd notice any difference.
Friday, October 08, 2004
The FAFSA Conundrum!
We thought Chester the (potential) Molester might be taking a class at the local community college across the way, because he's been parking his Ford Fugly
in our half hour parking for over an hour every Wednesday around 4 p.m.
I was determined to call the cops on him after he'd overstayed his time
this Wednesday, but Mrs. C was hogging the phone for most of the day and it was nearly 5 by
the time she got off. I know full well the meter-maid leaves work at
4:30, and after 5 it's legal to park there as long as you like, so I
didn't call.
Yesterday, however, he was back and this time at least had the indecency to only get three of his tires in the parallel space. He wasn't exactly blocking the road, but I figured I might be able to use his poor parking job as grounds to get him towed. Unfortunately, Mrs. A saw Chester's parking job and decided to go leave him a threatening note instead. It said something to the tune of: "This is half hour parking. If you continue parking here for over an hour at a time, as you have been, our next call will be to the meter maid."
Of course, if Chester's Fugly had been towed, I would just have to deal with him coming in to borrow the phone to try to get a lift back to his own home county. Then he'd have all the excuse in the world to hang around until that ride arrived. Probably best he wasn't towed.
About the time the rest of the staff left, in Chester walked. I don't think he'd seen the note yet. More likely, he was looking for an excuse to come in since two early-teen girls had entered ahead of him, (one of whom was the same one he'd been staring at before I invited him outside to give him "the speech" this summer). As soon as he was through the door, though, he saw me at the desk and stopped still.
"Um, do you have any FAFSA forms?" he said with a worried glance at our floor shelf where we keep such forms and local free publications.
"No," I told him. Which is true. We don't have any FAFSA forms because he had already taken them all.
"Um, do you think there might be any, um, upstairs by the newspapers?"
"No," I told him. Again, it's because HE TOOK THEM ALL as an excuse to be near the magazine racks where all he really wanted to do was steal a copy of Teen People.
Chester gave me a doubtful look.
"We haven't had any for a couple of months," I told him. "Other people have asked too."
"Oh," he said. "Do you know when... *mumble mumble mumble* "
"Pardon?"
"Do you know when you'll have any more?"
"No."
Chester didn't leave immediately. He went back and had a wee in our toilet, probably ogled the girls at the computers on his way back through, and then left.
Only after he was gone did it occur to me that I should have just said, "No, we don't have any FAFSA forms, cause you took `em all! Have you tried looking at HOME?"
Yesterday, however, he was back and this time at least had the indecency to only get three of his tires in the parallel space. He wasn't exactly blocking the road, but I figured I might be able to use his poor parking job as grounds to get him towed. Unfortunately, Mrs. A saw Chester's parking job and decided to go leave him a threatening note instead. It said something to the tune of: "This is half hour parking. If you continue parking here for over an hour at a time, as you have been, our next call will be to the meter maid."
Of course, if Chester's Fugly had been towed, I would just have to deal with him coming in to borrow the phone to try to get a lift back to his own home county. Then he'd have all the excuse in the world to hang around until that ride arrived. Probably best he wasn't towed.
About the time the rest of the staff left, in Chester walked. I don't think he'd seen the note yet. More likely, he was looking for an excuse to come in since two early-teen girls had entered ahead of him, (one of whom was the same one he'd been staring at before I invited him outside to give him "the speech" this summer). As soon as he was through the door, though, he saw me at the desk and stopped still.
"Um, do you have any FAFSA forms?" he said with a worried glance at our floor shelf where we keep such forms and local free publications.
"No," I told him. Which is true. We don't have any FAFSA forms because he had already taken them all.
"Um, do you think there might be any, um, upstairs by the newspapers?"
"No," I told him. Again, it's because HE TOOK THEM ALL as an excuse to be near the magazine racks where all he really wanted to do was steal a copy of Teen People.
Chester gave me a doubtful look.
"We haven't had any for a couple of months," I told him. "Other people have asked too."
"Oh," he said. "Do you know when... *mumble mumble mumble* "
"Pardon?"
"Do you know when you'll have any more?"
"No."
Chester didn't leave immediately. He went back and had a wee in our toilet, probably ogled the girls at the computers on his way back through, and then left.
Only after he was gone did it occur to me that I should have just said, "No, we don't have any FAFSA forms, cause you took `em all! Have you tried looking at HOME?"
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