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!!!

Borrowers, Get Out!

Our usual Monday Madness came late this week. It came on a Thursday. And while we had the staff to deal with it, none of us wanted to. We all had our own projects we were trying to attend to and wanted nothing to do with the circ desk.

Meanwhile, the phone would NOT stop ringing and the Brent & Brice auxiliary league of neighborhood kids would NOT stop coming in and demanding computers, which they insisted on sitting at in groups of three per computer, despite being told by Mrs. C and then again by Mrs. A and eventually again by me that they could only have one per cause they’re too damn noisy otherwise. Soon we had a 45 minute wait time for computers due to the backlog of patrons, neighborhood and otherwise. That's when I heard a familiar and horrifying voice at the circ-desk. Yep, it was everyone's favorite Vid-Borrower, Mrs. Bellows.

Mrs. Bellows was turning in all her videos from the last time she was in. On the counter, next to her heaping stack of returned videos, was a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Pepsi and a large clear plastic box with a handle on top in which every ratty-assed audio cassette tape in the world had been crammed. I prayed none of the audio tapes were ours and she didn't open it to disgorge any, so probably not.

After piling all her videos on the desk, Mrs. Bellows seemed to have several brain-farts in a row, then said, "Is there a... do you have one of them... You got a computer I could sit on for awhile?"

No!!! Please NO!!!!

Mrs. C informed her it would be a good-sized wait for one, as they were all still clogged with neighborhood kids for the foreseeable future.

"I'll just be over in the videos, then," she said. Well, naturally.

After about half an hour, the neighborhood kids left in mass and the computers were all finally free. This coincided with Mrs. Bellows finishing her selection of more painfully bad videos and bringing them to the desk for checkout. Mrs. C asked her if she still wanted a computer. No response. And it wasn't like Mrs. Bellows was clear across the room, either. She was right there at the circ-desk. So Mrs. C asked her again, but Mrs. Bellows was far more concerned with obtaining a large plastic grocery bag from us in which she hoped to carry her selection of bad videos home. After loading it full, she stuffed in her box of tapes too, causing the whole thing to bulge.

"Do you have a refrigerator I could put my pop in?" she asked, indicating her half-empty 2-liter. "I want it to keep cold."

Mrs. C said, no, we didn't have a refrigerator. Not precisely true, as we do have a little tiny one, but it's not for public use and Mrs. Bellows would be hard pressed to find room in it for something the size of a 2-liter anyway.

Mrs. Bellows walked away and Mrs. C, seeing that I was about to go refill my water bottle, asked if I would go try to tell Mrs. Bellows she could have a computer. I did and it took a couple of tries to get through to her, but she declined needing one. Then, as soon as I’d fetched my water and returned to cataloging, she decided she needed one after all. Mrs. C, noting my ire, told me to stay put, that she’d take care of it. She went back and logged on the last computer back and then told Mrs. Bellows which one she could use. Naturally, Mrs. Bellows sat down at the middle computer and, since it wasn’t logged on and therefore not of use, began bellowing for help before Mrs. C could even get away.

After that, I sat back to wait for further inevitable bellowing on her part, as she has never been known to use a computer without some need of assistance.

And I waited and waited and waited.

Soon everyone had left for the day except me and Mrs. A, who was still trapped in her office doing work. After a while, Mrs. Bellows collected her overstuffed grocery bag and departed. Only then did Mrs. A come downstairs and ask if I’d heard all the bellowing. Apparently, Mrs. Bellows had been bellowing for several minutes and Mrs. A had nearly abandoned her work to stomp downstairs and tell the woman to stop screaming for help and get off her lazy ass and walk to the front room to ask for it. Oddly, I’d not heard a single bellow, and I’d been listening for them.

I was already thinking that Mrs. Bellows should probably get her hearing checked, but now I’m starting to think I should too.

The Borrowers

I drove up to the library one day to find a patron outside taking an unnecessary amount of time trying to park her car. Sure, all of our spaces are parallel spaces, but she wasn't even doing a proper job of parallel parking in one of them. Instead, she had driven into the handicapped space then leaned way out her window so she could better see the curb as she backed her car down the hill into the parallel space behind. After swerving to avoid hitting her car, I'd then had time to drive up the hill, parallel park my own vehicle, gather up my things, exit the car and start across the lawn to the library while she was still trying to back into her space.  I tell you all this because it further informs as to the sort of patron I was about to have to deal with.  For this lady, you see, was a prime example of an especially irritating breed of patron known as The Vid-Borrower.

Vid-Borrowers are people who come to the library for the sole purpose of checking out our free videos. Granted, this is a perfectly valid thing to do and, despite my complaints here, I am not the kind of library staffer who believes you're not a real patron unless you're checking out books. However, Vid-Borrower Status, like its dumpy cousin Intanet Crowd Status, often brings with it certain annoying and consistent eccentricities.

For instance, after Ms. Video had finally parked her car (still poorly) and come inside to turn in all her old videos, she then sniffed around the video shelf by the circulation desk for a few minutes and then blurted out, "Where do ya keep yer adventure moovies?"

I reached across the counter to the video shelf and grabbed Buns of Steel, but only Mrs. A noticed and laughed.

I explained to Ms. Video that we don't really have an Adventure Movies section. (In fact, our videos are not arranged in any particular order, mostly because our patrons refuse to leave them in any particular order and we're tired of fighting against this.)  Still, we did want to be helpful so Mrs. A and I came over to the shelf to look for adventurous sorts of movies.

"How bout this?" I asked, passing the patron our copy of Dances With Wolves. Seemed pretty adventurous to me when I saw it. After all, how much more adventurous can you get than a guy stuck on his own in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by potentially hostile Indians, homicidal assholes for superior officers and a damn dancing wolf?

"Noooo, I don't want no westerns," Ms. Video said in a most emphatic tone. "I want something outdoors."

Do what? She wants adventure movies... set outdoors... but no westerns? Yeah, well, good luck, Peaches! I guess it's a Milo & Otis evening for you.

Rather than wait for us to find something else for her, though, Ms. Video opted to take her current selection of movies and go home. At least she was nice and didn't complain about it, which often happens with Vid-Borrowers. A major problem with the Vid-Borrower patron archetype is that they seem to feel that if they're going to use us as a video store we should also have as wide a selection as a real video store. And when they learn we most certainly do not, they can sometimes get huffy.

For instance, one such Vid-Borrower of the past became irritated with us that while we owned the Julian Sands magnum opus Warlock we had somehow not had the foresight to stock Warlock II or III. According to her, the first one ended on a cliff-hanger and she wanted to know what happened next.

"I'm sorry, but we don't own Warlock II or III," I explained. I had already explained this to her once before, but it didn't take.

"Well, when are you going to get them?" she asked.

"Um. I doubt we will," I told her.  I then tried to explain that the only videos we ever EVER buy are for our children's collection and anything else we have has been donated. Therefore, if Warlock II and/or III were to ever appear in our library it would be because someone had donated them to us and not because we had purchased them. This did not set well with the patron. Not at all. She seemed downright hurt about it. I then suggested to her that one of our local genuine video rental stores probably had both titles in stock and on the shelf. Upon my saying this, though, there came a sharp intake of air from the Vid-Borrower followed by the phrase, "Oh, no. Videos is `spensive."

While I give lip-service to it being hunky-dory for patrons to borrow videos exclusively, I must admit that I do find people who wouldn't crack a book at gunpoint very annoying. It's certainly not an all or nothing thing with Vid-Borrowers, as there are quite a few who do check out books, just as there are book patrons who check out videos. However, when Vid-Borrowers do get books, I have noticed a propensity among them to exclusively seek books by author V.C. Andrews. I can't really speak to the true reasons behind this, but the rather obvious correlation I could make is that Flowers in the Attic largely revolves around consensual sibling incest and this IS West Virginia. That's SO stereotypical that I should be deeply ashamed, but dammit the stereotypes have to start somewhere! (Come to think of it, that would make a fine slogan for an Abercrombie & Fitch state T-shirt. "West Virginia: Dammit, the Stereotypes Have to Start Somewhere!")

I also find that a very high percentage of the Vid-Borrower Crowd are also members of the Intanet Crowd. One in particular, Mrs. Bellows: The Video Borrowing Gorgon, even made the Rogues gallery.

Mrs. Bellows: The Video Borrowing Gorgon is exactly as horrible as she sounds. She's a round and hefty woman who closely resembles Tweedle Dum from Alice In Wonderland in nearly every aspect except mode of dress. Slap some stripes and overalls on her and you've got yourself a literary figure the likes of whom would frighten Thursday Next.

Mrs. Bellows was mostly known for her video-borrowing during the first few encounters I had with her. She was of the very variety of Vid-Borrower who checks out her card-limit in videos and then complains bitterly about our lack of certain titles, as though we're responsible for stocking the latest blockbuster. We the staff used to cringe collectively when we saw her waddling up the walk because we knew we were in for trouble. We weren't sure why she complained so much, as her tastes in movies skewed toward the extraordinarily shitty. And this is hardly due to us having only shitty movies in our collection. We actually have a large majority of the films on my mental list of the top 50 greatest films of all time. However, she never wanted any of the good ones. Instead, she gravitated toward anything starring the likes of Michael Ironside, Dolph Lundgren, Brian Bosworth, Chuck Norris, Rutger Hauer, Pauley Shore, Tim Thomerson, Vanity, or any combination therein. (Oddly, we don't own a single Rob Schneider movie, but I'm sure she would have borrowed it if we had.)

Like I said before, though, often our Vid-Borrowers do double duty as Intanet Crowders and Mrs. Bellows was no exception.

There are many patrons among the Intanet Crowd who come in daily to check their e-mail, read news, play crosswords, chat with skanks, etc. However, there's a particular flavor of the Intanet Crowder that does all of the above in a very obsessive, possessive, and compulsive manner. They have a hunger for their e-mail, news, crosswords, chatting, etc. that is overpowering and they will defend their time on the internet with their lives and try to extend it by any means necessary. Mrs. Bellows was not one of these people, but I think she really really aspired to be. She definitely had the hunger to get on the internet and seemed to recognize what an colossal amount of time could be wasted with it, but unfortunately she just didn't have the brains to figure out how to actually do so. In fact, she could barely check her e-mail without calling for help, which is how she earned her nickname.

Mrs. Bellows, when confronted with an internet hurdle she couldn't jump, would not, like a nice patron, get off her duff, walk twenty paces, and politely ask a staff member for assistance. No. She kept her considerable keister planted in front of the computer and would, instead, bellow at us for help.

The scenario would play out like this: I'd be up at the circ desk and would hear...

"He'p!"

(Thirty seconds would then pass during which I would ponder whether or not I actually heard Mrs. Bellows bellowing for help.)

"HE'P!"

(Yup. Sure sounded like it. Amazing. She actually expected that she could bellow like that from way back in the computer hall and someone would come running to help her. How lazy is that? It's not like she's disabled or anything. She's just that lazy!)

"HE'PP!"

(Still not moving to "he'pp".)

"HEEEE'P!!"

($%#&!)

So I'd trudge on back to find out what stupid-assed thing had flummoxed her this time. Usually she had forgotten her password and couldn't get into her e-mail, forcing me to guide her through the I'M A DAMNED MORON AND LOST MY PASSWORD page for Hotmail.

Or, better yet, she'd been to this one site this one time but couldn't remember where to go to see it again and really wanted to and also she couldn't remember ANYTHING else about it that might give me a clue as to how to get her back there, but it was really nice.

Or, even better yet, she'd accidentally X'ed out of Internet Explorer and now CAN'T REMEMBER HOW TO GET BACK INTO IT!

I tell you, it was all I could do to keep from primal screaming in her face. This went on for weeks and she steadfastly refused to learn from her mistakes, or otherwise get any smarter, despite our many attempts to teach her how to use the computer.

Fortunately for us, Mrs. Bellows stopped coming round to see us. I don't know if it was because she ran through our shitty movie supply or if she just doesn't have reliable transportation to get here. I do know that she now lives in Town-C, which is a nice distance from us in Town-A. (And, hell, even if she lived closer it's not like she was really gonna walk.) We haven't seen her at our branch in months, but I did see her one time at Town-C's branch, when I popped in to return some ILL's to them one day. There she was, squatted on a chair in front of one of their computers, checking e-mail. She didn't bellow for help while I was there, but it would have been quite a bit less offensive had she done so, since Town-C's computers are in close proximity to the circulation desk.

It must be a transportation issue that keeps her from visiting us. Town-C doesn't have nearly the selection of videos that we do.

Nastiest Patron EVER

Yesterday, January 21, 2004, Weird Wednesday, was a historic moment at the "liberry." For yesterday, you see, was the first and I pray only time I have been confronted by a woman I can only describe as the nastiest, most vile, evil patron EVER. She was so unbelievably horrid that she has officially secured the #1 spot in The Liberry Rogues Gallery.

Let me just put this in perspective. To be #1 means that she's beaten out the likes of Ron The (Magazine) Ripper, Chester the Molester, Mr. B-Natural, Billy the Brainchild and even Mrs. Bellows the Video Borrowing Gorgon in sheer unadulterated unholy foulness. Hell, I'll throw the Dufus back in there too cause she's got him beat hands down. Because while some of those people may be unwholesome and evil in their own way, none of them are as maliciously confrontational in their evil as this patron.

I have dubbed her Mrs. Carol Satan.

Mrs. Carol Satan marched up to the circulation desk yesterday accompanied by a thick fog of cigarette contamination. Or maybe it was brimstone. I dunno. Whichever, she smelled like she'd been sitting in an unfiltered Lucky Strike sauna for at least a week.

"I'm Carol Satan. You guys called me about a book," she said. Her breath was a more concentrated version of her apparently natural air.

"Sure thing," I told her. Then I stooped down and began rummaging through the hold shelf where we, naturally, store the books we're holding for our patrons.

I should probably explain that process a bit first. It'll be boring, but it's necessary.

At our library, as at many, we allow patrons to reserve books they'd like to read on a first come first served basis. We put their name on a list in our devil computer and when the book they want is checked back in the computer beeps and alerts us as to which patron gets which book. We then write that patron's name and phone number on a Post-it note, count five days from the date we received the book and write that date as the "pull date" on the Post-it. Then we slap said Post-it on the book, wrap the whole thing up with a rubber-band and chunk it in a three tiered holding shelf by the window behind the desk. Every night the liberry employee on duty calls all the people who have holds on the three tiered shelf. When we call we write the date on the Post-it beneath their name. If we speak to the patron themselves, we write OK by that date. If it's busy, we write BUSY. If we get no answer, we write N/A. If we get an answering machine, we leave a message with all the details and write MACHINE. If we get someone other than the patron themselves we leave a message with them and write "LEFT MESSAGE WITH..." husband, child, dog, etc. so there's always a trail of blame in case the patron never gets the message. Once a message is left or a patron is contacted, the book goes into the HOLD BIN, in a cabinet beneath the circulation desk. The patron then gets five days from the date we received the book on hold, (not five days from when we spoke to them), to pick up the book. If their five days run out, we put that patron's name at the end of the hold list and give the book to whoever is now first on the hold list. If no one's waiting for the book, we put it back on the shelf and usually leave the patron on the hold list so that the next time someone checks the book out and then back in the patron's name will pop up and we start the whole process over. Whichever option gets used, though, we write at the bottom of their loser patron's Post-It note along with the title of the book so we'll have plenty of evidence should someone wish to complain about not getting their hold book.

Can you imagine who that someone might be?

So when Mrs. Carol Satan marched up to the desk, in her thick haze of cigarette pollution, and told me that we'd called her about a book, I naturally looked for it. I opened up the hold bin beneath the desk and began searching for a book with her name Post-ited to it. There were exactly none.

"Uh, do you remember the title of the book?" I asked.

"No, I don't. Something by Danielle Steele," she said, breathing more carcinogenic-smelling breath at me.

I decided maybe I'd missed it on first look and began searching the spine labels of the hold books for a Danielle Steele. Still, there were none. So I started searching the next place we look in such situations... our little bundle of old Post-Its of all the formerly holding patrons whose hold time ran out.

As soon as I picked up the bundle, Mrs. Carol Satan sneered and said, "You don't have the books." She seemed more than a little pissed but not at all surprised.

"It appears we might not," I said, still trying to keep a positive attitude about it all. I began leafing through the pad. Sure enough, about five deep into the stack were two, count em, two Post-Its for one Mrs. Carol Satan. As a visual aid, I have recreated those Post-Its below, with Mrs. Carol Satan's real name changed and her phone number omitted.

(Click on the above images for larger versions)

"Actually, ma'am, it looks like..."

"Just put me back on the waiting list and call me," Mrs. Carol Satan interrupted. "I don't have time to wait around for you to find them."

She said "wait around for you to find them" in much the same tone she might take if saying "wait around for you to make me eat a dog turd." She also seemed to be under the impression that we'd somehow lost her books and had an attitude about it. I thought she should be made aware that we hadn't lost her books, but that their lack of appearance was due to her not coming to pick them up in the first place.

"Actually, ma'am," I began once again, "it appears your hold time ran out." I brandished my Post-its for her to see.

"No it didn't," she said, not bothering to look at the pull date or even the Post-its. I kind of blinked at her for a second. Was she really arguing with me as I stood there with all the evidence I needed to wipe the floor with her?

"Um, yes, ma'am, it did," I said, holding up the Post-its again, both of which quite clearly indicated that her books were pulled on 1/19, a full day after her allotted 5 days since the book had been checked in were over. "See," I said pointing to the evidence, "we started calling you on the 13th and pulled the books on the 19th."

"We're supposed to get five days to pick up our books! I didn't get five days."

Was she stupid?

"Uh, yes ma'am, you did," I said. "Like it shows right here, you were called on the 14th and told your books were on hold."

"No I wasn't," Mrs. Carol Satan snapped. "No one called me! I was home and no one called me. And I have a machine, so if I wasn't there you were supposed to leave a message and you didn't!"

At this point I could hardly believe what I was hearing. This woman was charging right through all my carefully crafted logic. All of the library's failsafes and ass-covering tactics were being ignored--nay, shredded--by this middle-aged, cranky, smog-belching monstrosity. Well, I wasn't having any of it and I was sure as hell not going to rise to her level of anger, at least not to her face. Instead, I turned my already polite and mild-tempered tone a notch nicer.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. Our records show that we did call you on the 14th. We did give you five days."

Mrs. Carol Satan let out what might have been a grunt or perhaps even a burp of disbelief, conveying just how utterly ludicrous I was being.

"Ma'am, maybe we spoke to someone else at your house and they didn't give you the message, but this note indicates we spoke to you."

"I live alone!" she snapped.

No shit? I didn't say.

"And there were no messages on my machine!" she bellowed further.

"This doesn't say we left one on an answering machine, ma'am. It says we talked to you. If you're the only person answering the phone then you're the one we talked to." And upon later inspection I noticed that the Post-Its in question had MY OWN HANDWRITING on them, so I HAD spoken to her sour ass.

Mrs. Carol Satan fixed me with her most fiercesome glare yet.

"I am so SICK of this CRAP!" she shouted. I thought the top of her bat-like little skull was about to come off. "This is ridiculous! I've never been treated this badly. We are supposed to get five days!!! I didn't get five days!!!!!"

No, lady, you got %&*#ing SIX I again didn't shout. Instead, I adopted my sweetest, most calm and measured tone yet and said, "Yes, ma'am, you did."

Mrs. Carol Satan's eyes bulged. She turned on her heel and stomped off toward the door, trailing a wake of Brimstone funk behind her. Before she reached the door, she looked back over her shoulder and commanded, "Just put me on the list for them!"

After the door closed, I turned to Mrs. C the librarian, who had witnessed the whole scene, and said, "You know, I don't think I'm going to put her on the list for jack."

"You don't have to," Mrs. C said, with a weary sigh. "I already did it when I pulled them on Monday."
Mrs. C assured me that my experience with Mrs. Carol Satan was not atypical. In fact, from the moment that stanky beast walked in the door, Mrs. C said she knew exactly what was about to play out and that I would bear the brunt of the woman's wrath.

"I feel... so dirty," I said. "That woman was foul and unholy. She has to be the nastiest patron I've ever encountered! There's something sincerely wrong with that woman!"

"Yep," Mrs. C said. "I don't even get upset about it anymore. I just know that when she comes in she's going to scream at me regardless of what I do. She gets especially angry if you prove her wrong about something, like you did."

I laughed. "Yeah, I love it that she walked in and said we called her about a book, then insisted that we never called her about the very book she had come in to pick up."

"That's Carol."

Mrs. C ran upstairs to tell Mrs. A, leaving me to stand at the desk shuddering with adrenaline and the remaining negative energy left behind by Mrs. Carol Satan. Soon, Mrs. A rushed back downstairs to commiserate with me over my battle.

"That woman is a raving bitch!" Mrs. A said. And this is from a lady who doesn't say such things lightly. "She's been in my face screaming more times than I care to count. And she always smells like she's been smoking all day."

"You ain't kidding!" I said. "I wanted to tell her to, `Have another puff and calm the hell down, lady!'"

We spent the next several minutes laughing and telling stories about Mrs. Carol Satan. Funniest yet was when Mrs. C revealed that Carol Satan used to work as an agent for a greeting card company and was responsible for keeping all the local stores stocked in happy, smiley greeting cards. I guess she was some kind of chain-smoking Hallmark Harpy. Or maybe it was being around all that concentrated happiness that corrupted her in the first place.

Another point of humor is the fact that both of the books that Mrs. Carol Satan wanted turned out to be on the shelf. No one else had been waiting for them, so Mrs. C pulled them and put them back on the shelf for someone else to choose at their leisure. While Mrs. Carol Satan is indeed still on the hold list for them, she won't actually see them until someone checks them out and brings them back.

In the end, we resolved that we would draft a staff-resolution that when the time does come to phone Mrs. Carol Satan about her books, whoever calls her will tell her that she has a book on hold and then will say, "Now, Mrs. Satan, could you please confirm for me what today's date is? Your five days start NOW!"