Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #132

SETTING: My "liberry" as recently re-poop-listed patron Ms. Green is using one of our computers, "assisting" her son with another school report. As in accordance with tradition, Ms. Green's cell phone has gone off three previous times during the evening. However, because she is now well aware of our anti-cell policy, she has hauled butt and phone to the breezeway to take each call as soon as the ring has started. The breezeway, being a small, glassed in, boxy room, only amplifies conversations held within it, which sort of defeats the purpose of people taking their calls there in the first place.

*FOURTH LOUD MUSICAL CELL PHONE RING OF THE EVENING*

MS. GREEN-- (Books it to the foyer, answers her phone and screams...) Stop calling me!!! I'm at the library!!!!

(Listens to someone, perhaps her other kid, presumably asking when she's coming home)

MS. GREEN-- I don't know! When I'm finished! It's like pulling teeth here and he's only making it worse!

(Listens)

MS. GREEN-- Stop calling me!!!

The Poop List Regains a Lost Member

Yes indeedy, annoying patron Ms. Green is back on the poop list. I don't understand how a human being who is so reliant on computers to do just about everything she comes to the library to do can be so inept at operating them.

I should have known it was going to be a bad day of it with her when her kid asked to borrow the phone, called home and told his mother that he'd found a book he wanted and would be needing "the library card," and could she bring it with her when she came to pick him up? Understand, Ms. Green and her two kids have had MULTIPLE LIBRARY CARDS each throughout the years we've had our current circulation system, but now they've apparently lost all but one of them. Nice.

At around a half hour to our Monday five o'clock closing time, Ms. Green herself arrived, signed up for a computer and began typing something in Word. The other computers were packed solid with patrons, so much so that at twenty minutes from closing I had to boot Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine off for yet another new arrival patron. I then announced to the entire innanet crowd that we were indeed closing at five and so they would have only ten more minutes of innanet time before I needed to shut down their computers. And I noted at that moment that each of these people instantly became very concentrated on not wrapping up their shit.

At pretty much ten `til close, Ms. Green waved me over to help her. She wanted to print the document she'd composed once, then make some changes to it and print it again. However, despite all the school reports she's written and printed for her kid over the past few months, she claimed she didn't know how to print the current one. So I showed her again how to do so and then showed her how to click on the OK button in the print dialog box.

Nothing happened.

I stepped over to the printer, expecting it to be out of paper, but it was full and seemed to be at the ready. I asked Ms. Green if she'd truly hit OK and she said she had. She then tried to print a couple more times just to show me.

"Listen. Don't hit print any more. I don't know what's wrong with the printer, but it will just print multiple copies of your page when it finally starts printing if you keep doing that and we will have to charge you for them." To prevent this, I opened up the print queue on her machine and canceled out the jobs. I then personally hit print again and waited.

Nothing happened.

Then Ms. Green tried to hit print again and I had to stop her, though not by the method that immediately came to my mind. Meanwhile, it was now five minutes until closing time, which was five minutes after I had told everyone they needed to be off. Not a soul had moved. After all, I was helping another patron with a computer problem and if she got to stay on the computer, so could they. I reiterated to them that we were nearly closed. Only then did one of them begin to wrap up their shit.

"I don't know why this isn't printing," I told Ms. Green.

"So, can I save it?"

Knowing full well the answer to what I was about to say: "Only if you have a disc or a jump drive. If you save it to the machine, it will be erased when we shut it down."

"Well, can I email it to you?"

Also knowing where this was headed. "You should probably just email it to yourself."

"I know, but I tried to access my Verizon account here and I can't get into it unless I'm at home."

"Then I don't know what to tell you," I said. "If you can't access your email from our computers, then it's hard to email it to anyone."

Granted, I could have logged onto my own email and emailed it to myself, or to her, or to Al Gore, but I really wasn't feeling like being very helpful to helpless people who've been through this very situation multiple times in the past and have clearly not learned anything from the journey. I've suggested she get a Gmail account several times before, but she's not heeded, so this was the consequence.

After noting for Ms. Green that she should not try printing any more, I marched back to the printer and hit the GO button, just for shits and grins. Instantly it said it had a job in the hopper, but indicated it required legal-size paper in order to proceed. Now, I knew that Ms. Green had not chosen legal-size paper on purpose because that was far, far, FAR beyond her capabilities. What I suspected was that our printer had lost a good bit of its mind and was in need of a reboot, for it had insisted on trying to print on legal paper for another patron earlier in the day. I overrode the insistence and it spat out Ms. Green's document on regular paper. The printer then indicated it had another job that it wanted to print on legal paper. I overrode that too and out came another copy of Ms. Green's document.

I went and gave them to Ms. Green. And while I was at the computers, I began shutting down the few empty terminals we had and pointed out to the remaining innanet crowders that we were, in fact, officially closed now. Mr. W. Perfect looked up from his conversation with another `crowder and then went right back to talking. That `crowder's wife, also on a machine, then called me over and asked me how to center the phone numbers she'd lined up on a flyer she was working on. My match-strikin' hand began to itch.

"Okay, I'm printing again," Ms. Green said. I returned to the printer, hit GO again and another copy of Ms. Green's first document came out. Another followed before her second document finally printed. Soon there were five copies of it in total. (Lady, what part of "STOP. HITTING. EFFING. PRINT." don't you understand????!!!!) I passed the pile of them over to her. She looked them over, perhaps noted the wild look in my eyes and decided not to complain about paying for multiple copies of the same document.

"I'll just need to step out to the car to get the money," she said.

Again, if you've come to the library at the crack of closing time and intend on printing ANYTHING, you must have known in advance that you would have to pay for what you were going to print. On what planet, therefore, does it make any sense to leave all your money in the car?

Meanwhile, it was now five minutes past closing time, a fact I then indicated to Mr. W. Perfect and the two remaining innanet crowders when I went to shut the rest of the computers down. They looked up at me as though this was the first they'd heard of it, but they at least began paying lip service to wrapping up their shit.

The printer light was flashing again when I returned to the circ desk. I overrode the legal size again and it was another of Ms. Green's pages. The document that followed was as well, so I canceled the next one after that and the printer gave up. Now, I don't know which of the two documents I canceled actually belonged to the OTHER innanet crowder who was printing flyers, but no more documents came out so evidently I'd canceled it, too. When they came to pick up their prints, I had to then explain to them that they were basically SOL, as nothing was printing.

"Do you still have them up on your screen?" I asked.

Nope, she's shut the machine down and logged off, cause I'd told them we were closing. Ah, so now it's doubly my fault. Fortunately, they weren't mad that all the work they'd just done had vanished and said they'd come back another day.

I never saw Ms. Green return to pay us. She'd taken her initial set of prints with her, as well. My theory is that she'd gone to the car for money, discovered there wasn't any there to begin with and had done a runner, resolving to "get us next time. " Yep, back on the poop list she goes.

After we finally got rid of Mr. Perfect, who'd hung around to watch all the chaos, and then stood around making small talk with Ms. D, it was nearly fifteen minutes after closing.

On my way to check the men's room, I passed by our local history room and noted that there was still a patron sitting at the desk within it. He wore a hearing aid, which evidently wasn't in good working order, cause he'd not heard any of my many announcements about being closed. So I tapped him on the shoulder and informed him we'd closed quite some time back and apologized that this was the first time I'd noticed him. He graciously wrapped up his research, but then wanted us to look up a few more books for him before he left. I was all for being very rude to the man and kicking him out, but Ms. D stepped in and agreed to do his searches. After five minutes of this research, though, I began to wonder if I was going to have to finally give my long-chambered AFTER-CLOSING, GET-THE-EFF-OUT speech and scream, "Excuse me, but we have been closed for TWENTY MINUTES, now! You are abusing our good will!!!! I now have no alternative but to return this abuse in full!!!! Instead, I kept my back to him and busied myself counting the cash box. Mid- way through his next search request, he paused and then said he wouldn't take any more of our time and left. Wise man.

After I'd counted the cash box, we discovered a lone dollar tucked beneath one of the barcode scanners. I don't know for sure if Ms. Green left it there when I wasn't paying attention, but I'll assume she did. It was more than enough to pay for her prints, including the ones that printed after she went to get money.

The following day, I told Mrs. A we need an emergency power cutoff switch at the circ desk for not only each individual computer but the whole lot of them as well. As it stands, we'd either have to crawl under the computer desks to turn off the power strips, or go down to the basement to unplug the data cables. I want remote control Kill Switch access and I want it now.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #129

SETTING: My "liberry" on a very busy Monday, shortly after we open when we're at our busiest.

*RING*

ME— Tri-Metro County Library.

MS. GREEN— Hey, this is MS. GREEN. Are you busy? Is it busy there right now?

ME— Yeah. Actually, we're quite busy right now.

MS. GREEN— Oh, okay. Well, I had a couple of questions. Do you have a public fax machine?

ME— Yes.

MS. GREEN— And I'd just pay you for it?

ME— Yes.

MS. GREEN— Okay. I'll have to come up and do that. The other question was... well, someone told me that YOU do computer classes.

(And by the intonation of her voice when she said "YOU" I took it to mean that she had heard that I personally conducted computer classes, not the library in general, not that the library does either.)

ME— No, that is incorrect.

MS. GREEN— That is incorrect?

ME— Yes.

MS. GREEN— So, it's correct that it's incorrect?

(WTF?)

ME— Its... I do not do computer classes and we do not do computer classes here at this time.

MS. GREEN— Oh, okay. Well, do you have any recommendations for somewhere I could take them?

ME— I don't know of anything in the area. I know that LIBRARY IN NEXT COUNTY OVER THAT HAS THEIR OWN COMPUTER LAB DEDICATED TO THE TASK AND DOESN'T HAVE TO FIGHT WITH INNANET CROWDERS OVER THE USE OF THEM LIKE WE WOULD does them, but I don't know about anywhere around TRI-METRO.

MS. GREEN— But the community college does them?

ME— I don't know.

MS. GREEN— You don't know?

ME— I don't know. I am unaware of them doing them.

MS. GREEN— You're unaware of them doing them? (Pause) So what you're saying is that you don't know if the community college does them?

ME— (How many &%*#ing ways must I spell this out?) What I am saying is that I, JUICE AARON, am not personally aware of anyone conducting computer classes in the area. That said, I am also not personally aware that anyone is not conducting them, either. So the community college may well be teaching computer classes, I am just not aware of it and could not tell you authoritatively one way or the other. You might give them a call.

(Pause)

MS. GREEN— So you're saying that you don't know of any?

ME— That is what I'm saying.

MS. GREEN— But that you don't know that they're not?

ME— That is what I'm saying.

(You know, if Verizon were to develop a feature whereby I could set fire to other people over the telephone, I'd pay extra to have that as part of my monthly service.)

Actual Conversations I SWEAR Were Heard in Actual Libraries #107

SETTING: My "liberry" as Ms. Green's son comes to the circ desk to pay for a print of a draft of a school paper. Ms. Green herself is standing nearby, having finished helping her son at the computer moments earlier.

MS. GREEN— (Seeing son with paper) You printed it? You finished it already?

SON— I changed a few things to make it sound like I wrote it.

Pulling Teeth

We've had a string of royally bad Mondays over the past couple of months—Mondays in which a world's population of needy and innanet-seeking patrons have descended upon our heads, all signing up for computers at once and then demanding to know things such as "What do you mean they're all full and you don't know when I can have a computer?" and "No, really, when can I have a computer?" They've been the sort of Mondays that cause your teeth to grind and your match-striking fingers to itch.

Not so today. Sure, we've been open every single MLK day probably since the holiday began, but most of our patrons are blissfully unaware of this. In fact, in the past, I've had patrons who've walked into the building on MLK day, through a clearly unlocked and open door, approach the circ desk and ask me to my face if we're open. So our Monday was largely hassle free. Oh, we did plenty of computer and circulation business, but it felt more like an average afternoon, rather than the usual Monday Madness.

The only real annoyance during the day came from Ms. Green, who had some kind of brain fart that impaired her communication skills and caused her to make a run back toward her former status as a very annoying patron.

Ms. Green has been in a lot recently helping her son with his homework. And by "helping" I mean she's basically writing his book reports for him, taking dictation from her kid as to the actual events of the book. So, he's allegedly done the reading part, but is getting no chance to develop his writing skills to convey this. At one point in the afternoon, Ms. Green approached the circ desk and asked me if it would be okay for her to come behind the desk. Now, she'd just been behind the desk to venture into the staff workroom to talk to Mrs. B, so I wasn't sure why she was bothering to ask permission now. In fact, I'd barely heard her request at all because she was mousewhispering it to me, as though what she was conveying was the greatest secret in the world.

"Are those... those..." she whispered. Then she whispered several other things I genuinely couldn't understand at less than two feet from her face. Her gaze seemed to be staring back over my shoulder at something on the far end of the counter behind me.

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked.

She then whispered something to me EVEN MORE quietly.

"You're going to have to speak up. I cannot understand you," I whispered back.

"Letterhead," she whispered.

"I'm sorry?"

"Letterhead. Is that what it's...? Letterhead," she said, finally at full voice. Again, she was staring over my shoulder where I had by then guessed she'd spied some of our thank you letters to fund drive donating patrons, which were indeed printed on "liberry" letterhead and were stacked on the counter, waiting to be signed by a board member. I didn't know what she wanted with our letterhead but I wasn't going to give her any. In my experience, patrons wanting library letterhead are up to no good; and yes, we've had examples.

"Are those bills?" she then asked. Then several different thoughts seemed to come to her at once and she stuttered several unintelligible things at the same time followed by the phrase, "A letter."

"A letter?"

"A letter," she repeated, in a tone that suggested what she was saying somehow made perfect sense.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"A letter."

"A letter? I'm not sure I follow you."

"A LETTER," she said, emphasizing each word.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking me. What about a letter?"

"A letter," she said, not frustrated, just seemingly without a clue as to how to put her request into an actual interrogative phrase.

I looked at Ms. Green's daughter, who was standing there looking at me as if she somehow understood what was going on. "A letter?" I asked her. She offered no explanation. I returned my gaze to Ms. Green. "You're going to have to help me, here," I said. "I don't understand what you are asking me."

She paused here, her brain clearly firing behind her eyes, but nothing seemed to be connecting anywhere.

"Nevermind," she said.

"What?"

"Never mind." And, again, she wasn't angry, offended or frustrated. She'd just given up. Either I was too dim to figure out the very obvious thing she was implying or she had realized she was not capable of communicating on a higher level at that moment in time.

"No, really," I said. "I'm perfectly willing to help you out with whatever it is you need. I just do not understand what it is that you are asking me."

"Never mind," she said with a smile.

"Never mind?"

"Never mind."

Ms. Green walked away, leaving her daughter standing at the counter. The girl looked as though she were somehow waiting for me to say something to her.

"Can I help you, then?" I asked.

"Nope. I'm just standing here," she said. I imagine she sees a lot of this sort of thing and it probably amuses her. The daughter broke off from the desk and returned to the computer where her brother was busy not writing anything on his own.

I helped a couple of other patrons, but still felt a little odd about the exchange. I was no longer sure if it was my failure to be intuitive or her failure to #$&*ing spell out what she wanted, but I was beginning to suspect a bit of both. Not wishing to further damage our recently established truce of conflicting personality types, I went over to pretend to reboot a computer near Ms. Green's, hoping a thought might have by then congealed in her brain. And, glory be, it had!

Upon seeing me, Ms. Green explained in actual sentences that her son was in need of an example of what a letter looked like because he'd been assigned to write a letter to his favorite author. Instantly I became all service-oriented, and stuff, and fired up the letter wizard template in W0rd, which spat out an example of the format. This seemed to do the trick and Ms. Green thanked me for my help.

I walked away very quickly, lest my urge to pat her on her head like she was a four-year-old and say, "There, there, was that so hard?" assert itself further.

When Bad Patrons Go Good: Take 1 (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 3)

I've complained before about our annoying patron called Ms. Green. I should stress, though, that Ms. Green is not a Rogue, per se. She's never seemed to be a bad human being by our estimation. She's never qualified as mean, nasty or antagonizing to any degree. However, she has certainly proven difficult to deal with due to her ability to drive the staff to the edge of madness as we attempt very simple, standard "liberry" transactions with her only to have her question us at every turn. It's not that she doesn't trust what we're telling her, it's that she just doesn't seem to understand it. She's not dumb at all, but just doesn't quite "get" a lot of things that we take for granted as being pretty obvious.

In recent months, however, Ms. Green and I have come to a bit of an understanding. I came to understand that the major sources of friction between us are that her personality type and mine aren't the most compatible (she being a brassy, outgoing, semi-oblivious and often prone to distraction Yankee; and me, not so much) and that her perspective as a patron and mine as a "liberry" ass. don't always intersect. I also came to understand that Ms. Green has never seemed to hold a grudge about the times I've become annoyed with her or, more importantly, the times I've allowed it to show. In fact, while I may have been oblivious to it for a long while, Ms. Green has always been very nice and friendly to me, regardless of my behavior. Once I was able to wrap my head around this, my problems with her just sort of melted away and I suddenly found myself being friendly and nice back.

The last several time Ms. Green has been in for a visit, we've actually chatted for goodly stretches of time. And not chatted in that "I'm making small talk with a patron because it's polite and they won't go away" sort of chatted, but more of a genuine, unforced, friendly exchange. I tell you, I'm as shocked as anyone.

Oh, sure, Ms. Green still has idiosyncrasies that can be annoying, but given my shift in perspective, I just don't take much offense at them and pretty much roll right along. And Ms. Green, for her part, has actively taken to being less annoying by doing things like taking her cell phone calls outside and not allowing her phone to blare on for ages. It's freaky.

A further example of how helpful she has become came last night. Ms. Green was in with her kids, they browsed, we chatted, they browsed some more and toward closing time Ms. Green asked if we could make a couple of photocopies for her. Sure thing. Only she wound up not having the 50 cents in her pocket to pay for them then and there and asked if she could pay us tomorrow. Annoying? Eh, sure, but she's made this request before and I knew she was good for it. We let folks slide on paying like this all the time and they almost always pay us back.

Closing time arrived, Ms. Green and her kids checked out and left. While I was waiting for a few last minute computer stragglers, I went ahead and unlocked the book return and locked the front doors. Soon the computer users had finally left, though not before one of them had gone into my perfectly cleaned restroom, pissed up the urinal and didn't flush. I had discovered this act of bad-patronage, remedied it and was just leaving the restroom when I spied Ms. Green standing again at the circ desk. That didn't make sense, though, because I'd just locked the front door.

"Oh, here's the 50 cents I owed you," she said, placing it on the counter.

"How did you just..." I started.

"How did I what?" she began. Then light dawned in her eyes. "Oh. You thought you'd locked the front door, didn't you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Wow. It's a good thing you came back."

Sure enough, I'd managed to lock one of the doors but must have turned the key the wrong way in the other. That could have ended very badly for us, because despite all the signs declaring our hours, and despite the absence of interior lights, nearly every patron who approaches that door when we are indeed closed has to try both handles and yank on them for a while before the message finally sinks in.

Whew! Several strikes in the positive column for Ms. Green. I may have to move her to the Sundry Others column, or maybe add a "Good" Patrons column, just to make it up to her.

Ah, Inconsistently Executed Public Service, You are Indeed a Harsh Mistress

While I often feel the urge to scream at patrons, it's a rare occasion that I want to haul off and belt one. I'm still not convinced I really wanted to belt annoying patron Ms. Green, Sean Connery-style, but I was tempted to cram her cell-phone in her mouth and tatoo some basic library policy somewhere on her person that she might notice it.

Ms. Green came in to return a book. Before she could, though, she spotted a friend of hers and the two of them began conversing next to the circ-desk, recommending books to one another and having a good old time. No problem. We weren't busy and they weren't so much in the way. Then Ms. Green's cell phone went off.

"Oh, wait, let me see if this is someone I want to talk to," Ms. Green said, taking a gander at her phone's screen. She stared at it for a few seconds while its irritating and lengthy chirp continued at full volume. (And what company would willfully design a ringtone as annoying as THAT one? For that matter, why would anyone willingly choose THAT ringtone? "Let's see... Out of all the ringtone choices I have here, I think I'll pick the one that sounds like a convicted cockatiel's first night in Cell Block-D. Yeah, that'll be a good one.")

"Nah," she said, and set the phone down on the desk where it continued to chirp, long and loud. She didn't decline the call. She didn't put it on silent mode. She just let it do its thing and went back to her conversation over the racket. Whomever was calling was pretty intent on talking to Ms. Green, too, cause the phone continued to chirp for nearly half a minute. Strike one against Ms. Green.

Shortly, Ms. Green's friend went off to search for a book while Ms. Green remained at the desk, leafing through the book her friend had just returned and recommended. Ms. Green's own return lay on the desk before her.

"Are you returning that one?" I asked.

"Yes, but I need to wait and do it in a minute because I forgot my library card."

Now, what Ms. Green was indicating was that she wanted to wait until she was ready to check out before actually returning her book so that, when I scanned her book to check it in, her patron record would pop up on our screen, allowing us access to her record without her card and, she hoped, allowing her to check other stuff out on it. This is a back door method for checking books out without a card that we USED to employ back before our library consortium cracked down on such rules violations and which some of our staff, on occasion, still use even today when no one in authority is looking. Strictly speaking it's not allowed, especially for patrons with strikes against them.

"Um, I'm really not supposed to do that either," I told Ms. Green. "You need to have your library card to check out books." This is not news to Ms. Green, for we've all had the You need to have your card... conversation with her many a time before. It did not, however, stop her from giving me an appraising look, perhaps sizing up my potential for being swayed by either charm or hissy fit. She decided to try charm and began blinking at me in what I can only assume was an attempt at sympathy-seeking puppy dog-eyes.

"Reeeallllly?" she said. Blink blink blink.

Unmoved, I nodded.

She blinked at me some more, before adding, "This look's not working, huh?" She actually said that. I smiled politely, but gave no quarter.

I thought she might next try for "fit" but she only lightly complained that she really needed something to read before heading to the health club, but now wouldn't have anything and would be forced to read a magazine instead. Oh, the pain.

Y'know, if aquiring something to read was so all fired important to her when she decided to come to the library, it seems like she might have, oh, I don't know, brought her card with her, or something. I mean, isn't "Repeating the same behavior and expecting different results" the very definition of insanity? And beyond that, I continue to SO completely fail to understand patrons who keep doing things like this. Is it truly that much of a hassle to keep up with your library card?

After a few more minutes of browsing and chatting with her friend, it suddenly occurred to Ms. Green that she still had one other book checked out. Her manner suggested that she was afraid the book might be nearly overdue and in need of a renewal. I knew what was coming when she returned to the circ-desk.

"Oh, oh, I have this other book out I'd like to check on," she said. "It'll be under Mary Green." Then she did that frantic little hand wave at the monitor patrons always do when they want us to just work our magic with it when they don't have their card. It's the very sort of gesture that says, yeah, yeah, we all know you can look us up by name no matter what you tell us, so just make with the lookin' up and we'll all go home happy.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but I really do need your library card to access your patron record."

Ms. Green looked surprised for a second, as though I was telling her something she'd never heard before. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, as if she were about to say something, most likely about previous "liberry" ass.es who'd let her look up her record in just this manner despite it being against the rules. A mildly annoyed expression crossed her face and I thought she might be reconsidering her hissy fit, but she didn't attempt one nor a return to the puppy dog-eyes. What could she say? "But, Mrs. B let me get away with breaking the rules!"?

5th Week Event

As there are 5 Mondays in this month, I was careful to note, well in advance, that I was scheduled to work the last one today. Didn't need another repeat of the last Monday I nearly failed to work.

Other than an extended session of irritation from Ms. Green—in which she hogged up all the circ desk counter space, taking her time as she wrapped a package to mail out to somebody, like we were the post office, or something, and attempted to give me a bit of trouble over a hold she was supposed to have picked up by last Thursday (a date she set) but which she rolled in to pick up today only to find we'd given it to the community college as an inter"liberry" loan last Friday, not to mention interrupting transactions I was trying to complete with other patrons, y'know, the ones who had to squeeze in on either side of her just to get their books on the desk to check out—not much went awry. It was the usual Monday Madness, minus most of the madness.

Oh, and Birthday Lady phoned. She wanted to know the birthday of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock, who died last week. The answer, according to Wikipedia, is April 11, 1978. She mentioned that she was a big Cardinals fan. I believe this marks the first non-Hollywood birthday she's asked about.