"Liberry" Glossary: Old White Women

Old White Women
-collective noun

A loose affiliation of elderly Caucasian females who continually demonstrate themselves to be the fussiest, least easy-to-please human beings on the planet. Members of the Old White Women collective come well-armored with a thick and chitinous shell of entitlement that cannot be cracked by mere mortals. They are either used to people jumping at their merest whim or are forever longing for the days of yore when people jumped at their merest whim. They are completely unaccustomed to not getting their way and being told they cannot do that which they wish to do and become quite put out when such situations inevitably occur. Their most favored attack posture in these circumstances is a deftly-wielded, razor-sharp, obstinate insistence that they be allowed to do whatever it is they want to do anyway and despite all logic and policy that might say otherwise. Very often, it is all the weaponry they need, for it can be a powerful force indeed. The most frequent obstacle they face at the "liberry," therefore, is their inability to check out library materials without their library card or the requirement of a drivers license number to get said card. Old White Women are rarely seen to be happy about anything at all.

While there is no obvious organizational structure to their ranks, (much as in the case with a similar loose affiliation of the elderly, The Grampy Patrol) there is definitely something of an exclusive membership present. Membership in the order of Old White Women is not compulsory by any means, for the vast majority of the world's population of both old women and white women are not members. However, membership in the ranks of the Old White Women does seem to be dependent upon being both old and white. Wealth and privilege is also a traditional characteristic of the membership majority, particularly at levels which elevate the individual old white woman above the reality experienced by most other human beings. Abbreviations: OWW (Old White Women); OWL (Old White Lady/Ladies)

(Famous Old White Women: Mrs. Owl, Mrs. Delva Poopoohead of the New England Poopooheads, Mrs. Manic, Mrs. Carol Satan, Hillary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II)

(Honoray Old White Women: Ann Coulter, Mr. Crab)

When Bad Patrons Go Good: Take 2 (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 5)

I was mindin' my own at the circ desk when a brightly-dressed lady entered the building, approached the desk and set some Danielle Steel books down.

"I'm bringing these back," she said in a genial tone. Then she moved off toward the New Fiction section.

Now the lady looked a little familiar but I couldn't quite place her face. When I checked in the first book, though, the patron record of one Mrs. Carol Satan popped up.

I didn't want to believe it at first. My eyes said the record was hers, but my other senses, particularly my nose, usually detect her presence long before I actually lay eyes on her. Mrs. Carol Satan, you see, traditionally smells like a heaping bowl of that old Christmastime favorite, Aunt Linda's 3-Unfiltered-Lucky-Strikes Salad.

(RECIPE: In a large dirty ash-tray, mix together three packs of half-smoked, unfiltered Lucky Strikes, three 10 oz cans of Veg-All, a handful of Junior Mints and three cigarette-pack-cellophane-wrappers full of balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Toss. Serves seven.)

After a few minutes had passed, Mrs. Carol Satan returned to the circ desk with a stack of seven or eight hardback books. She placed them on the edge of the counter, but did so a bit faster than advisable, for the whole stack tumbled over, avalanching toward the back edge of the desk. Fortunately, my "liberry" ninja skills kicked in and I caught the whole tower before a single one could fall. What happened next, though, came completely as a shock.

"Oh, I'm SO sorry!" Mrs. Carol Satan said. And there was genuine regret in her voice as she said it. Granted, it was regret crusted over by layers of tar, but it was regret all the same. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to let them fall like that."

"That's... that's okay," I said.

Mrs. Carol Satan continued to be very nice as I checked out her books. First, she readily offered her library card without having to be asked, made chit-chat with me while I scanned and stamped each one and seemed remarkably pleasant for a woman who has repeatedly blessed me out for issues that were her own fault. She even smiled. SMILED! And still I couldn't smell any cigarette fumes coming off of her. In fact, she smelled... pretty good, really. Was this somehow a twin sister? Maybe a Mirror Universe escapee, sans goatee? Why was she being so nice to me?

And I still don't know. Mrs. Carol Satan gathered up her books when I was finished with them, wished me a good day and vanished through the doors, a smile still upon her lips. I was floored! This was a turnabout in behavior that could not possibly have been achieved without divine intervention, or at least a few visitations of the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, Future and Zyban.

Mrs. Carol Satan: recent divorcee?

Patty Cornhole and the Brimstone Clue

Mrs. A and Mrs. C were both out today, so Mrs. B and I split the day up between us with me opening. I must say, it was one of the easier shifts I've ever done. Even Mr. Kreskin failed to call despite the absence of Mrses. A & C. (I have no doubt he probably called to plague Mrs. B at some point today, though.)

I spent much of the time cross-checking our book database with the printed report concerning books of ours that are allegedly lost to the sands of time... (BEGIN BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT THAT YOU MAY FEEL FREE TO SKIP IN CASE YOU JUST WANT TO READ ABOUT MY MOST RECENT ENCOUNTER WITH MRS. CAROL SATAN) These are books that were checked out on our old VTLS system, before we moved to the new Millennium system, and may or may not have been returned to us in the intervening time. If they were returned, they've likely been checked out again in the last five months. If not, they will likely be missing from the shelves. Regardless, we have to look in the record for each book in question to find evidence of their status. If they've circulated in the last five months, we check them off the list as books we probably still have. If they haven't circulated we go look on the shelf for them and if they're not there we delete them. Fortunately, our paper record also contains the names of the patrons who last had each book, so maybe we can find them in the new system and put the hurt on them. I'd be happy to undertake such a lengthy and potentially fruitless task, just cause I have an overdeveloped sense of library justice. (END BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT)

So I'm searching away when a female patron approaches the circ counter. I'm so engrossed that I don't even look up at her right away. I just notice her peripherally and say, "Can I help you?"

"Could you put me down for the new Patricia Cornwell?" the patron said, sliding a book across the counter for return.

Ahh, Patty Cornhole, I thought. We meet again.

Having never actually read any of her fiction, I can't say that I really have anything against Patricia Cornwell. (I do kind of question her logic in blindly rejecting all previous research as to the identity of the real Jack the Ripper in favor of her somewhat forced view of it in her big non-fiction Jack the Ripper expose book from a couple years back. I didn't read much of that book either, but read enough to see that she didn't agree with the major points raised by Alan Moore in his graphic novel FROM HELL, nor with the research of other prominent Ripper-ologists. The New York Times book review of her tome was pretty scathing on this point.) However, despite having no real animosity toward her, I do think it's terribly funny to call her Patty Cornhole all the same. And it's especially fun to call her Patty Cornhole in a cheesy overly enunciated announcer voice, just like the guy who does I LOVE THE 90'S. Of course, I don't do this around the patrons.

Naturally, this particular as yet unseen female patron didn't know the title of Patty Cornhole's book, and since I haven't bothered to pay enough attention to Patty Cornhole's recent releases to know off hand, I had to look it up. It's called Trace. I mentally noted this, then scanned the barcode of the patron's returned book to bring up her account from which I could access the hold screen. At the same time that I scanned the book, my nose finally clued in that I'd been smelling something smoky and awful for the past half minute. It seemed familiar and in a bad way, but I didn't place it right away. I brought up the hold screen and added Trace to her list of books there.

"Do you need my card?" she asked.

Technically, I'm supposed to ask for it, but it's just as easy to bring up her record if she's already returning a book I can scan anyway. I explained this to the patron, still not looking at her. Then my eyes happened to fall on the Patron Name field of her record. It read: Mrs. Carol Satan. Only then did I finally look up at the woman herself and see that, yes, indeed it was her, standing there like the kiss of death. Actually, she wasn't quite as bad as the Kiss of Death. The Kiss of Something Foul to be certain, but not Death. In fact, Mrs. Carol Satan looked downright nice. Her hair was stylishly cut and she was dressed in a very pleasant ensemble and looked for all the world as though she were headed out to a nice restaurant or perhaps even to church. Sure, she wasn't actively smiling, but she was also not actively breathing fire and gnawing the heads off of infants, so it was a toss up as to her actual mood. I might not have even recognized her if she hadn't brought in a thick cloud of her usual stench of Brimstone and cigarettes. (They say smell is the sense tied closest to memory, but some memories are just too horrible and must be suppressed, so it's no wonder I didn't pick her up on radar earlier.)

What really burned me about this situation, though, is that by not paying attention to who she was in the first place, I had inadvertently been far nicer to her than I might otherwise have been. If I'd realized this was Mrs. Carol Satan in the first place, I would never have been so kind as to put her book on hold sans her "liberry" card. I'd have made her search through all the cigarette butts I imagine are clogging her purse and dig that sucker out. What's worse, now I've set a precedent in her head that she doesn't need her card for all transactions, which will surely come back to bite us in the ass in the future. My only real comfort is that she doesn't usually come in on days that I work, and it's only because I was filling in on this particular Tuesday that I saw her at all. When she bites in the future, she'll bite someone else. (Course, she'll likely bite Mrs. A or Mrs. C, who will then in turn bite me back later.)

Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead!

No, Mrs. Carol Satan didn't kick the bucket. In fact, she's alive and well and in possession of a new "liberry" card. But enough about her...

Instead, our problems with the new Millennium system giving our printer diarrhea seem to have mostly been resolved. Today, Mrs. C noticed that the little PRINT SLIP box that had been turning itself on at its own whim, causing our printer to reward us with a cover-page and a print for just about any normal function, had simply vanished. Gone. Bye byes. We still had a PRINT button at the top of the screen, allowing us to print on our own schedule as necessary, but the slip box was definitely gone from all screens. We haven't heard officially, but it would seem someone has messed about with the master control program and sorted things out.

My theory is that someone higher-up did the math, saw how much money was being wasted by the printers of 31 libraries spitting out a steady stream of unwanted paper and told the techs to shut it off.

Now if we can only convince them to shut off the coversheets we'll be groovy.

Librarians Against the Apocolypse

Mrs. A and Mrs. C, our wondrous librarians, left today for a meeting out of town. It's rare for both Mrs. A and Mrs. C to be gone at the same time. Probably only happens five times a year. However, on each and every occasion when it occurs the phone begins to ring and it does not stop.

Who's calling? People.... People who are DESPERATE to talk to either Mrs. A or Mrs. C. And Sweet Merciful Rob Van Winkle, it's like the callers think the world is ending and the only thing that can halt the impending tide of carnage is the answer that Mrs. A and Mrs. C have locked away in their brains that these callers have to have right now.

Even more irritating is that half the time the callers know good and damn well that Mrs. A and Mrs. C are away at a meeting. I know this because more than one of them said, "Aw crap! They're at that meeting, aren't they?" To which I long to respond Yes! They're at THAT meeting! If you knew that already, why are you calling my ass?

If the callers don't already know exactly where Mrs. A and Mrs. C are then they WANT to know--nay, HAVE TO KNOW--exactly where Mrs. A and Mrs. C are so they can get on the horn and try to track them down. Nary a soul in the WV Library network is willing to wait patiently. With long-distance communication in this country striving to be more instantaneous every day, people just can't be bothered with patience. I personally blame Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas and her enticing T-Moble ads.

Now, do you think for one instant that Mrs. A and Mrs. C left any kind of contact information as to where they were going or when they would get back? Uh, that would be "no", Pat. They left us Jaques Shite. Understandable, really, since they don't want to be contacted by any of these people in the first place. So the whole day was just a never ending stream of calls that Mrs. B and I had to field.

CALLER: Uhhh, hey. I'm a liberrian registering for WV Liberry Association conference and I wanted to know if I could FAX it in? It's due in two seconds, y' hear?

ME: Well, I don't know. Probably so, but I don't have the definitive answer and there's no one here today that can answer definitively. I do have a FAX machine that's spitting out registration forms as we speak, so the forecast is good. If you FAX it and you're not supposed to at least you won't be alone.

The only person who didn't call that we fully expected to call was the president of our board of directors, Mr. Kreskin. He always, ALWAYS calls when our librarians are both away. In fact, I've never known him to call at all unless they are both away. It's like he innately knows that they're not in and that none of the rest of us can answer his questions so he calls anyway just so he can get mad about it. The fact that Mrs. A has already told him at least once that they're going to be out of town on X day makes no difference. He calls and gets upset anyway then verbally kicks himself to me over the phone for forgetting that they'd already told him they were not going to be there. However, his anger instantly reignites if he asks where Mrs. A and Mrs. C went (information that he has already been hand fed by Mrs. A) and we don't have an answer for him. He doesn't get mad at us, mind you. We're just innocent victims in the information withholding wars, you see. But when Mrs. A gets back and he actually gets through to her, he gets royally torqued.

This is also the same man who swears he keeps getting an answering machine when he calls the library before 9 a.m. Mind you, we don't open until 9 a.m., but our librarians are usually in by 8 a.m. and turn the answering machine off when they get there just so he can get through. So if he's getting the machine as he claims, he's calling before 8.

I don't mean to make fun of him, for the man is very nice. We were just shocked that he didn't call today. Maybe he's sick.

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In other "liberry" news, I finally figured out why one of our mentally handicapped patrons insists on unleashing blood-curdling screams on a regular basis. It's been a big mystery for several months now. The Screamer, you see, is a client of the local Unobstructed Doors office that assists the mentally handicapped in the area. She's usually among a group of clients that they bring to the library at least once a week. They're all very sweet people, but during nearly every visit the Screamer gets something stuck in her craw and just opens up with an unsettlingly accurate impression of someone being stabbed to death. You can hear it throughout the entire building and it just makes your spine seize up with sympathetic pain for the poor murder victim you think you're hearing. Any other patrons standing around suddenly begin looking in the direction of the staff as though we're just inhuman monsters for not immediately running up the stairs to defend the poor girl. We sigh, roll our eyes and trudge up the stairs a bit quicker than usual to see if we can do anything to help quiet things down, which we can't.

Today I at least got a clue as to why it happens. In the past, when the Screamer's started up, the Unobstructed Doors staff immediately gathers their clients and everyone leaves the building. I've assumed that they do this because they know the Screamer's just caused a massive disturbance and so they leave out of apology.

Nope. Turns out the whole reason the Screamer is upset is that the Unobstructed Doors aides are trying to make her leave in the first place. She evidently doesn't want to leave and when it's time to go so she drops to the floor and starts a-death-wailin'.

Naturally, I was on the phone today when the Screamer started and by the time I could ditch the caller and get upstairs the screaming was mostly over. The other clients didn't seem put out that one of their own was calling down the vocal thunder. One of them asked me if I would tie her shoe, which I did. She then said I was her buddy, which I'm proud to be.

Another fellow, a short man named Calvin, came up and gave me a hug. I like Calvin. In addition to being generally sweet-natured and given to hugs, Calvin's also distinguished for his cursing. When he and his aid were coming into the library one day, Calvin tripped slightly on the front step.

"Oh, shit," Calvin said.

"Calvin!" his aid snapped.

"Oh, my," Calvin corrected.

-------------------------

And finally, I had yet another pleasant encounter with Mrs. Carol Satan. Today was the day the Danielle Steel book she has on hold was due to be pulled and given to the next person on the list. Just as I suspected, the book was still in the hold shelf when I got there this morning. I even pointed it out to Mrs. B so she could be sure to pass it along to the next patron should Carol not show up. Around 3 this afternoon, Mrs. Carol Satan called. She very politely, even humbly, asked if we would please hold it for her for one more day as she couldn't get out due to weather and a massive pile of gravel blocking her driveway. I sighed and relented. After all, she was being polite and that should always be encouraged.

Dawn of the Cheerful Bizatches

This has not been a good week for bitter, surly liberry assistants, such as myself.

First Kammy K completely fails to give us any kind of fight in returning her overdue book and now I can't even get a rise out of Mrs. Carol Satan.

That's right, yet another Danielle "Get me, I write a new book every three months--tee hee, just kidding, I really change all the names and republish the same book repeatedly" Steel book us is out and Mrs. Carol Satan was the first and only person on the hold list for it. Great. So I call her and her phone wasn't even busy. It rang and rang and eventually the machine picked up so I figured I wouldn't even get to speak to her unsavoryness. Then, half way through her oddly cheerful outgoing message, Carol herself picks up the phone.

"Hello? Hello?"

I explained who I was, where I was calling from, what we were holding for her and that we would stop holding it for her on 3/16.

"Oh, very good," Mrs. Carol Satan said in an oddly cheerful voice. "I should be in for it on Monday. Thank you so much!"

Beyond being oddly cheerful, she seemed oddly genuine about it. She even went so far as to repeat back to me the pull date. Not even once did she royally bitch me out. Maybe she's trying to make up for her utter defeat at my hands during her last visit.

The Defeat and Utter Humiliation of Mrs. Carol Satan

Ahh, what a most blessed and glorious day it has been. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and I got to help put Mrs. Carol Satan in her place.

I'd been at work for only a couple of hours when she arrived. I knew her before I saw her by smelling the thick haze of cigarette smoke and brimstone that flowed ahead of her to announce her presence. She dropped a stack of 6 women's novels on the desk and slunk over in the direction of Mrs. C, our librarian. Mrs. C was having an in-person conversation with Mr. Rob, the librarian from the neighboring community college, and she, quite correctly, didn't feel it necessary to pause her conversation in the slightest just because Mrs. Carol Satan wanted a word.

While this was going on, I checked Carol Satan's patron record and saw she was still on hold for Danielle Steel's book Dating Game, which she had been on hold for a couple months ago, back when she decided to tear me a new one because she was four days late picking it up.

For a moment, I considered being the kind and helpful liberry ass. that I usually am and going over to the shelf where I had left the book she wanted sitting for all these weeks and getting it for her. Then I remembered the holy hell she raised for something that was her own damn fault and all the lies she told to try and cover it up. I left Danielle Steel alone and returned to the desk.

In the meantime, Mrs. Carol Satan wandered the shelves, selected several more books and came up to the desk where I checked them out to her. I would just like to say that I was sickeningly sweet and cheerful to her. A passing diabetic went into a coma.

Unfortunately, about that time Mrs. C allowed a chink in her conversation and it was long enough for Carol to jump in with a question.

"Did you ever find that book you said I had out?" she belched.

Mrs. Carol Satan, see, had a book out—ironically, Adam's Fall, by Sandra Brown. The last time she was in, last Thursday, Mrs. Carol Satan swore she had returned the book to us the previous Monday. She swore she had put it in the book return. She swore she never keeps books late because she always keeps library books in the SAME EXACT PLACE in her house and she NEVER forgets them. EVER.

"No, we still haven't found it," Mrs. C told her.

"Well I brought it back! I remember it very clearly because I brought it in with me last Thursday and I laid it on the desk."

Last Thursday, if you will recall from two paragraphs ago, is exactly the day she complained that she had put Adam's Fall in the book return the previous Monday. Already Mrs. Carol Satan has been caught in a lie.

"Yes, I remember," Mrs. Carol Satan continued to spew, "I remember I put my books here and there was a... well, a... a good sized girl behind the counter. And I remember she didn't check my books in right away."

"Yes, ma'am," Mrs. C said. "She is one of our staff members here. "

"And I remember that there were all these..."—and at this point, she dropped her voice down to a low, tar-crusted whisper—"these retarded people running around in here. And they were looking at the shelves and they were over here," she said, pointing to the desk. "Any one of them could have picked it up."

Now this hell-belching gorgon was blaming our mentally-handicapped patrons for stealing her stupid late book—a late book, I might add, that we wouldn't have charged her a fine for ANYWAY because of some computer issues we're going through at the moment. Forget about the fact that this walking poster-child for Not Smoking is lying to begin with because it was on that very previous Thursday, Feb 19, that Mrs. C asked her about Adam's Fall for the very first time

I don't know how, but Mrs. C remained diplomatic. She explained to Mrs. Carol Satan that despite the fact that we did take the book return apart and had not found Adam's Fall within it and despite the fact that the book still wasn't on our shelf, we would continue looking for it and would she please do the same.

"I don't need to look for it! I brought it back already!" Carol bellowed. And Carol continued to bellow on in a similar loud manner. Mrs. C decided to leave Carol to it, and she left the desk entirely to go look for a book for another patron who had wandered in during Carol's earlier diatribe.

After venting her foul air for a while, Carol stomped for the door, pausing briefly to look back and say, "I may be crazy about a lot of things, but I'm not crazy when it comes to bringing back my library books!" She then slammed the door and was gone.

"It ain't library books that's made her crazy," I told Mr. Rob, who had witnessed the whole scene in amazement. He laughed. I then started to tell him about my previous deadly encounter with Mrs. Carol Satan when the door suddenly flew open and in she came.

Carol was no longer fiercely angry. In fact, Carol looked positively befuddled. Still, she managed a nervous sort of laugh as she teetered up to the desk clutching a lone book in her talon, one Adam's Fall by one Sandra Brown.

"I looked in the last place I could think of," she said. "It was under my car-seat."

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" I said in what I gauged was a slightly maniacal-sounding degree of wonderment.
"It must have fallen down between the seat and the door when I put my books in the other day."

"Yeah, that'd do it," I said.

"So I guess I... had it... all along," she said. She turned and left, forked tail tucked between her legs, cloven-hooves clattering on the floor.

Sure, she didn't actually come close to apologizing for raising such a stink. Nevertheless, it was an admission of guilt I will savor for weeks to come. Mrs. C and her friend rushed back in to join the celebration. If we'd had champagne, the cork would have been popped and bubbly poured all round. The great and powerful Mrs. Carol Satan had been defeated....

...for now.

Miscellaneous Losers

After all the slow/no liberry news last week, this week is off to a hearty good start.

When I arrived today, Mrs. C the liberrrian told me I'd just missed a visit from my least favorite patron in all the world, Mrs. Carol Satan. Carol was in to return some books, but not ALL of her books. Seems there are two books left on her card that are WAY overdue. Of course, on Carol's planet she returned those books months ago. ("No, decades ago. In fact, I never checked them out in the first place. I don't read books! I can't even read at all! I have glaucoma from smoking too many cigarettes! Hell, I've never set foot in the library before and I'm not even here now! I've never been treated so rudely in all my life!"... etc. etc.) She said she put `em in the drop box outside, cause she always puts her borrowed books in the same place in her house and they're not there so she HAD to have returned them. (Try looking under the cigarette crate sometime, lady!)

Mrs. C said Mrs. Carol Satan didn't actually throw her usual hissy, but the threat of one was definitely there.

It's probably for the best that I wasn't around for her visit. I'm finding it more and more difficult to resist the idea of returning fire at full bore upon her next verbal onslaught.

We also were paid a visit from another patron who is usually one of our nicer patrons, but today he was the messiest patron. Let's call him Luigi. He's usually harmless enough and mostly comes to the library to look up gardening information, as, I'm pretty sure he's a member of our local Back to the Land movement. From what I've gathered from talking to a couple of friends in the movement, Back to the Landers pretty much live off the land, farming and eschewing such amenities as electricity and running water in favor of living like our forefathers from early last century and before. Many of them are, understandably, former 60's hippies who didn't ditch their ideals at the first sign of 80s prosperity.

I don't pretend to know what Luigi's exact situation is. I'm not even entirely sure he's a Back to the Lander. All I do know is that he tracked a great deal of that land into my library in the form of intensely muddy footprints.

See, we've had something of a cold spell for the past three months here, with loads and loads of snow which has now piled up into great heaping, road-grime and pollution absorbing mountains of ice. Over the past few days, however, we've had a warming trend, with temperatures reaching the upper 50s and lots of sunshine. Much of the ice has started to melt, mingling with the soil and churning up mud in its place. So now, at the liberry, we no longer have to constantly vacuum due to the road-salt being tracked in and the idiot patrons who somehow always manage to avoid the perfectly good door mat outside in favor of using the runner carpet from the door to the circulation desk, no now we have to deal with mud.

When Luigi came in, he somehow managed not to get much mud on the runner itself, which means he didn't even attempt to wipe his feet. He stepped across it and left muddy footprint after muddy footprint through the main room, then through the carpeted children's room, up the carpeted stairs and into the uncarpeted non-fiction room upstairs where he proceeded to a table beneath which he left a sizeable puddle of mud and filth. Unfortunately, we didn't notice what he had done until some time after he'd already done it. We had to follow the muddy footprints up the stairs and to his table to determine that he, Luigi, was the culprit.

And the thing is, while there is mud outside, it's all in the library's lawn and NOT on the perfectly clean and well-swept cut-stone sidewalk and walkway leading right up to our front door from the equally unmuddy parking area. For Luigi to track in as much mud as he did, he would have had to go walk around in the muddy portion of the lawn, which is NOT even near the library's front door and which he would have to go out of his way to get to in the first place, and really put some effort into getting his boots truly good and muddy whilst there. It seems like this muddying of our floors would almost have to be intentional.

Rather than cleaning the mess up right away, we decided to wait until Luigi had left, as he was just going to track more mud in the process.

Much mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing of carpet on hands and knees later, we managed to get most of the mud up and are now considering boot-checks as standard library policy.

But those two losers, terrible as they are, pale in comparison to the joy I had in getting to mail a letter to a completely different patron whose tale I have not yet chronicled here.

When I arrived for work, Mrs. C told me I needed to take all our interliberry loan packages to the post office to send out. That's the kind of grunt work I occasionally have to do. You just have to lug a bunch of bulky packages down the street to the post office, dump em on the desk and wait ten minutes for the postal employee to get em all processed. It's a hassle but it's not difficult.

In addition to this, though, Mrs. C needed me to send a certified letter to a particular problem patron whom I have not yet discussed on this blog. I speak of none other than Kammy K: the Book Hoarding Bizatch.

Kammy K. is a local employee of the county. In fact, she's one of the higher-ups in a local county-run office, which I will omit from naming so as not to soil their good name. She's not an elected official, by any means, but still a higher up in her particular neck of county business.

In May of 2003, Kammy K. asked us to interlibrary loan a book for her called "Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?" We ILLed it from another county and gave it to Kammy K when it came in.

That was the last time we saw that book.

Now, most interlibrary loans give patrons a month to read the book and return it to the library that borrowed it for them. Rules such as this evidently do not apply to Kammy K., for she ignored them.

Kammy K. kept the book beyond her month limit. When she passed into overdue status, we phoned her to remind her to bring it back. We could never seem to get through to Kammy K. herself, but we were able to leave messages asking her to please return it.

Kammy K. ignored the messages.

Weeks passed and many more messages followed.

Kammy K. ignored them too.

Next we sent non-certified cards and letters to Kammy K. asking her to please return the book or at the very least contact us regarding it.

Kammy K. ignored the cards and letters.

The loaning library from another county, annoyed that we had not yet returned their book, BLOCKED our library from borrowing any more books from them until its return. We weren't offended by this; it's standard procedure for most libraries and if the tables had been turned we would have blocked their collective butt too.

So, again, we sent more letters to Kammy K. and loaded down her office and home voicemail with messages explaining our situation of being unable to borrow books from the loaning library BECAUSE of her book-hoarding ass.

Kammy K. ignored them all.

Next up, we started leaving messages with her co-workers, hoping that the embarrassment of having her entire office staff know that she's borrowing books with titles like Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be? might cause her to reconsider ignoring us.

Nope. Kammy K. began ignoring us with renewed vigor.

About this time, I suggested that instead of leaving messages with Kammy K.'s co-workers complaining that she had an overdue book called Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be? we should really be leaving messages about a book called "STD-Ridden Anal Lice: How to Cope." This idea was shot down.

I then suggested we needed to start putting the names of problem patrons, such as Kammy K., in the newspaper. Hey, it works for all the property-tax-evaders, traffic-offenders, bad-check-writers and deadbeat-dads around here. Why not asshat-patrons? Besides, Mrs. A is always stressing over having to come up with material to put in our weekly column in the local paper so why not just spend one week a month running Liberry Deadbeats on Parade? This idea hasn't been shot down yet, per se, but I'm thinking it's not going to be enacted any time soon.

After all that, we began trying personal visits to Kammy K.'s office, which is just down the road from us. However, Kammy K. was mysteriously never in when we visited, so we were forced to leave more messages.

About three weeks ago, Mrs. A complained about Kammy K. to the liberry's board of directors. One of our board members, Mrs. Emm, knows Kammy K. personally. I think their husbands used to work together or something. Mrs. Emm figured it would be no problem to pop down to Kammy K.'s office and ask her about the book. It would turn out to be a big misunderstanding, they'd have a laugh and Kammy K. would produce the book for Mrs. Emm to take back to us. No problem.

Evidently, when Mrs. Emm went down to Kammy K.'s office, Kammy was there. Kammy K., however, refused to see Mrs. Emm. Gave her the brush off, if you'll allow. Shunned her, if you will. Blew her off, if you catch my drift. Said, "F**k All Y'all," if you suss my meaning.

This was NOT to be done, nor forgiven in the eyes of Mrs. Emm.

Mrs. Emm is now on the warpath. She's pissed and no longer in the mood for dicking around with book-hoarding bizatches. This book is getting returned even if we have to pull the blasted thing from Kammy K.'s cold dead hands. An example is now going to be made of this woman that the liberry is not to be trifled with nor ignored. The impending battle promises to be terribly fun or at least funny.

According to the WV Code of Law, once a patron has been notified in writing that they have an overdue book, that patron has one month to return it or the "liberry" is well within their rights to take said patron to small claims court over the matter. This has never, to my knowledge, actually happened with our library, though Lord knows it should with folks like the Fagins walking the earth. Mrs. Emm has made it clear, though, that going to court is very much an option she intends to exercise if she doesn't see a certain book come back. I couldn't be happier.

I also couldn't have been happier to have the privilege of mailing Kammy K. an envelope full of threats to this effect, return receipt requested.

Kammy's envelope includes another letter, hopefully the last, explaining that we're now sending her a bill for Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?, which she has had since May, along with instructions that she is to either return the book NOW or pay the bill NOW. Also included is a copy of the above library-related law code concerning small claims court and our obligations, which we've now fulfilled 20 times over, in the matter before hauling her in.

My guess is she'll pay for it, but if not then the next letter she receives may be a subpoena.

Long Lost Tales of Mrs. Carol Satan

Well, it looks like we're still waiting for news about the ongoing laptop/bladderboy drama. I do have a leftover bit of liberry-related news from earlier in the week.

On Wednesday, Mrs. C handed me a Danielle Steele book with one of our hold-bin Post-its adhered to its cover. Whose name should I find on said Post-it that of Mrs. Carol Satan's.

"You wanna call her?" Mrs. C asked with a grin.

"Yes I do!" I said with evil glee. I did indeed want to be the one to phone Mrs. Carol Satan up to tell her we had a book on hold for her. After delivering that news, I planned to politely add: "Oh, and by the way, Mrs. Satan, if you don't mind, would you please confirm for me that today is in fact February 4th? You see, I'd like to avoid any unpleasantness that might result from further confusion on your part as to the exact day we called your hideous, stanky gorgon ass."

That's what I would have WANTED to say, at least. I might have even come within spitting distance of such phrasing too, but Mrs. Carol Satan's phone was busy when I dialed. And it remained busy for the next three hours, with each member of the liberry staff taking turns calling, because no one wanted to let me have all the fun by myself.

While we were playing phone tag with the devil, Mrs. A came downstairs and laughed when she heard what we were up to. She then surprised us by telling a heretofore untold tale concerning the very object of our ire.

It seems several years ago, our library had another male employee (we're a rare breed, I tells ya) who I shall call Mr. Jay. One day, back then, Mrs. A was at the front desk when Mrs. Carol Satan appeared in a whiff of brimstone to pick up a book on hold. After picking it up, Mrs. Carol Satan leaned over the desk and loudly announced that one of the library employees was stalking her.

"Stalking you?" Mrs. A asked.

"Yes. He keeps calling me. I have caller ID and I can see that the man who works here has been calling me."

"Carol, he's been calling you about a book," Mrs. A said.

"Oh, no. He isn't calling about a book. He's calling me to harrass me on the phone."

About this time, Mr. Jay, who'd heard all of this from the other room, steps in, walks right up to Mrs. Carol Satan and said, "Lady, I wouldn't call you if you were the last woman on Earth!"

We laughed at this and I made a note to thank Mr. Jay, who is still a patron of ours, the next time he comes in.

We also decided that it would be a good idea if we documented in exact detail the number of times Mrs. Carol Satan's phone was busy on any given day so that we could shove it in her face when she came in to bitch about not getting a call. Before we could put this plan into action, though, Mrs. C dialed and got an answer.

I'm terribly disappointed in Mrs. C. She didn't come anywhere close to being even subtley rude to Mrs. Carol Satan. She just told her that she had a book on hold and that she had until February 9 to pick it up. What a wuss.

And to make matters worse, I wasn't even at work when Mrs. Carol Satan came in to pick it up the following morning. From all indications, she didn't make a big scene or even bare her fangs at Mrs. H, the liberry ass. on duty.

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!"