Innanet Crowd Onslought (Moving Days M)

As I mentioned, we only had four public internet terminals when we opened the new building. Our plan was to eventually have ten and we had already installed the desks for those--or, rather, we'd installed one gigantically long computer desk with room for ten stations and serious issues with picking up the squeezings of patrons on its surface. The other six computers did arrive within a couple weeks of opening, but the company we'd purchased them from neglected to stock enough monitors to accompany them and said they weren't expecting a resupply for months. We bought new monitors from another vendor, but before they could arrive we experienced several wonderfully fun conversations such as this...

PATRON-- So when are you getting your other computers?

ME-- Oh, they're here.

PATRON-- (Does doubletake. Looks at six empty desk spaces.) Uh, they are?

ME-- Yep.

PATRON-- Um... when are you going to install them?

ME-- Already did.

PATRON-- (Looks again. Completely ignores obviously present CPUs on the floor beneath each empty desk space.) Uh... what?

ME-- Yep. Installed the computers a few days ago. They're right there. (Points to CPUs) It's just the monitors we don't have yet.

PATRON-- (Looks again. Looks back. Appears confused and slightly irritated. Decides I'm an asshole, perhaps justifiably. Walks away.)

We decided early on that our old system of using kitchen timers to monitor the amount of time patrons were using the computers was probably not a workable system for ten machines; it was hard enough getting those accurate with only three computers in the old place, plus the idea of more than one of them going off at the same time made us edgy to even think about. So the new plan was to extend the time patrons had on a given machine from a half hour to a full hour (still with no kick offs if no other patrons were waiting), reserve two of the machines as 15 minute stations and then just keep track of everything on paper. This sounded like an enormous headache to me and I was actually quite panicked about it. I began begging Mrs. A to see if we could get some sort of computer-based monitoring system, one that would allow us to decide who lived and who died. Mrs. A said that the state techs were considering such a program to be used consortium-wide, but hadn't made any firm decisions, so we'd just try our new paper system and see how things went. And so I awaited the doom of our sanity at the hands of the innanet crowd.

Quite unexpectedly, the doom did not come--at least, not at first. Even after we had all ten stations up and running, the competition for them was surprisingly slim in the early weeks. We rarely had to enforce the 15 minute station rules and often just let users of them go for however long they wanted as there were almost always other stations open. We didn't even have to kick anybody off a machine for nearly a month into the new gig and even then it was a rare occurrence. Patrons basically could stay on as long as they wanted and there was enough turnover that we didn't have any problems with competition.

As the months passed, though, we began to have more and more innanet crowders more and more often. Word was getting around that we had a bountiful supply of computers and the crowders began to crawl from beneath their rocks and lurch in to use them. Patrons we'd not seen in years, such as Matilda the Cranky Wiccan, Mabel the Amateaur Geneal0gist, Sunday Bob, and the Formerly Sweatiest Woman in All the Land, began to become regular visitors again. Previously frequent innanet crowders such as Germaphobe Gary, Johnny Hacker, Mr. Little Stupid, Mr. Hinky, and Mr. Perfect began coming far more frequently, usually multiple times a day. And former repeat offender Innanet Rogues, such as Mr. B-Natural, Old Man Printer, The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, and Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine basically needed to have their ass roots cut out of our chairs each evening for all the innanet time they were hogging up. Sonofabitch, we even saw us a Fagin or two.

All of this increased traffic made for increasing problems with paper-based monitoring process. The way it was designed to work, patrons signed up on our sign-in clip-board with their name and time as usual; the staff then assigned them one of the vacant computers and then the staff noted which one it was beside their name on the sign-in sheet; when computer patrons departed, the staff was supposed to highlight their names to indicate their absence; then, if all computers were full, whichever patron was at the top of the list of non-highlighted names (usually Gene) was automatically up for being kicked off.

This system actually worked pretty well for several months, but as our traffic increased so did the problems inherent with it, such as the difficulties in keeping track of just who has to get off and when in addition to the other duties of our jobs. If you throw in a couple of patrons who refuse to put down what time they signed on, or incorrectly put down what time they signed on, it makes things a bit more tricky. Then add to this the complaints we began to get over the slowness of our connection speed (again, mostly from Gene) and the computers and their users quickly become an even deeper source of resentment to the staff than usual. It reached the point that we really didn't care when less than fragrant patrons, such as Mr. Stanky, paid us a visit because it gave us a nice chance to clear the decks, as it were. (Well, except for Gene. The only outside force we've ever found that could shift Gene off of a computer was the day the power went out and he had no choice.)

And on the topic of Mr. Stanky, our new computer area was equipped with vinyl upholstered chairs, the kind we could spray down with disinfectant spray and wipe clean as opposed to the old cloth chairs we had that tended to soak up his "essence." Yes, we planned the chairs around Mr. Stanky.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled program.

So what have the "bad" patrons been up to since I took two weeks off from crapping on them quite so much?

Oh, the usual...

• We still have the usual urinal non-flushers to deal with, who in recent weeks have taken to leaving sloppy drippage on both the front lip of the urinal edge as well as the floor beneath. Now they've stepped up their game and are somehow managing to get urine on TOP of the urinal itself, where it congeals in the hard to clean trench made by the sealant. Son-of-a-bitch, you'd think we'd had a pack of dogs in here marking their territory! I've now been a bit more observant when I visit public restrooms in other buildings and I must say I don't notice near the amount of excess spillage in them that I see on a daily basis at the "liberry." Engage in Intercourse with a small water-fowl, I hate `em!


• In more excretory news, we seem to have a new Serial Shitter—a Copycat Shitter, if you will. We know it's not the original Serial Shitter for none of us have seen him in for months. However, just like his namesake, the Copycat Shitter has left his calling card splattered all over the interior sides of our men's toilet and made, from the evidence, only a cursory effort to flush. This Copycat Shitter may in fact be related to our next mystery rogue...


• Some asshat has been frequently rendering our men's restroom a gassy no-man's land through the sheer power of his fecal fumes. I know, I know, this has been a regular complaint here about a LOT of different patrons over the years, but this is one guy with, presumably, one ass and the ability to completely void the warranty of any given room. We don't know who it is yet, but he has to be a regular patron, since it is occurring quite regularly. The stench is horrifying and lingering and defies our efforts to dispel it. And while I've never been on a CSI-style forensic field trip to know first-hand, to me this guy's product smells exactly like a bog corpse. And due to some damn genius having hid all the aerosol freshener, I had to combat this horror with a tiny bottle of pump-spray air-freshener and a crucifix. For a bit, I thought the responsible party might be Sunday Bob, who did return on a recent Friday and caused all hope to be abandoned by anyone entering the restroom after his departure. However, he's not been in regularly enough to be the culprit and has fumes of a different... um... flavor, I guess. We have now bought numerous cans of aerosol air-freshener, each a different scent and different brand because we know from experience with the likes of Mr. Stanky that this level of stench will wear out a given scent in no time flat.


• The Coot has now taken to shaving in the men's room, which seems the next logical step in his campaign to make the "liberry" his home. This might have gone entirely unnoticed by the staff, except for the fact that, just as he leaves piles of books in his wake throughout the "liberry," he also leaves wads of shaving cream, stray whiskers and soap scum in the sink and seemingly makes no effort to clean up after himself at all. I personally suspect he may be the culprit behind at least two of the above three paragraphs.


• While hauling boxes down to our lower-level storage area (or as we like to call it "the wine cellar), Ms. D noticed there was a light coming from beneath the unusually closed door of our story hour room. Opening it to investigate, she found two teenagers, a guy and a girl. They were both clothed, though the girl was just putting on her coat. Immediately they adopted what she described as incredibly guilty expressions. Before she could ask them what they were doing in an otherwise unpopulated area of the building that we prefer patrons stay the hell out of, they dashed out the lower level back door and were gone. None of the staff had seen anyone go downstairs in the first place, so we have no idea how long they'd been down there and, lacking any infa-red Woods lamps, can only guess what they'd been up to.

B.O. at the P.O. (Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week: Day 3)

We have loads of packages we need to mail round the "liberry," but no one asked me to haul them to the Post Office. In fact, Mrs. C took petty cash to run to Wally World, so I couldn't have taken those packages even if I wanted to. Which I didn't. Like a dumbass, though, I used my afternoon break to go to the post office anyway to do some mailing of my own.

I truly hate going to the post office as part of my work duties, because we always have 50 ILLs to mail and they and the inherent slowness of whichever postal clerk happens to help me (usually the ONLY clerk) clogs up the damned line even moreso than it's usually clogged. However, I reserve a particular hatred for going to the post office in December; for it's in December that ehhhhhveryone is doing all of their last minute Christmas package-mailing—most of the actual packing of which they could have done at home, but decided to do at the post office, cause that's inconvenient for EVERYONE—and this screws up the line even more and generally making everyone feel less merry. In kind, our local post office usually responds to the increase in traffic by putting even less people on the desk.

yaaaay.

When I arrived, there were five other people wedged into the tiny corner that the local P.O. has set aside for queueing. One of them was Mr. Stanky. He wasn't as blazingly-stinky as I've smelt him before, and his clothes, while disheveled, were not outright filthy. In such close quarters, he was still most unpleasant. Everyone else in line was trying to give him a wide berth, but there was only so far we could move in our attempt to widen the space between he and we.

There were two employees running the desk, but the people standing at their stations were insisting on doing complicated transactions that took FOREVER, so we all had to wait for several minutes before one of the lines opened. Eventually and most uncharacteristically, a third employee came up and opened a new window. I thought "Glory Be! Someone in charge is using their brain." Then one of the other employees told the next person who was able to approach to hold on, that he'd be with them in a moment. He then disappeared for five minutes, leaving the rest of us to wait.

Mr. Stanky was eventually next in line, but hadn't done his package packing at home, so he had to stop and do that and then had to fill out paperwork about it.

Finally, the second desk guy returned and the lines began moving again and I was at last able to mail my single package and flee that stank-choked, line-filled purgatory.

Cat Piss Man (a.k.a. "Bodily Excretions Week: Day 3")

In our local kingdom of stinky patrons, there are some royally fetid gems.

Naturally, the king of this empire is Mr. Stanky.

Second in line of succession, perhaps surprisingly, is Mr. Stankier who, while outranking Mr. Stanky in pure stank power, is still rated only second because, generously, he visits us only about a tenth as often.

Third up is The Sweatiest Woman in All the Land (ne, the Urineiest Woman in all the Land). I must say, though, that while she has been a more frequent visitor as of recent, I've found she no longer really smells sweaty or uriney at all. Maybe I'm catching her on good days, but let's hope this is a permanent change. However, even with her current diminished stank power, she's still third based on nasal-memory alone.

Fourth would be Bear Piss Man, who is no longer in the area, but ranks fourth all the same. He is so named not only because that's what he smelled like but also because we were pretty sure he had free access to such a substance in his line of work as a carny running an animal display at the local fair. Bear Piss Man became progressively more offensive as the days of the fair passed and progressively more insistent that the staff should come visit his booth at the fair. If we dropped his name, he said, we could get in for free. We had no desire to do this, however, because by the end of the week this guy could clear the computers of patrons within seconds of his arrival. We also learned we were wrong about the bear piss. By his own admission, late in the week, he actually ran the Freak Tent, which gave us all sorts of unsettling mental images to accompany his aroma.

Let us not forget Crusty the Patron, either, who I'll refrain from detailing as it is getting close to lunch time. (Okay, so it's only 9 a.m. here, but somewhere in the world it is indeed lunch time.)

And we've had an assortment of stinky drifters who smell of sweat, but who are often entertaining, so we don't mind so much.

Last week the stinky patron royal family saw a new and dangerous threat to their hierarchy amassing its armies on the horizon. I first noticed it shortly after arriving for my shift one day.

While shelving books near the computer area and comfy chair reading section, my nose detected the unmistakable odor of cat piss. I say unmistakable because, as the owner of a thankfully-retired former World Champion Cat-Piss-Distributor (the Official World-Champion Cat-Piss-Distributor of the 1996 Summer Olympics), I know it well. The smell seemed to be coming from a particular comfy chair, which disturbed me greatly. However, upon my next trip through the area, the smell had vanished from the chair. Moments later, though, as I was turning back to the desk, I caught it again, now coming from somewhere near the fireplace.

"Um... have we let a bunch of cats run free in the library recently?" I asked Mrs. C after returning to the desk.

Mrs. C shook her head. "It's him," she said, pointing back toward the fireplace. Sprawled there on one of our comfy sofas, practically on his back, his ass nearly completely off the front edge of the seat cushion, his legs jutting way the hell out in EVERYBODY's way, was the Coot.

Lord, beer me strength.

The Coot, it turns out, was wearing a winter jacket that has, evidently, been steeped in cat urine. It's quite foul and quite unholy and he seems to be either quite unaware of it or is quite aware of it but just doesn't quite give a damn. Frankly either of those options seems plausible.

So because of our stubborn lack of policy allowing us to point out to stinky patrons that they are making our very EYES BLEED with their stench, we had to sit in his cat piss fumes for most of the business day.

Two days later, the Coot returned, but no longer smelled like cat piss. Ah, very good, we collectively thought. He'd washed his coat or has otherwise been given a heads up.

Nope.

A day later, he was back and pissy-smelling. Either he'd worn a different coat on the intervening day, or his cleaned coat had been given a fresh cat-spraying.

So far the War of the Stankites has not commenced in full, as no other members of the royal family have been present to defend their territory from this new aggressor. It's only a matter of time, though, before the battle for the throne commences and the valley runs yellow with the secretions of our enemies.

"Mr. Stanky? Is that you?"

The Stankmobile was in our parking lot when I arrived for work today. And here I was hoping for a good day.

I entered the building, expecting to be hit about the face and neck with Mr. Stanky's reek. Surprisingly, though, the air smelled fresh. I crept to the workroom door to peer out at the computers and spied Mr. Stanky seated about mid way down the row. Other computer patrons were seated to his immediate left and right. They were also conscious. I still detected no foulness on the wind.

Then I noticed that Mr. Stanky's hair had been trimmed and combed and his usual sweat-soaked/stained t-shirt had been replaced with a blue-green colored suit coat. Upon closer, yet still distant inspection from the other side, I saw that he was also wearing a shirt and tie, which looked rather crisp.

Mr. Stanky had apparently undergone one of his quarterly hosedowns. It's a rare occurrance, that we've noticed in only about one out of every ten visits he pays us. And as pleasant as it is not to be attacked by his stench, it's also sort of disconcerting. It's like you're encountering the Mirror Universe version of Mr. Stanky, where he's a fine, upstanding and lemon-scented citizen. Of course, this illusion doesn't hold up so well if you get too close to him. No matter how scrubbed and polished he might seem at first, his foulness is so pervasive that he usually has some degree of contact stench left over from his house.

Still, I'll take any amount of relief I can get when it comes to him.

Mr. Stanky: The Return

A seizure of horror gripped me as I casually glanced out our front window. There, in our parking lot, was the open-sided, plywood-roofed Jeep that we know as the Stankmobile. More horrific still, it was empty, which meant its owner, one Mr. Stanky, was no doubt coming up the walk outside of my field of vision. This was the moment I'd been dreading for weeks.

Because of our recent introduction of additional patron computers, we've increased the amount of time our patrons can have at a station from a half hour to a full hour. This is almost meaningless, however, for we only enforce that time limit on the rare occasions that all the computers are full, including the 15 minute stations. Most of our regular computer patrons, such as Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, really like the new rules since it means they potentially have no time limits whatsoever. As long as there's at least one computer available, and there usually is, they can stay on all day. The major drawback I foresaw weeks ago was that this new setup would also work to the advantage of our more tenaciously repulsive patrons, such as Crusty the Patron and Mr. Stanky. I was afeared to my very soul.

Within seconds of my Stankmobile sighting, the front doors bumped open and in he came, clad in the usual sweat-soaked, sweat-stained T-shirt and shorts, which he had, no doubt, been clad in for at least a week. I remained at the far end of the desk, away from the computer sign-in sheet, which Mr. Stanky noticed shortly and for which he made a slow lunge. I hadn't yet caught a whiff of him, and was looking to prolong the time before I was gifted with that inevitable experience.

I scurried away from the desk and went out to log him onto a computer, so that I would then have time to scurry away from the computers before he got close. But which one to put him on? There were only two people on computers at that moment, but despite the fact that one of them was Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine (who had already been on the entire morning), I politely decided to place Mr. Stanky equidistant from both computer users. Before I could get that particular machine logged in, though, Mr. Stanky was upon me. I tried to take in enough breath to sustain me back to the circ-desk, but he was too close and I wound up inhaling some of his fumes.

Sweet Melissa!! It was worse than usual, if such a thing is even possible! Had he been rolling around in a carcas all morning?!!

I made my escape, but the stench just seemed to follow me. It felt like it was not only in my nose but permeating my clothes, sticking to my skin like some sort of stank napalm. I wanted to take a shower—a nice, long, radiation-scrub shower administered with a wire-bristle brush on a long stick, Silkwood-style.

Where the hell was the Febreeze?! The Lysol?!! The Easy-Off?!!!

I retreated to the staff workroom, but the fumes followed me in there, too. Every time I took a sip of my instant tea from my hard-plastic sippy cup, my nostrils pulled in Odeur de Stanquet, nearly causing me to gag.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay in the relative safety of the workroom because the front doors opened wide, a stream of people seeking computers began to flow through them and beyond Mrs. J, I was the only staff member not out at lunch. I tried keeping the newcomers away from Mr. Stanky, but there was only so much I could do before most other available spaces were taken. When Mrs. J took a turn at logging people on, she sat some poor kid directly next to Mr. Stanky despite the fact that the 15 minute station furthest away from him was available. It would have been kinder to seat him beside a mace-fogger, really.

Fortunately, Mr. Stanky didn't stay the entire afternoon, but cleared out shortly after an hour. If only the lingering evidence of his presence had cleared out with him, for we were forced to share space with its slowly diminishing returns for another couple of hours still, thanking God that we'd had the good sense to order vinyl-covered computer chairs to replace the old cloth ones.

Stinking Innanet Crowd!

I'm so disappointed in our computer patrons. Now that Crusty Dave has provided us with a genuine threat to temperament, nose and the holding down of lunch, none of our regular innanet crowders seem willing to help us get rid of him. 

See Crusty has proven himself perfectly willing to stay on our computers all day long, and, provided no one is in need of his computer due to the other two computers being taken up by patrons, he can actually get away with it. In order to bust him off, we need at least three other people who want computers at the same time. The trouble is, Crusty Dave is very very stinky. It's not quite the slap-you-in-the-face-with-a-dead-fish stench of Mr. Stanky, but it's ultimately a more pervasive stench because it has so much time to build up. Once any other computer user gets around him, they find their desire to stay there quickly diminishes and rarely stay for their full half hour. So for most of the day, there was at least one and often two computers open. 

At one point, Crusty had some competition from Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, a relatively recent addition to our benign irritants gallery whose major claim to infame is his tendency to tell anyone who gets too close to him the mind-numbingly boring details of his geneal0gy research. (We make it a point never to engage him in conversation of any kind because he forcefully steers it back around to his favorite topic every single time.) 

Gene got his computer a couple hours after Dave's first sign-in and I was glad to have him, because Gene can hog up the computer time better than most and has the added bonus of not stinking. Soon, another patron took the last computer and before long a kid came in and signed up for Crusty's. I let Crusty know he needed to get off, but by the time he actually got around to getting off the kid had left the building and I didn't technically have anyone waiting. I kept that bit of information to myself, though, and Crusty departed. 

I had barely had time to clean up his crust and spritz down his chair with Febreeze when he returned and signed up again. By then, unfortunately, the other computer patron had also departed, leaving only Gene. And by the time I had another computer-competition-trifecta, I then had to bust Gene off. 

Gene, while signing out, said something about possibly coming back later. I tried to get him to go ahead and sign up for another session right then. I was even willing to stand there and engage him in geneal0gy talk until his turn came up, but he decided he would go away for a bit first. 

So for the rest of my workday, Crusty and his intense stench held sway over the computer hall and indeed the landing above it. I spent the day cursing the usual innanet crowders for being so disloyal to us and Crusty for officially ruining Febreeze's Linen & Sky scent. 

Where the hell are our tried and true faithful? Why aren't they flocking to us in great numbers? (For it is only in great numbers that we will be able to stave off the evil!) I'll take nearly any of them, really, provided they're not stinky. Where is the Devil Twin Auxiliary League? Or the Devil Twins themselves?! I'd be willing to cut them some slack on fines if they'd just monopolize a couple of computers for a few hours for me. Where is Mr. B-Natural? Or Crazed Mom? Or Mr. Big Stupid? Or Kanji the Kid? Or The Dufus? Where are they? I'll take Mrs. Bellows or the Internet Neophyte, too, and will even show them how to load "the innanet." 

God help me, I'll even take Parka's dumb ass back. 

There! I said it! I said his name, have given him power and summoned him from the depths of whatever Stygian pit he's been trolling around for the past few blissful, Parka-Free months! Bring it on!!!

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.

The Near-Miss Returns of Barbara Turdmurkle

I was at the circ-desk on a Wednesday night, a couple weeks back. All of my fellow employees had departed, including Mrs. A who had just walked out the door. After a minute, the phone rang.

*RING*
ME: Tri-Metro County Library.

MRS. A: (From her car outside) Hey, it's me. I just wanted to warn you, Barbara TURDMURKLE may be on her way in.

ME: Mmm boy.

MRS. A: She's sitting in a car in front of the lib... oh, wait, no. She's getting out now. Just thought I'd warn you.

ME: Thanks.

MRS. A: Good luck!

There passed several tense seconds as I waited for Barbara Turdmurkle to show her face. I don't rightly recall what she looks like, as I have rarely had to deal with her beyond phone calls. Oddly, though, Barbara Turdmurkle never appeared at all. I don't know if she just parked out front and walked somewhere else or what, but she never came inside. Kind of a nice near-miss situation. (We'd had another earlier that day, when Mr. Stanky drove up, failed to find a good parking place for his Stankmobile and then drove away to befoul greener pastures.)

Though I haven't had to personally deal with Barbara Turdmurkle much in the past, I have heard tales from my co-workers that could curdle your blood. From all accounts, she is stark-raving mad but feels a deep-seated compulsion to convince everyone she meets that she's not. And if that involves producing documentation, often in the form of photographs of herself from back when she was "normal-looking,"--her words--she'll do it. (Again, I can't even say that she looks abnormal now, I see her so little.)

When not trying to convince everyone of her sanity, Barbara spends her spare time eavesdropping on the activities of her 20-something neighbor in the apartment next door to hers and phones the police to complain whenever she hears the girl having sex. We know this, because Barbara has made it a point to tell us that she frequently does this.

I say "us" but what I really mean is "Mrs. B," who is kind of Barbara's ambassador to the world.

See, crazy people looooove Mrs. B. This is probably because, unlike the rest of us, Mrs. B actually pays attention to the crazy people, sometimes give them rides places, and almost always returns their phone calls. You do that enough and you develop a reputation among the crazy populace as the go-to gal. Barbara is no exception. Barbara likes telling Mrs. B of her many problems, and about all the people she knows who either think she's crazy or otherwise aren't behaving as they should. It seems to come in cycles, though, for she's not a regular patron. Just every few months she gets it in her bonnet to come talk to Mrs. B and any other employees who happen to be there too. I have, unfortunately for this blog, missed out on most of her appearances. But I do get to talk to her on the phone.

For instance, the day after the above near miss with Barbara Turdmurkle, I had another one. I was running the desk for Mrs. C and Mrs. B while they were engaged with Thursday morning story hour.

*RING*

ME: Tri-Metro County Library.

BARBARA TURDMURKLE: Um. Yes. Is MRS. B... no, wait... that's not right. Is that right? What's that girl's name? MRS. B? Yes. Is MRS. B available?

ME: I'm sorry, she's not. She's in the middle of story hour right now.

(This, by the way, was the 5th such call I'd fielded for Mrs. B and/or Mrs. C, both of whom were engaged in separate story-hour groups. I'll give Barbara a pass on this, but all the other calls had been from people, often other librarians, who knew bloody well better than to call them during story hour.)

BARBARA TURDMURKLE: When will she be finished?

ME: Uhhh, I'd say 11:30 would be safe.

BARBARA TURDMURKLE: Oh. I see. Well then. This is BARBARA TURDMURKLE and I just wanted to ask her a question. So if you could give her my number and tell her to give me a call when she's finished.

Mrs. B did finish up around 11:30 and noticed the note I'd left her to call B.Turdmurkle. She sighed and picked up the phone.

Would ya like to take a guess as to what Barbara Turdmurkle wanted to ask Mrs. B about? Why, yes, you're right. She wanted to ask Mrs. B to renew the same bloody book I'd already assured her days earlier was NOT on her card in the first place. And the REASON it wasn't there? Turns out it's because when Barbara tried to check it out, she neglected to bring her library card and Mrs. B had checked it out on her own personal card in order to get Barbara to simply leave without a big scene. Now my own policy is that I never check books out to patrons on it unless they're sweet little old ladies who genuinely forgot theirs, and Never. To. Crazy. People. However, I can see the logic in resorting to such a move in order to get rid of someone as troublesome as Barbie T.

It took Mrs. B nearly a minute to explain the situation to Barbara in a way that finally seemed to convince her. After that, Mrs. B asked how things were going in Barbara's life, which lead to the latest installment of Barbara's ongoing battle with her over-sexed neighbor and how the police chief himself had now told Barbara to stop calling him about it and how she couldn't speak to the girl about it again because anything they said to one another these days came from a place of anger and was not constructive.

Barbara's latest mission is to find someone gullible enough to come hang curtains for her. She's told this to Mrs. B several times, but Mrs. B has wisely not taken the bait.

I might do it just to have material to blog about if I didn't know that such an act would get my name put on the Crazy People Go-To list for life. The less Barbara Turdmurkle knows my name the better.

Mr. Not So Stanky

When I pulled into the parking lot Friday afternoon, I spied something I wished I hadn't: Mr. Stanky's Stankmobile.

Mother pussbucket!! That meant he was inside, stinking up the joint, about to ruin my lunch! And I'd brought a slice of my wife's ham & cheese quiche!!

However, as I walked in the door, I wasn't immediately pummelled to the floor and gobbed in the face by the stench. In fact, I couldn't smell it at all. Had I been wrong?

No.

As I reached the computer hall in preparation on going upstairs to clock in, I saw Mr. Stanky himself, seated at the little computer by the stairs wearing his usual filthy cut-off denim shorts and a multi-stained brownish T-shirt. Still I didn't smell him, and I was mere inches away from him.

That's when I noticed that his hair—which usually resembles a half-dead, 17-year-old, salt & pepper colored Schitsu that's badly in need of a grooming—was trimmed neat and short. Could it be? Could our dreams and prayers have been realized? Had someone finally forced him to bathe and get a haircut? Glory be!!

"Is it just me or does Mr. Stanky not stank so much?" I whispered to Mrs. A once I was safely in her office.

"No, he smells much better today," she said. "We noticed that too. And his hair is shorter."

After Mr. Stanky left, Mrs. A came down and carpet bombed the area with Febreeze Air Essentials, just to be safe. I wish she hadn't done that. I know I've sung the praises of Air Essentials here before, but I can no longer sing that tune. Oh, it's still a great product, but I'm afraid Mr. Stanky has utterly ruined it for me by searing into my sense memory the unholy coupling of his stench and the Air Essentials "Fresh" scent. Any amount of it sprayed just brings that memory flooding back and I am instantly sickened. That will no doubt be his ultimate legacy.

The story continues, though.

Today I'm in for a rare Sunday shift. At around 1:30, the door opened and a tall girthful man wearing a suit and tie walked through it. By the time he reached the desk to ask if he could use a computer I was able to do the visual math and realize that this well-dressed person was none other than Mr. Stanky himself. He's still not nearly as stinky as he has been at his worst, but he's well on his way back toward that goal. Unfortunately, I didn't have a computer readily available, as Sunday Bob—a fairly new regular patron who only comes in on Sunday mornings and who often, though not today, has a violently stinky poo beforehand which he refuses to dilute with air-freshener—still had two minutes. So I had time to examine him as he clopped around the front room like Frankenstein after a year-long rancid custard bender.

The well-dressedness was only a surface impression due to his wearing a suit and tie. The charcoal gray suit coat itself was frayed and wrinkled. The black pants were equally unironed. However, his blue shirt and blue and red angle-striped tie seemed fairly stain-free.

I sure hope that suit isn't yet soaked through with his usual air, because the only computer we had for him was one of the ones with a cloth-covered chair.

Juice Vs. The Stench Volcano Part II: It's been Stankronized!

I sure hope this isn't a trend. Mr. Stanky was back today, and how! His girthful, crazy salt and pepper-haired, days unshaven, dispenser of foulness self had at least changed clothes, though not into clean ones.

Why? WHY? WHYYYY?!!! Why must he inflict himself upon us?!!!

Just like last time, I stuck him at the little wooden-chaired computer station by the stairs where he proceeded to spread his WMD-grade funk in radiating waves. Unfortunately, aspects of my job caused me to have to walk past him on several occasions, but I was able to hold my breath for the most part. I did manage to steal a glimpse at his screen on one such pass. He was surfing Amazon.com, though I didn't see what he was looking for. Mrs. A walked past him and caught a whiff, causing her face to contort in disgust and horror as she approached my position at the circ desk, where I was still trying to Febreeze away Mr. Stanky's funk wake.

"How can he stand himself?" she asked.

"No idea," I said. Spray, spray, spray.

Soon afterwards, Parka came in for a computer and Mrs. A bravely went back to log him on.

"Did you put him by Mr. Stanky?" I asked with evil glee upon her return. I was sure she would have, because Mrs. A has no love for Parka.

"No. I couldn't do that to even him," she said. I suppose it would have been rather cruel, but I would have done it. Regardless, Parka didn't stay long.

At one point, I snuck past Mr. Stanky and stole the small Glade automatic air-freshener from the restroom, turned it up to 11 and discretely hid it by the potted plant on the window-sill beside him. I don't think it actually helped, but I had fun doing it.

After nearly an hour, Mr. Stanky left the building and waddled away, presumably toward his stank mobile. Once again I was left with the task of fumigating the computer hall. Had just as much success as last week, which is to say very little. His funk had possessed the wooden chair in exactly the same way we had feared it would ruin our cloth chairs. Even the keyboard seemed somehow stinkier than before. The whole area had been Stankronized (tm).

And no matter how much Febreeze was dissipated into the air, I could still detect the ghost of Mr. Stanky hours later. I think we're going to have to give the whole place a tomato juice bath.  Or call an exorcist.

Maybe we can also start researching obscure city ordinances concerning intolerable levels of airborne offensiveness.

Juice Vs. The Stench Volcano

I wasn't scheduled to come to work last Friday. However, due to a bit of a scheduling conflict involving a press conference, a doctor's appointment and a vacation day for Mrs. A, the library was going to be devoid of all employees except for Mrs. J for an hour. This is not a good thing. For the record, while Mrs. J is a very sweet lady and a capable library worker, she's not precisely a whiz with computers and can only execute the most rudimentary functions of the new circulation software. She also has a tendency to answer the phone by saying, "Yeah?!" so we try to keep her as far away from both the computer and the phones as possible. At Mrs. C's request I came in.

I'd only been in for around half an hour when the loathsome Mr. Stanky wafted through the door. He's been visiting us far more regularly than we care for as of late and is responsible for putting us way over-budget in the Canned Air-Freshener department. Naturally, he wanted to use a computer.

All three computers were free, but I put him on the little computer by the stairs. It's the only one that has a wooden chair instead of a padded cloth chair. It's therefore less comfortable, hopefully prompting early departure, and less likely to hang on to offensive odors.

If anything, Mr. Stanky has become stankier and his clothing filthier since the first time I encountered him. I don't know the full story on this guy, but he's got some definite mental and cleanliness issues. From what I'm told--and this may be a local urban legend--a house that he had once occupied had to be condemned by the city and torn down after he moved out because he had rendered it impossible to de-stankify. And if the massive black stain on the back of his shorts Friday was any example, I can see how this might be true.

I would love to know what Mr. Stanky surfs for on the web, but frankly I couldn't get near enough to snoop even if I was of a mind to. He has a force field of stench that is overpowering. In an arm-wrestling match between Mr. Stanky's funk and that of the Sweatiest/Uriniest Woman in All The Land, Mr. Stanky's would SO go "Over the Top" and plow Sweaty's odor through the table several times over. In fact, she would be a refreshing pallet-cleanser by comparison.

Mr. Stanky stayed his half hour and then left. After he was safely gone, I took our new can of Febreeze Air Essentials, waded into the DMZ and started firing.

Normally Febreeze Air Essentials is a good product. I highly recommend it, due to its patented "clean & pleasant" smell. It does a good job of fighting and destroying odors instead of just covering them up. Until Friday, I had never known the odor that could withstand it.

I emptied half the can into the computer hallway, at Stanky ground zero. The stench ate every last particle of Febreeze, digested it and shat out something almost exactly as foul as before. I then retreated to our cubby-hole restroom under the stairs, where the air wasn't quite as eye-hemorrhagingly foul, and snatched up our big ol' can of Air Wick. I practically emptied it into the computer hall. Now the place smelled like rot and flowers. Great.

In the end, I gave up and fled the building, Amityville-style. Mrs. C and Mrs. B had just returned from their respective diversions, so my services were no longer needed.

I asked Mrs. C if she would clock me out cause I "forgot" and wasn't about to brave the stairwell to do so.

"You smell like Febreeze," she said.

At least that's all I smelled like.

Of course, by that time my lungs were aching for air.

It's like someone turned on the stench-electro-magnet today. We were beset by stinky patron after stinky patron.

Well, all right, so there were only two of them, but they were foul enough for ten.

I'm almost certain that the first guy is the same stinky man who darkened our door and soiled our souls with his stench around three years ago, during Stinky Patron Day 2001. He had been using the little computer by the stairs just prior to my arrival at work. No one likes to use the little computer by the stairs provided the other two comfyer computers are free. I'm guessing that they were therefore not free when he was logged onto the little one, but they had long since been abandoned by the time he got up and left.

On his way out, Mr. Stinky walked past me, wearing a too-tight, filthy gray t-shirt with deep-set stains and a veritable cloud of nose-permeating evil. My theory is that this shirt is actually the too-tight red t-shirt he had worn on his previous visit, leeched of its color by his olfactory aura. Before he had even left the building, Mrs. H had busted out both the Airwick and the woefully underpowered automatic air-freshener, which had been secreted within a potted plant on the windowsill next to Mr. Stinky. The lingering stench ate both of them.

Barely an hour had passed when the Sweatiest Woman in All the Land came in. We knew she was on her way because she'd sent her daughter ahead to herald her coming and check to see if there were any computers free. (Her daughter's pretty stinky too, but only because of contact-stench from mom.) I'm starting to believe that the eye-watering breeze of the Sweatiest Woman in All the Land is not entirely sweat-spawned. My fellow employees are of the opinion that it is not so much a sweaty sort of odor as a uriney sort of odor. I didn't buy into this at first, but now I've come to think that my nose may have simply been overwhelmed by her wake of funk and automatically defaulted to the most palatable explanation for what it smelled like. I mean really, which would you rather have come into your library, a patron soaked in dried sweat or one steeping in her own urine? And being as how she's a really nice lady, beyond the impoliteness of her vapors, we think she must have some sort of bladder control issue rather than just having a penchant for peeing her pants on purpose. Again, that's the most palatable explanation.

So anyway, the Uriniest Woman in All the Land finally came in for a computer too. That's all she ever wants, hence why we have so many air-freshening products hidden in the computer hall. Unfortunately for those of us who'd have to share the front room with her while she waited, all three of our computers were full. We'd just signed on two people a few minutes earlier and the only one our timers said was out of time belonged to Mr. B-Natural, who was back with his dog, Bubba, playing solitaire. I went back and told him that his time was up.

"I ain't been on that long!" he angrily grumped. "I had to wait around upstairs for a while. My time's not up."

I sighed. If only he knew the favor I was trying to do him by allowing him and Bubba the chance to escape before the stench-fest descended on his head.

"Well, the timer says you're done," I told him. "But maybe it was still set for the patron before you. I'll go check."

As I was about to go check, the patron using the computer by the stairs stood up and said she was finished. Mr. B cracked a smug grin at this, thinking himself safe to continue his game. If only he knew what I was about to unleash into the computer hall. I smiled with this knowledge, rebooted the free computer and then went to tell the Uriniest Woman in All the World it was ready for her to use.

Poor Bubba. They say dog noses are a million times more sensitive than human noses.

Stanky Patrons

Last week I asked Mrs. C if it would be okay to put up a sign on the back of the restroom door that read: "If you make stinky in this restroom, please be so kind as to use the provided can of Airwick. Thanks."

It's a project that needs serious consideration. After all, the vast majority of patrons who have a poo in our tiny, unventilated, non-sound-proofed, one-toilet, no stall public restroom never even consider using the provided air-freshener afterwards. In fact, I don't think it would be going too far to say that a patron actually using the air-freshener would be an unprecedented event. I figure if we put the sign on the back of the door only people actively making a "stinky" will see it, might actually read it and might actually become inclined to use the air-freshener to cut the stench they leave behind.

Don't get me wrong... as my wife will readily attest, I'm no stranger to being the root cause of stanky bathrooms myself. However, when I know I'm about to befoul a confined space, in proximity to a public area, which, as soon as the door is opened, will unleash my by-product upon an unsuspecting world, I use some damn air-freshener, or light a match or pull the fire-alarm or something.

Not our patrons. No sir. They just let fly and walk away. We should probably count ourselves lucky that they even flush. It's like they're proud of what they've made and want everyone to get a whiff. This, in turn, causes me to want to chase them around the library with a can of Lysol and a lighter. Or sometimes a hose.

Beyond just the restroom olfactory adventures we have, we have patrons who are just naturally eye-wateringly stinky. One lady in particular either doesn't bathe very often or just eschews the use of "de-funk" in general, because she can light up a room with B.O. And once, around 2 years ago now, we were paid a visit by the Stinkiest Man Ever. He's not on the Rogues List because he only visited the one time, but his stench has been seared into the memory centers of my brain. He was like Pigpen from Peanuts as an adult. In addition to being revoltingly-stinky, he was also the owner of the worlds filthiest, too-tight red T-shirt, which was doing a less than admirable job of covering his lumpy hide. Mr. Stanky wanted to borrow an atlas from us. We don't loan out atlases, but I very nearly gave our copy to him and wrote the book loss off as a hazard of doing business. Instead, I sent him upstairs with it, where he promptly drove off every patron up there except Ron the Ripper, who probably enjoyed it. After Mr. Stanky left, I had to hold my breath and run for the bathroom to retrieve our kitchen-strength can of Airwick, which I emptied in an attempt to fight back the evil presence he'd left behind.

In related Stanky Patron news... my friend Glen works in a library located in a southern state known for its spicy food and government corruption. (Heheheh, try to narrow that one down from the clues provided.) If anyone should be writing a "liberry" blog, it's Glen, as he's just a damn genius, funny as hell in general and his observational skills are saber sharp. Shortly after I began working at my library, he wrote me to compare notes on problem patrons.

Glen wrote: "My patrons smell like dusty turds. I'm serious. From day one, I noticed this peculiar odor about my branch and quickly traced it back to the patrons. It took some time to satisfactorily classify the scent for myself but in my second week while listening to some woman go on about how she `paid that fine fo' weeks ago,' I thought: `Lady, you smell just like a dusty turd. That's it, by golly!' Imagine a long lost link sitting on top of a bean pie in the bottom of a tool box and there you go. It's amazing. It must have something to do with diet. Or a propensity to roll around in aged feces. I don't know."

Incidentally, Mrs. C gave me permission to put up my sign.