It's our penultimate week of Summa Reading `06, but already we're clawing our way toward the end with anticipation. Once again, our demonic little friend Kayla is in attendance. (See episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4.) Oddly, though, our troubles this year aren't due to little Kayla.
Mrs. C and Mrs. B began complaining a week ago that while Kayla was surprisingly well-behaved in Summa Reading, her mom and little sister are driving them mad. Mom insists on accompanying Kayla to the Summa Reading sessions, not to mention dragging little sister along with her. Once in attendance, though, mom doesn't really do much other than lay around. Literally. Mrs. C said that during craft time last week, Kayla's mom stepped out into the center of the ring of craft-assembling children and lay down in the middle of the floor for a nap. Meanwhile, little sister was allowed to run amok through the activity room, terrorizing everyone by stomping on the Summa Reading kids' crafts, or even on the Summa Reading kids themselves when they thoughtlessly allowed their hands to stay within Sis's stomping range. Mom didn't even attempt her usual ineffective, "No, no, mommy said `stop that,' " leaving it to Mrs. C and Mrs B to keep Sis from destroying everything.
After last week, it was Mrs. C's stated intention that the next time Kayla and crew arrived (late as usual, no doubt) that she would take the mom aside and tell her that we think Kayla will do fine by herself and that she, the mom, is welcome to take Sis and wait downstairs. And this is precisely what Mrs.C did yesterday. According to Mrs. A, who watched safely from her office, Mrs. C took Kayla from her mother before they could even make it to the top of the stairs, ran off with her and closed the activity room door firmly behind her. Kayla's mom then stood on the stairs looking worriedly up at the closed door, as though she could hardly stand not being in there to aid in the chaos.
So for an hour, I got to watch Mom and Sis mill around the children's room picking out books. Little sis hasn't quite reached the level of destruction capable by her older sister, but I'm sure she's just working up to it.
When Summa Reading was over, Kayla picked out nearly her weight in board books which she marched up to the desk with, announcing she wanted to buy them. Her mom tried to explain that she already had several other books picked out and that they could only take what they had room for on both her library card and Kayla's. Before they could check them out, though, Mom said they needed to fetch all their returns from the car to check-in. I was afraid this would mean Mom was going to leave the little ones in our care while she fled to the car for a much needed break. Kayla had already been trying her best to pop all our inflatable animals in the kids room by violently attempting to ride them. ("No, Kayla, don't ride the animals. No, Kayla, mommy said don't ride the animals. Kayla? Are you listening, Kayla? Kayla?") Fortunately for us, mom took both kids to the car with her for the search.
After ten minutes of blissful silence, during which I pre-date-stamped their books for added speed to their departure and during which no animals were menaced nor any little sister voices raised in spine-rending wail, they returned with their check-ins, which I then checked in. Afterwards, I looked up at them expectantly only to find expectant looks from them already.
"Um, do you have your library cards?" I asked.
"No, I don't think so," Kayla's mom said. Expectant look, expectant look.
"I'm sorry, but you do need your library card in order to check books out."
"Oh, really?" Kayla's mom said without any of the usual conviction of people genuinely surprised at this news. "Well, let me see." She began leafing through her wallet, occasionally gesturing other patrons around her, as the line at the desk was backed up by this point. Meanwhile, little sis had discovered the two brooms we keep beside the front door and was walking around with them. I wasn't worried, at first, as it gave me a chance to make the joke, "Are you going to sweep up for us?" Then she dropped one of the brooms and began swinging the other one with a force that, had she been a baseball player, would have got her brought up on charges of `roiding. One such swing nearly took off her sister's head and another nearly took out the glass of our front door. Mom ignored her and continued to search her wallet, leaving Mrs. A to bravely run over and disarm the child.
"Maybe they're in the car," Mom said. She gathered up kids and went to the car, but came back far sooner than a lengthy search would have taken. Little sister was now wailing again.
"I don't have the cards," mom said.
"Well, I'm sorry, but we do require a library card to check out books."
"All right, then," Mom said, looking downcast and without a friend in the world. "I guess we'll just come back some other time." Pause, then eyes flash up, full of hope.
"Okay," I said.
Mom stood there at the desk for several more seconds, as though waiting for me to relent. Little did she know, I am relentless. Meanwhile Kayla had returned to the children's room to pop more animals so Mom went in seemingly to collect her. She told Kayla to stop jumping on the animals because they had to leave. Next, she added that they wouldn't be getting any library books because they didn't have their library cards. I expected Kayla to freak out and burst into loud tears at this. In fact, I think Mom was counting on that reaction too, hoping a tantrum incident would give us added incentive to let them check out anyway. However, Kayla didn't take the bait and went right on happily squashing our plastic elephant into the floor.
Instead of collecting Kayla and leaving as she'd just said they needed to do, Mom stepped back into the main room, stood in the middle of the main room's floor and held screaming little sis in her arms there for a full five minutes. There was no indication as to why, she just stood there and let the toddler scream herself silly. Wail, wail, wail, spine-clench, spine-clench, spine-clench. Occasionally, Mom would glance pittifully in the direction of the circ-desk, leading me to again reach the conclusion that Kayla's mom was intentionally inflicting her children on us so we'd relent just to get them all out of the building. It was extortion, and brilliantly played. However, I became all the more determined that my administration would not give in to terror. I stayed planted at the desk. There was no danger of us letting her check out sans card, but there was the possibility that someone on staff would take pity on Mom and let her use one of their cards to check out. Wouldn't be me, but I could sort of see Mrs. A possibly offering just to make the screaming stop.
After five minutes of screaming, Mom approached the desk again. I'd stepped away from the computer and was speaking to Mrs. A back at the window. Mrs. J was now nearest to the computer, so mom tried to deal exclusively with her in a very low voice. Unfortunately for Mom, Mrs. J is hard of hearing. After a couple of low-volume failed attempts, Kayla's mom finally explained at full-volume to Mrs. J that she wanted to check out the pile of books that was still on the desk, but that she'd forgotten their library cards. Hopeful look, hopeful look.
"Ma'am, we cannot check books out to you without a library card," I said, stepping over.
"But I have a library card," Mom said, pointing at the computer.
"No. We have to have the physical card."
"If you like, we can hold these for you until you come back," Mrs. A offered.
Mrs. B then came over to join the crowd behind the desk and asked if the little sister had a card yet. Mom looked hopeful at this, but then Mrs. B pointed out that they would only be able to 10 books on that card and not the full 20 she wanted, so Mom decided not to get any extra cards at all.
"We'll just come back on Saturday," Mom said.
"We're not holding those until Saturday," Mrs. A said. "I thought you meant you would come back later today."
Mom adopted a sad tone and said they lived too far away to make a second trip back.
"Okay, well, maybe you can find them next time," Mrs. A said. We then collectively dispersed from the desk, our business concluded with no further need for discussion, leaving Mom to look unhappy. After Kayla and family finally left, a good ten minutes later, Mrs. A said that she was worried that she'd offended Kayla's mom by saying we wouldn't hold the books for two days. (It really wouldn't have been an issue had there only been a couple of books, but our hold bin is packed to the gills right now and there isn't room for 20 extra books in there.)
"So what if she is mad?" I said. "What's she going to do? Not come back next week? Yeah, that'll show us."
Showing posts with label Summer Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer Reading. Show all posts
Friday, July 21, 2006
Friday, July 30, 2004
Here's your handbasket, now get in line.
Well it was plenty peaceful at the "liberry" Thursday. The computer
traffic had calmed down and the final day of Summer Reading went
splendidly. Unfortunately several other things went to hell at
work.
It appears Miss E may no longer be with us as an employee. It's not that anyone wants her gone or even wants to fire her, but she's not leaving anyone a lot of choice at this point.
Last Thursday, her mom called in to say she'd be out for all of her weekend shifts due to being sick. No prob. We covered just fine. However, an anonymous male also called shortly after her mother's call and told us the same thing. We assume this is her boyfriend, but we don't know for sure. And neither call mentioned anything about her missing the rest of her shifts for the remainder of this week. It's now been a solid week since she's been in and she's not phoned or returned any calls or messages.
We've checked into it enough to determine that she is still alive, but her refusal to call Mrs. A is more than a bit odd. There are other circumstances that may shed light on this, but I'm not going to go into them now, if ever. Most of what we think we know about the situation is gossipy speculation at best, which Miss E would not wish to be repeated. Rest assured, there's Drama O' Plenty at every turn.
Meanwhile, I'll be picking up some extra hours as I fill in for Miss E's Sunday shifts.
It appears Miss E may no longer be with us as an employee. It's not that anyone wants her gone or even wants to fire her, but she's not leaving anyone a lot of choice at this point.
Last Thursday, her mom called in to say she'd be out for all of her weekend shifts due to being sick. No prob. We covered just fine. However, an anonymous male also called shortly after her mother's call and told us the same thing. We assume this is her boyfriend, but we don't know for sure. And neither call mentioned anything about her missing the rest of her shifts for the remainder of this week. It's now been a solid week since she's been in and she's not phoned or returned any calls or messages.
We've checked into it enough to determine that she is still alive, but her refusal to call Mrs. A is more than a bit odd. There are other circumstances that may shed light on this, but I'm not going to go into them now, if ever. Most of what we think we know about the situation is gossipy speculation at best, which Miss E would not wish to be repeated. Rest assured, there's Drama O' Plenty at every turn.
Meanwhile, I'll be picking up some extra hours as I fill in for Miss E's Sunday shifts.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Summer Reading Day 9
I woke up Monday thinking, Joy! It's Monday. It's Summer Reading Day. And I get to run the desk all by my lonesome!
That's right, Mrs. A was out of town at a meeting so I had to run the circ-desk by myself while the rest of the staff was outside conducting a water fight with the Summer Readers. So in addition to the usual Monday Madness, my day was punctuated by the occasional soggy dripping child padding through in search of books. I don't know how many friendly fire water casualties we had among our book population, but I'd imagine there were some.
One child even wanted to check out our gigantic Norman Rockwell retrospective, a book I pray was protected in the dry confines of our activities room before the water fight started. In addition to requiring a good sized wheelbarrow to move, this book is so huge that we don't have any plastic jacket cover big enough to fit its dustjacket. So it's one of the only books in the place not protected by plastic. A water fight goes down around it and we're talking serious collateral damage.
As busy as it was--what with fifty librarians and sundry relatives phoning up YET AGAIN to ask if the people they knew good and well were outside involved with Summer Reading could speak to them for a minute--my only real trouble came late in the day, after the Summer Reading crowd had left. A patron had been browsing the shelves for twenty minutes or so before bringing her finds up to the desk and giving me her name to check out.
"Um, do you have your library card, ma'am?" I asked.
"No. It's back home. Why?"
"Well, erm... we kind of need your card to check books out. It's part of the policy for our new system."
"What? You're kidding, right?" she said.
"No, ma'am. I'm afraid not. We really do need the card."
"But my card's at home. It's back in NEIGHBORHING county. You mean I'm going to have to drive all the way back to NEIGHBORING county just to check out a few books?"
"Well, ma'am, I'm not saying you have to do that, but we DO need the card to check books out to you."
Fire flashed through the woman's eyes. She was getting hot about this. She left her books on the desk and started moving toward the door, talking back at me over her shoulder and occasionally stopping to give me fiery glances as she went.
"So even though I could just show you my driver's license and prove that I am who I say I am, I can't check out any books?!"
"Oh, well, ma'am, if you..."
"This is just ridiculous! I already drove over here once today, then saw the sign saying you didn't open until 1 and had to turn around and go back home!" She was really screaming now and was quite angry.
"Ma'am... if you..." I tried to start again.
"Now I have to drive all the way back home and come back for a few books?!"
"Ma'am..." I said, a bit louder than I meant. "Ma'am, you do have your driver's license on you?"
"Yes!"
"Well, I'll take that, then," I said. Sure, it was against the policy by letter, but if I could match her drivers license number to the one in her patron record it was just as good as having her card there. That's part of the whole reason we require driver's license numbers in the first place.
This instantly took the wind out of her sails. Suddenly, she didn't have anything to argue about and was forced to realize just what a big deal she had been making about it all in the first place and became suitably apologetic.
She began fishing out her ID and I asked her name so I could go ahead and bring up her record. Only when I checked, there was no such record for her to be found. It was only then that I realized she didn't even have one of our new cards. I had to direct her to our applications, feeling terribly silly in the process for not having realized my error before. By now the woman was feeling so bad about screaming at me, though, that she completely didn't care that it had been my error and gladly filled out a form.
That's right, Mrs. A was out of town at a meeting so I had to run the circ-desk by myself while the rest of the staff was outside conducting a water fight with the Summer Readers. So in addition to the usual Monday Madness, my day was punctuated by the occasional soggy dripping child padding through in search of books. I don't know how many friendly fire water casualties we had among our book population, but I'd imagine there were some.
One child even wanted to check out our gigantic Norman Rockwell retrospective, a book I pray was protected in the dry confines of our activities room before the water fight started. In addition to requiring a good sized wheelbarrow to move, this book is so huge that we don't have any plastic jacket cover big enough to fit its dustjacket. So it's one of the only books in the place not protected by plastic. A water fight goes down around it and we're talking serious collateral damage.
As busy as it was--what with fifty librarians and sundry relatives phoning up YET AGAIN to ask if the people they knew good and well were outside involved with Summer Reading could speak to them for a minute--my only real trouble came late in the day, after the Summer Reading crowd had left. A patron had been browsing the shelves for twenty minutes or so before bringing her finds up to the desk and giving me her name to check out.
"Um, do you have your library card, ma'am?" I asked.
"No. It's back home. Why?"
"Well, erm... we kind of need your card to check books out. It's part of the policy for our new system."
"What? You're kidding, right?" she said.
"No, ma'am. I'm afraid not. We really do need the card."
"But my card's at home. It's back in NEIGHBORHING county. You mean I'm going to have to drive all the way back to NEIGHBORING county just to check out a few books?"
"Well, ma'am, I'm not saying you have to do that, but we DO need the card to check books out to you."
Fire flashed through the woman's eyes. She was getting hot about this. She left her books on the desk and started moving toward the door, talking back at me over her shoulder and occasionally stopping to give me fiery glances as she went.
"So even though I could just show you my driver's license and prove that I am who I say I am, I can't check out any books?!"
"Oh, well, ma'am, if you..."
"This is just ridiculous! I already drove over here once today, then saw the sign saying you didn't open until 1 and had to turn around and go back home!" She was really screaming now and was quite angry.
"Ma'am... if you..." I tried to start again.
"Now I have to drive all the way back home and come back for a few books?!"
"Ma'am..." I said, a bit louder than I meant. "Ma'am, you do have your driver's license on you?"
"Yes!"
"Well, I'll take that, then," I said. Sure, it was against the policy by letter, but if I could match her drivers license number to the one in her patron record it was just as good as having her card there. That's part of the whole reason we require driver's license numbers in the first place.
This instantly took the wind out of her sails. Suddenly, she didn't have anything to argue about and was forced to realize just what a big deal she had been making about it all in the first place and became suitably apologetic.
She began fishing out her ID and I asked her name so I could go ahead and bring up her record. Only when I checked, there was no such record for her to be found. It was only then that I realized she didn't even have one of our new cards. I had to direct her to our applications, feeling terribly silly in the process for not having realized my error before. By now the woman was feeling so bad about screaming at me, though, that she completely didn't care that it had been my error and gladly filled out a form.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Summer Reading Day 7
I wasn't scheduled to be at work at all for
today's Summer Reading desk-riding session. I figured if they needed me
they would have asked. When I got back home from some errands, though,
there was a message on my answering machine from Mrs. A saying it would
be perfectly all right with her if I wanted to come in. There was a
hint of desperation in her voice, so I rolled on over. It was a good
thing, too, because today brought a more traditional level of
Monday/Summer Reading Day chaos than the past two weeks, not to mention a
few surprise guests.
It never ceases to both amaze and irritate me how many people, who truly should know better, call to speak to my fellow employees during Summer Reading Day. I understand that not every caller realizes this is any big thing, but I'm talking other librarians who have summer reading programs of their own and know how intensive and non-conducive to taking phone calls such programs are. Yet every single week, who calls? Other librarians.
THEM: Is Mrs. C there?
ME: Yes, but she's busy with Summer Reading right now and cannot come to the phone. May I take a message?
Multiply that by about five times and that's the average for that little phone script.
And if it's not librarians, it's relatives and/or significant others of our staff who call. And again, it's not just a one-time "Oops, I forgot" sort of call, it's a weekly "I'm completely oblivious to the fact that this scenario has played out exactly this way for the past four weeks" sort of call. I want to scream, "Dammit, you people know better! Quit EFFing CALLING!!"
I mentioned this to Mrs. A. She said she's had the same problem for much of the past decade and it never stops. One fellow librarian from another county made it a point to call every Thursday morning during Story Hour. Thursday mornings are perhaps the only time during the regular year that Mrs. A is chained to the circulation desk while the rest of the staff is wrangling kids. In this state, she is unable to answer any detailed questions from other libraries because all the answers are upstairs in her office. So every Thursday morning for months this librarian would call and every time Mrs. A would tell her she would have to call back later. Mrs. A even asked her not to call on Thursday mornings, to no avail. Finally, Mrs. A point blank told the woman to stop calling on Thursday mornings. The following Thursday, guess who called? Mrs. A said their conversation went something like this...
MRS. A: What day is it?
OTHER LIBRARIAN: Thursday.
MRS. A: What time is it?
OTHER LIBRARIAN: Ten thirty a.m.
MRS. A: And what is the significance of those two pieces of information?
OTHER LIBRARIAN: Um... I'm not supposed to call you on Thursday mornings?
MRS. A: Riiiiiight!
So after fielding similar calls from about four people who knew better, I was in a fantastic mood.
It was about to get even better.
After about an hour of steady circulation, I looked up from checking out a book to find Chester the (Potential) Molester standing not seven feet from me in the middle of our main room. I was unhappy to see him, to say the least, and tried my damnedest to let him know this with what I hoped was a multi-daggered stare. If it had any effect, it was to make him start stammering.
"I was... I was just... I wanted to use a computer," he said.
Mrs. A stepped up and told him, "They're all full right now."
This wasn't a lie--the computers really were all full and none were due to open up any time soon. I don't think either of us were prepared to let Chester wait around for one, regardless.
"Oh," Chester said. "I guess I should come back another day."
"Yeah. I think that would be a good idea," I said. I was mad, but mostly I'm still smarting for failing to banish him for all time during our last major encounter.
What happened next, though, surprised me. Instead of turning tail and leaving, Chester walked closer to where I was at the circulation desk. I can't be completely sure, but it looked like he had tears in his eyes, or had at least been crying recently. His eyes were certainly red, puffy and watery-looking, so maybe he'd had a recent allergy attack. I somehow don't think so.
"I... I just wanted to apologize for... mumble mumble mumble," Chester said in a low voice.
"What?"
"I... I want to apologize for... if... if I scared any girls... last time," Chester said.
I couldn't believe it! He was actually trying to apologize--not for staring lasciviously at our young patrons, mind you, but for startling any of them while doing so. What was this, some kind of twelve step pedophile program? Step 1: You must apologize to all the library assistants who got pissed off that you were ogling their underage patrons? Step 2: Stop ogling their underage patrons!
Then, like a dog lifting an injured paw, he held out one of his hands for me to shake. I'm very proud to say I had enough presence of mind to keep from shaking it, even out of reflex. No, sir, I will not be accepting an apology from that bloated sack of shit! Not even if I witnessed him wash it first would I ever shake his hand. Moreover, I refuse to give him any reason to believe we're at all cool with his presence in our library.
There passed an awkward moment, during which Chester realized that I had no intention of touching his greasy paw. He withdrew it, then offered it back again, then withdrew it again, as though maybe I might reconsider, then again, no. Then he stood there looking back at me with a kind of hurt, swollen-eyed expression that failed to stir any sympathy in me.
My only response to him was to raise my own hand and give him, not the bird, but instead the kind of finger-flapping bye bye wave favored by toddlers worldwide. Chester turned to the door and went bye byes.
After a minute of standing there fuming, I tagged out from the circulation desk and went outside to make sure he was gone. Mrs. C said he drove off pretty fast, but had made it a point to park his car--poorly, once again--clear on the other side of the Summer Reading activities so he'd have an excuse to walk by the kids on his way to and from.
Since my last confrontation with him, the library staff has been debating whether or not he would ever return. It was pretty much a half and half split between the Yes's and the No's, with me in the middle as a Probably. I guess we have our answer now. We also need to figure out what our new Chester policy will be.
Now that the cards are on the table, do we let him back in?
I know that a number of libraries have policies allowing them to ban patrons from the building, and we've even been known to ban people before ourselves. Where are we going to fall on this guy?
It never ceases to both amaze and irritate me how many people, who truly should know better, call to speak to my fellow employees during Summer Reading Day. I understand that not every caller realizes this is any big thing, but I'm talking other librarians who have summer reading programs of their own and know how intensive and non-conducive to taking phone calls such programs are. Yet every single week, who calls? Other librarians.
THEM: Is Mrs. C there?
ME: Yes, but she's busy with Summer Reading right now and cannot come to the phone. May I take a message?
Multiply that by about five times and that's the average for that little phone script.
And if it's not librarians, it's relatives and/or significant others of our staff who call. And again, it's not just a one-time "Oops, I forgot" sort of call, it's a weekly "I'm completely oblivious to the fact that this scenario has played out exactly this way for the past four weeks" sort of call. I want to scream, "Dammit, you people know better! Quit EFFing CALLING!!"
I mentioned this to Mrs. A. She said she's had the same problem for much of the past decade and it never stops. One fellow librarian from another county made it a point to call every Thursday morning during Story Hour. Thursday mornings are perhaps the only time during the regular year that Mrs. A is chained to the circulation desk while the rest of the staff is wrangling kids. In this state, she is unable to answer any detailed questions from other libraries because all the answers are upstairs in her office. So every Thursday morning for months this librarian would call and every time Mrs. A would tell her she would have to call back later. Mrs. A even asked her not to call on Thursday mornings, to no avail. Finally, Mrs. A point blank told the woman to stop calling on Thursday mornings. The following Thursday, guess who called? Mrs. A said their conversation went something like this...
MRS. A: What day is it?
OTHER LIBRARIAN: Thursday.
MRS. A: What time is it?
OTHER LIBRARIAN: Ten thirty a.m.
MRS. A: And what is the significance of those two pieces of information?
OTHER LIBRARIAN: Um... I'm not supposed to call you on Thursday mornings?
MRS. A: Riiiiiight!
So after fielding similar calls from about four people who knew better, I was in a fantastic mood.
It was about to get even better.
After about an hour of steady circulation, I looked up from checking out a book to find Chester the (Potential) Molester standing not seven feet from me in the middle of our main room. I was unhappy to see him, to say the least, and tried my damnedest to let him know this with what I hoped was a multi-daggered stare. If it had any effect, it was to make him start stammering.
"I was... I was just... I wanted to use a computer," he said.
Mrs. A stepped up and told him, "They're all full right now."
This wasn't a lie--the computers really were all full and none were due to open up any time soon. I don't think either of us were prepared to let Chester wait around for one, regardless.
"Oh," Chester said. "I guess I should come back another day."
"Yeah. I think that would be a good idea," I said. I was mad, but mostly I'm still smarting for failing to banish him for all time during our last major encounter.
What happened next, though, surprised me. Instead of turning tail and leaving, Chester walked closer to where I was at the circulation desk. I can't be completely sure, but it looked like he had tears in his eyes, or had at least been crying recently. His eyes were certainly red, puffy and watery-looking, so maybe he'd had a recent allergy attack. I somehow don't think so.
"I... I just wanted to apologize for... mumble mumble mumble," Chester said in a low voice.
"What?"
"I... I want to apologize for... if... if I scared any girls... last time," Chester said.
I couldn't believe it! He was actually trying to apologize--not for staring lasciviously at our young patrons, mind you, but for startling any of them while doing so. What was this, some kind of twelve step pedophile program? Step 1: You must apologize to all the library assistants who got pissed off that you were ogling their underage patrons? Step 2: Stop ogling their underage patrons!
Then, like a dog lifting an injured paw, he held out one of his hands for me to shake. I'm very proud to say I had enough presence of mind to keep from shaking it, even out of reflex. No, sir, I will not be accepting an apology from that bloated sack of shit! Not even if I witnessed him wash it first would I ever shake his hand. Moreover, I refuse to give him any reason to believe we're at all cool with his presence in our library.
There passed an awkward moment, during which Chester realized that I had no intention of touching his greasy paw. He withdrew it, then offered it back again, then withdrew it again, as though maybe I might reconsider, then again, no. Then he stood there looking back at me with a kind of hurt, swollen-eyed expression that failed to stir any sympathy in me.
My only response to him was to raise my own hand and give him, not the bird, but instead the kind of finger-flapping bye bye wave favored by toddlers worldwide. Chester turned to the door and went bye byes.
After a minute of standing there fuming, I tagged out from the circulation desk and went outside to make sure he was gone. Mrs. C said he drove off pretty fast, but had made it a point to park his car--poorly, once again--clear on the other side of the Summer Reading activities so he'd have an excuse to walk by the kids on his way to and from.
Since my last confrontation with him, the library staff has been debating whether or not he would ever return. It was pretty much a half and half split between the Yes's and the No's, with me in the middle as a Probably. I guess we have our answer now. We also need to figure out what our new Chester policy will be.
Now that the cards are on the table, do we let him back in?
I know that a number of libraries have policies allowing them to ban patrons from the building, and we've even been known to ban people before ourselves. Where are we going to fall on this guy?
Monday, July 12, 2004
Summer Reading Day 5 (or "AHHHH!!! MY EYES!! MY BEAUTIFUL, PRECIOUS EYES!!! WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!! WHY, WHY, WHY?!!!")
Summer Reading Day 5 was suspiciously unchaotic. We didn't even have any of the usual Monday Madness. It was downright peaceful.
"Well, I guess that means we won!" Mrs. A said.
"Looks like it," I said. "Word has finally gotten out not to come to the library on Monday."
Course the fact that we had most of the parking spaces out front blocked off with bright orange road cones so the kids would have space to draw with their chalk might have had something to do with it too. We decided that, if we'd known that before now, we would have been using cones on Mondays LONG ago.
Toward the end of my shift, the door opened and Parka came through it. Instead of his namesake puffy white Michelin Man parka (which he hasn't actually worn since late April) or his usual too thin white t-shirt, Parka was wearing a bright red tank top. While I'm all for diversity in clothing, I SO did not want to see the shag carpet of body hair covering the entirety of his torso that was accented, nay HIGHLIGHTED, by his low cut red tank-top. We're talking front AND back covered in an inches-thick layer of dark fur. You could not see the man's skin from the shoulders on down.
I equate the sight to that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Jon Lovitz impersonating Today Show movie critic Gene Schalit where they showed a closeup of his chest hair with bugs crawling through it. It was exactly that nasty.
"Well, I guess that means we won!" Mrs. A said.
"Looks like it," I said. "Word has finally gotten out not to come to the library on Monday."
Course the fact that we had most of the parking spaces out front blocked off with bright orange road cones so the kids would have space to draw with their chalk might have had something to do with it too. We decided that, if we'd known that before now, we would have been using cones on Mondays LONG ago.
Toward the end of my shift, the door opened and Parka came through it. Instead of his namesake puffy white Michelin Man parka (which he hasn't actually worn since late April) or his usual too thin white t-shirt, Parka was wearing a bright red tank top. While I'm all for diversity in clothing, I SO did not want to see the shag carpet of body hair covering the entirety of his torso that was accented, nay HIGHLIGHTED, by his low cut red tank-top. We're talking front AND back covered in an inches-thick layer of dark fur. You could not see the man's skin from the shoulders on down.
I equate the sight to that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Jon Lovitz impersonating Today Show movie critic Gene Schalit where they showed a closeup of his chest hair with bugs crawling through it. It was exactly that nasty.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Summer Reading Day 3
Since we were closed for holidays on Monday, Summer reading got
shifted to Tuesday of this week. Mrs. A asked me to come in and help
run the desk with her again. I was expecting the usual Chaos Hell thing
to occur again, as it on Day 1 of Summer Reading, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
It was wonderful! Just an absolute joy. The kids were polite and waited their turn in line. They all still had their new library cards from last week. The adults were also nice and there weren't even all that many of them who needed new cards.
We put Mrs. J on computer sign up duty, but I don't think we even needed to do that. We had everything under firm control and even had a little downtime to relax. Hell, we were so hip to the scene that Mrs. A let me leave early to run home and make my signature dish potato salad for a party my writers group was having.
On Wednesday, Mrs. C asked me how things went for Day 3 and if it was as bad as it had been on Day 1.
"No, Tuesday went great," I said.
And then it hit me: the reason everything is awful and chaotic during Monday Summer Reading days is because they take place on a MONDAY! Mondays are EVIL enough all by themselves without the added complication of a hundred kids running around, snarling at one another for taking the last Junie B. Jones book. Why the hell are we compounding our problems by doing Summer Reading on Monday when Tuesday is SO MUCH BETTER?!
Mrs. C had the answer. It seems some time ago a certain librarian type person (*COUGH* *COUGH* *MRS A* *COUGH*) used to insist that Summer Reading be scheduled primarily on days when she didn't work so that she wouldn't have to work it. She never used to work Mondays so that's when it landed. I don't know if she was just phobic about kids, or what, but Mrs. A has never had a lot to do with any children's programming we do. (I'm not pointing fingers, cause I don't really either.) Somewhere along the line, though, she began working the desk during it to free up other staff members to help outside. And now she's wrangled me into helping her out of necessity. So my big question is: If she's going to work the desk during Summer Reading anyway, why don't we just move it to Tuesday when it's so much more bearable than leaving it on the most horrible day of the week?
Mrs. C says it's also because she herself can't imagine having it on any other day than Monday. To her, it just seems right. I told her that was crazy talk and that I'm going to become a Tuesday Lobbyist until we get it moved. Perhaps if I threaten to come down with a Mondaycentric five-week intestinal illness that prevents me from working the desk, they'll start listening.
It was wonderful! Just an absolute joy. The kids were polite and waited their turn in line. They all still had their new library cards from last week. The adults were also nice and there weren't even all that many of them who needed new cards.
We put Mrs. J on computer sign up duty, but I don't think we even needed to do that. We had everything under firm control and even had a little downtime to relax. Hell, we were so hip to the scene that Mrs. A let me leave early to run home and make my signature dish potato salad for a party my writers group was having.
On Wednesday, Mrs. C asked me how things went for Day 3 and if it was as bad as it had been on Day 1.
"No, Tuesday went great," I said.
And then it hit me: the reason everything is awful and chaotic during Monday Summer Reading days is because they take place on a MONDAY! Mondays are EVIL enough all by themselves without the added complication of a hundred kids running around, snarling at one another for taking the last Junie B. Jones book. Why the hell are we compounding our problems by doing Summer Reading on Monday when Tuesday is SO MUCH BETTER?!
Mrs. C had the answer. It seems some time ago a certain librarian type person (*COUGH* *COUGH* *MRS A* *COUGH*) used to insist that Summer Reading be scheduled primarily on days when she didn't work so that she wouldn't have to work it. She never used to work Mondays so that's when it landed. I don't know if she was just phobic about kids, or what, but Mrs. A has never had a lot to do with any children's programming we do. (I'm not pointing fingers, cause I don't really either.) Somewhere along the line, though, she began working the desk during it to free up other staff members to help outside. And now she's wrangled me into helping her out of necessity. So my big question is: If she's going to work the desk during Summer Reading anyway, why don't we just move it to Tuesday when it's so much more bearable than leaving it on the most horrible day of the week?
Mrs. C says it's also because she herself can't imagine having it on any other day than Monday. To her, it just seems right. I told her that was crazy talk and that I'm going to become a Tuesday Lobbyist until we get it moved. Perhaps if I threaten to come down with a Mondaycentric five-week intestinal illness that prevents me from working the desk, they'll start listening.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Summer Reading Day Two
Once again, I was drafted to come in early to help man the desk for Summer Reading, Week One, Day Two.
I started off by getting there just before 9. Through the window, I spied the rest of the staff gathered in the main room so I began pounding on the front door screaming, "LEMME IN! I GOTTA USE THE INNA-NET!" Unfortunately, I forgot there were several Summer Reading moms sitting in their cars, until I turned and caught some disapproving looks from them.
We have two Summer Reading sessions per week. Today was the under 6 crowd's turn. It actually went much smoother than Monday, though we're not entirely sure why. It might be because the little kids weren't as interested in checking books out as the older ones, so we only saw a handful of them at the desk. Mostly they stayed upstairs, where it sounded as though they were trying to jump through the floor. Course, as old as this place is, nearly any foot traffic up there sounds like that.
We were all prepared for the usual mass chaos, though. We even stationed Mrs. H at her own little desk in the computer hall where she had the sign-up sheet and computer timers. Our plan was to shuffle the usual internet crowd that way so we could concentrate on making cards and helping patrons. Naturally, since we were prepared for them, hardly anyone needed a computer this morning. Still, we're planning to put that system into further practice soon. A guy has recently come in to talk to Mrs. A about working off some hours of community service he'd received. We're planning on sticking him in the computer area. Maybe I can get him to start giving Parka dirty looks, just to save me time.
What little turmoil we did have today was due to a sudden rush on the bathroom by seemingly everyone in the building. Even I was trying to get in there, though only to retrieve our ladder for the local artists to put up their work in our above-the-shelves mini art gallery, which rotates monthly. I tried four times to get the ladder, but every time I would go back, I'd knock and hear a different voice say, "Just a minute..." So the artists had quite a wait.
We also had to dismiss Ron the Ripper, today. No, I didn't become enraged at for his ripping up our magazines and go "Chester" on his ass. Instead, when Ron came in with his aid, Mrs. A stopped them and explained that there were no tables upstairs for him to sit at to rip up said magazines due to Summer Reading having taken over the space. He didn't even give us a single caveman growl of disappointment. He just turned and left without a fight. I guess he was feeling "too cool" for that, in his stylin' new bucket hat, which was made from a very loud patterned fabric that looked like it would be more at home as a pair of Bermuda shorts than a hat.
Damn, that reminds me... I still haven't revealed his secret identity.
I started off by getting there just before 9. Through the window, I spied the rest of the staff gathered in the main room so I began pounding on the front door screaming, "LEMME IN! I GOTTA USE THE INNA-NET!" Unfortunately, I forgot there were several Summer Reading moms sitting in their cars, until I turned and caught some disapproving looks from them.
We have two Summer Reading sessions per week. Today was the under 6 crowd's turn. It actually went much smoother than Monday, though we're not entirely sure why. It might be because the little kids weren't as interested in checking books out as the older ones, so we only saw a handful of them at the desk. Mostly they stayed upstairs, where it sounded as though they were trying to jump through the floor. Course, as old as this place is, nearly any foot traffic up there sounds like that.
We were all prepared for the usual mass chaos, though. We even stationed Mrs. H at her own little desk in the computer hall where she had the sign-up sheet and computer timers. Our plan was to shuffle the usual internet crowd that way so we could concentrate on making cards and helping patrons. Naturally, since we were prepared for them, hardly anyone needed a computer this morning. Still, we're planning to put that system into further practice soon. A guy has recently come in to talk to Mrs. A about working off some hours of community service he'd received. We're planning on sticking him in the computer area. Maybe I can get him to start giving Parka dirty looks, just to save me time.
What little turmoil we did have today was due to a sudden rush on the bathroom by seemingly everyone in the building. Even I was trying to get in there, though only to retrieve our ladder for the local artists to put up their work in our above-the-shelves mini art gallery, which rotates monthly. I tried four times to get the ladder, but every time I would go back, I'd knock and hear a different voice say, "Just a minute..." So the artists had quite a wait.
We also had to dismiss Ron the Ripper, today. No, I didn't become enraged at for his ripping up our magazines and go "Chester" on his ass. Instead, when Ron came in with his aid, Mrs. A stopped them and explained that there were no tables upstairs for him to sit at to rip up said magazines due to Summer Reading having taken over the space. He didn't even give us a single caveman growl of disappointment. He just turned and left without a fight. I guess he was feeling "too cool" for that, in his stylin' new bucket hat, which was made from a very loud patterned fabric that looked like it would be more at home as a pair of Bermuda shorts than a hat.
Damn, that reminds me... I still haven't revealed his secret identity.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
The (Potential) Final Conflict
And So It Begins... Summer Reading.
Day One has now passed and I feel like I've been run over by a truck. Oddly, I don't care.
Normally, I don't have much to do with our library's Summer Reading program itself. However, I've often been recruited to man the desk during Summer Reading while the rest of our staff—Mrs.'s C, B, J, occasionally A and Miss E—ride herd over the 100 plus kids who turn up. As busy as they are outside, working the circ-desk is no picnic either, as Summer Reading takes place on a Monday and Mondays at our library are already horrible to begin with. So I get the usual horrific Monday Madness as well as line after line of Summer Reading kids marching through to check out books as well. This year, however, I got not only the usual Monday Madness AND Summer Reading kids, but these were both compounded by the fact that we've got the new circulation computer system to deal with at the same time.
We tried to head off problems by making all the Summer Readers' library cards in advance. This was very helpful. It was also very helpful that the computer finally regurgitated the new patron records it ate last Friday and seems to have cut back on its cravings for patron record flesh. What completely didn't help was our usual Monday crowd, though. None of these people had new cards and most of them were in a fussy huge hurry to check out and didn't want to wait around for us to make them one. This would have been fine with us, but they decided to wait anyway just so they could grumble about it.
Fortunately, I wasn't there solo. Mrs. A was also on the desk and Mrs. J was our runner, responsible for shelving the billion books that were either checked in or merely knocked off the shelves by yungguns. This way, one of us could always stay on the circ-computer leaving the others free to help patrons, answer the constantly ringing phone, make more cards on a different computer, keep up with the internet crowd, tell the kiddies where the potty was or just answer dumb questions in general.
"Do you know why it's so busy in here today?" a patron asked, staring in bewilderment at the sea of reasonably well-behaved kids around him.
"Yes, I do," I told him.
"Well... Why?" he asked, seconds later after it became apparent that I wasn't going to answer the question he SHOULD have asked.
"It's day one of Summer Reading," I told him. Duh!
Between 1:30 and 3:30, both the interior and exterior of the library were eat up with kids and parents and regular patrons and madness in many forms. At no point during that time were either Mrs. A or myself able to utter the phrase, "Whew, finally a chance to catch my breath without eight pressing responsibilities requiring my immediate attention!" (And I know that Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Miss E outside were run just as ragged by the actual Summer Reading program itself.)
Then there was the phone... THE $#%*ING PHONE! Oh, how it rang!!!
The following exchange happened no less than FOUR TIMES during my shift:
*RING*
ME: Tri-Metro County Library?
CALLER: Is Mrs. A there?
ME: Yes she is, but I'm afraid we're incredibly busy at the moment. Can I take a message and have her call you back?
CALLER: Um, er, sure.
Then there was the call that went...
CALLER: Yes, I have a child at Summer Reading today and my mother is there with her. I'm having an emergency here, can I please speak to her?
So I break my ass running outside to find Grandma only to learn that she stepped away to run errands. Then I learn from our caller that there wasn't actually an "emergency" as per the definition of the word, but more of an "inconvenient situation" which should not have required the breaking of any ass, especially mine.
Around 2:30, at the height of the tumult, Mrs. A suddenly vanished.
There I was, swamped at the desk with a line of kids waiting to check books out and adults waiting to be told they have to leave the desk again and go fill out an application for a new card before they can check books out. Mrs. C came inside, walked around the desk and whispered to me that Mrs. A was currently indisposed as she was busy following the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester.
Chester! Dammit to hell, the absolute last person we needed coming in when we had a house full of preteen, elementary-aged girls was Chester the (Potential) Molester—a.k.a. public enemy #1 of the Liberry Rogues Gallery. When he comes in, we usually spread out the whole library staff in a Chester-watching dragnet, but today of all days we didn't have a soul to spare.
Chester's been conspicuously scarce over the past two months. In fact, seemingly since the day we learned of his recent arrest he's been cutting back on his visits. Oh, he's come in on occasion, but we've had no real problems out of him. Evidently he was just picking his moment.
Well, at least Mrs. A had spied him and was shadowing him. The trouble was, we had barely been holding back the tide of "liberry" chaos when both of us were manning the desk. Now I was left to face it alone, with a huge line stretching into the next room. Could it get any worse?
*RING*
Dammit!
ME: TRI-METRO County Public Library?
CALLER: Yes, is Mrs. A there?
ME: Yes she is, but I'm afraid we're incredibly busy at the moment. Can I take a message and have her call you back?
The caller identified herself as a librarian from a neighboring county. She said she was in the midst of a circulation software emergency and needed Mrs. A's guidance, stat.
ME: Um. She's in a bit of a... Well, she's... Er...
What could I say? Announce to the caller and the rest of the room, "I'm sorry, Mrs. A can't come to the phone right now, she's busy chasing down our resident pedophile"?
ME: Hang on a second and I'll see if she can come to the phone.
I put the librarian on hold, told the kid at the front of the desk to hang on a second and someone would be with him soon, then I marched through the front room, up the stairs and into the non-fiction room where I found Mrs. A and Chester.
Mrs. A was trying to look busy with some shelving while keeping an eye on Chester, who was seated at the nearest table. He was facing toward our shelves where a teenage girl in a short skirt was browsing with some friends. Mrs. A needn't have pretended to be doing anything official, because Chester was oblivious to her presence. His eyes were bulging, his mouth was grinning insanely and his entire head seemed to move in time with the girl's every motion. He was completely transfixed.
Mrs. A's eyes were wide too, though hers from shock. I don't think any of us had ever seen Chester this happy before. He was literally shaking, I presume with lustful glee, and looked to be in danger of falling out of his chair.
"This is a full time job, up here," Mrs. A whispered.
"You've got an emergency call," I said.
"What about..." she said, nodding toward Chester. He failed to notice.
I sighed. "You want to trade?"
"Okay."
Mrs. A left to take her emergency call and I was left to stand and watch this sicko ogling one of our young patrons. It was so odd too. He was staring directly at the girl and I was staring directly at him. Usually when he catches you staring at him staring at a kid he breaks off and pretends he was doing something else, but this time he didn't even register that I was there at all. This made me angry. I was also pissed because he was aiding the chaos downstairs by just being here. After all, I couldn't just leave him there while I returned to work, but I also couldn't afford to stay there and babysit Chester's pervert ass all day—and believe me, as overjoyed as he was to finally have girls to stare at in the library, there was no way in hell he was ever going to leave on his own unless all the kids left first. It was infuriating!
There's a speech I've wanted to give Chester for two years now. It's a speech in which all cards are laid on the table and where I tell him that we know what he's up to and that such behavior is not welcome nor tolerated in our library, nor for that matter is he. Even before Mr. X gave Chester a similar speech a few months ago, I had wanted to do it first. However, I have to admit that I've been too big a coward to actually confront him and give him that speech. I know I would be well within my rights to give it. I know I even have Mrs. A's blessing to give it. But I kept telling myself that giving him the speech would tip my hand too soon. I told myself that what I really wanted was to catch Chester actually doing something wrong, so we would have something to pin on him and the police could finally prosecute him. Trouble is, he's already been arrested in his home town for exposing himself to a girl in a park and somehow the charge was dropped.
I also remembered the advice of my friend Joe, a former teacher, who upon hearing my desire to give Chester that speech, recommended I go ahead and do so. I told him my logic in wanting to catch Chester at something, but Joe said, "No. You don't want that kind of thing happening on your watch."
No. I don't. And still I had not given the speech. So I'm back to a question of cowardice.
As I stood there, a mere seven feet from Chester, watching him grinning in apparent lust as he in turn watched one of my young patrons, I realized that if any moment was perfectly tailored to the application of the speech it was this one.
I walked over to Chester's table, leaned over it toward him and said, "I need to talk to you outside, right now."
I didn't wait for Chester to respond to my summons. I just turned around and started for the stairwell. Behind me, I heard Chester's chair slide on the floor as he stood to follow. He kept several paces behind me as I walked down the stairs, through the computer hall and out the back door into the sunlight.
The Summer Reading program itself was being held further out in the park area of the library's yard. I didn't want to get near it, so I stopped just outside the back door. I didn't want to cause a big scene in front of parents. In fact, the fewer parents to hear what I was about to tell Chester, the better off we all were.
I held the door open for Chester as he came out. His wide perverse grin had been replaced by a nervous frown. Frankly, my nerves were doing none too good themselves.
"I was... I was just..." he started.
"We don't have time for you today," I told Chester. "We do not have time to deal with you."
"I... I was..."
"We know what you're doing here. We know what your deal is. We know that you like coming in here to look at little girls and we don't like it."
Chester wrung his hands nervously in front of him. "But I was just waiting to use a computer... They were all full."
Through the glass of the back door I could clearly see two empty computer terminals.
"No, they weren't," I said, pointing at them. "There are two of them right there. You were upstairs to watch that girl."
"I was just..."
"Look..." I said, holding up a finger to get him to shut up. I could feel the momentum of my speech slipping away. "Look, you've been coming in here for two years now, staring at girls. We know it. We've watched you do it. And we also know about your little visit to the police department back home... from another library." Great, now my sentence structure was losing it. My hands were shaking from adrenaline and my thoughts weren't forming as logically as I wanted. I had to get through this speech before it completely fizzled. At least Chester had the decency to look scared now.
"I was just... I was just waiting..." he stammered.
"No. We know why you come in here. We know what you've been doing and we don't like it. It makes our patrons nervous. It makes us nervous. And we don't appreciate it. We're tired of it. And today, we don't have time to deal with you."
"I..."
"I think right now it would be best if you left and came back some other time."
Even as I said it, I knew how lame a closing line that was. Come back some other time? What happened to Get the Hell out and don't let us catch you here ever again? Fuck!
Still, it did get the job done. Chester didn't offer any more argument. Instead, he made a break for his car--which was parked half-way in the middle of the street, in a handicapped spot no less--and sped off.
I didn't even watch him go, though. My arms were shaking and I felt deflated. I headed back through the front door of the library, surprising Mrs. A who thought I was still upstairs. Mrs. C, who had watched my confrontation with Chester from afar, followed in behind me.
"Well," Mrs. C said. "I was going to come tell him he had to move his car out of the handicapped spot, but it looks like you took care of it."
"Yeah. We had a little chat," I said, trying to sound cool but still feeling mostly blistered. I picked up the date-due stamp and began stamping the books Mrs. A was scanning, but my hands were shaking so much that I kept getting it crooked. Dammit! This was supposed to be my greatest triumph over a rogue ever and here I was all jittery from it. I didn't even feel good about having done it. Sure, I got the message across just fine, which was the important part, but my execution had been a little off. Granted, I doubt Chester raced home to write up a scathing critique of my speech, but I still felt like it could have gone better. It bore little resemblance to the wonderful speech I'd planned out in my head. For one thing, I forgot to accuse Chester of stealing our Teen People's while I was at it.
I didn't have too much time to dwell on my flawed delivery, though, cause we were indeed still very busy at the desk and soon I was back in the thick of it. It wasn't until the last of the kids left at 3:30 that our library began to calm down once again. The staff then began to assemble at the circulation desk, looking at me expectantly.
"I think someone has a story to tell all of us," Mrs. C said.
"Lord," I said.
So I told them. Every lame ass detail of it. They didn't seem to think it was all that bad, though.
"All I could see was your mouth moving and his head nodding," Mrs. B offered.
"Yeah," Miss E said. "We were going to sneak around the building to see if we could hear what you were saying."
Turns out just about all the staff knew something was about to come to a head from the moment Chester pulled up.
"He couldn't even get his car parked right in the handicapped space before he was out the door of it and grinning at all the girls," Mrs. B said. "He just about stepped on one trying to get in the library."
"He looked SO happy," Miss E said.
"You should have seen him when that girl bent over to get a book in that short skirt," Mrs. A said. "He didn't know where to look first."
We all had a good laugh about it, for as horrible as Chester is there are comedic moments, particularly in how inept he is at his job of being a pervert. I still felt like I'd been run over, though. I wasn't shaky any more--just tired.
Before I left, Mrs. A said she wished she'd been there to hear the speech in person and that she was sure we'd seen the last of Chester. I don't know. I hope so. I really do.
I went home, did some housework and made supper, dwelling on my day the whole while. The wife came home around 7 and asked how my day went.
"It was very odd, but I think it turned out okay."
I told her what had happened. She laughed at all the funny parts and got sympathetically angry at all the infuriating parts. In the end, she congratulated me on doing what had to be done--what should have been done a long time ago.
"But I just don't feel very good about it," I said. "I don't feel triumphant, like I always thought I would."
"You don't need to feel good about it and you don't need to feel triumphant. But don't you feel bad about it either. Just know that you did what needed doing and got him out of there."
And that, I decided, was true. In my flawed, semi-lame way, I'd finally gotten the job done, laid the cards on the table and told Chester how things stood. And in the end, it shouldn't be about whether or not I feel good about having done it, but that I finally did it.
Day One has now passed and I feel like I've been run over by a truck. Oddly, I don't care.
Normally, I don't have much to do with our library's Summer Reading program itself. However, I've often been recruited to man the desk during Summer Reading while the rest of our staff—Mrs.'s C, B, J, occasionally A and Miss E—ride herd over the 100 plus kids who turn up. As busy as they are outside, working the circ-desk is no picnic either, as Summer Reading takes place on a Monday and Mondays at our library are already horrible to begin with. So I get the usual horrific Monday Madness as well as line after line of Summer Reading kids marching through to check out books as well. This year, however, I got not only the usual Monday Madness AND Summer Reading kids, but these were both compounded by the fact that we've got the new circulation computer system to deal with at the same time.
We tried to head off problems by making all the Summer Readers' library cards in advance. This was very helpful. It was also very helpful that the computer finally regurgitated the new patron records it ate last Friday and seems to have cut back on its cravings for patron record flesh. What completely didn't help was our usual Monday crowd, though. None of these people had new cards and most of them were in a fussy huge hurry to check out and didn't want to wait around for us to make them one. This would have been fine with us, but they decided to wait anyway just so they could grumble about it.
Fortunately, I wasn't there solo. Mrs. A was also on the desk and Mrs. J was our runner, responsible for shelving the billion books that were either checked in or merely knocked off the shelves by yungguns. This way, one of us could always stay on the circ-computer leaving the others free to help patrons, answer the constantly ringing phone, make more cards on a different computer, keep up with the internet crowd, tell the kiddies where the potty was or just answer dumb questions in general.
"Do you know why it's so busy in here today?" a patron asked, staring in bewilderment at the sea of reasonably well-behaved kids around him.
"Yes, I do," I told him.
"Well... Why?" he asked, seconds later after it became apparent that I wasn't going to answer the question he SHOULD have asked.
"It's day one of Summer Reading," I told him. Duh!
Between 1:30 and 3:30, both the interior and exterior of the library were eat up with kids and parents and regular patrons and madness in many forms. At no point during that time were either Mrs. A or myself able to utter the phrase, "Whew, finally a chance to catch my breath without eight pressing responsibilities requiring my immediate attention!" (And I know that Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Miss E outside were run just as ragged by the actual Summer Reading program itself.)
Then there was the phone... THE $#%*ING PHONE! Oh, how it rang!!!
The following exchange happened no less than FOUR TIMES during my shift:
*RING*
ME: Tri-Metro County Library?
CALLER: Is Mrs. A there?
ME: Yes she is, but I'm afraid we're incredibly busy at the moment. Can I take a message and have her call you back?
CALLER: Um, er, sure.
Then there was the call that went...
CALLER: Yes, I have a child at Summer Reading today and my mother is there with her. I'm having an emergency here, can I please speak to her?
So I break my ass running outside to find Grandma only to learn that she stepped away to run errands. Then I learn from our caller that there wasn't actually an "emergency" as per the definition of the word, but more of an "inconvenient situation" which should not have required the breaking of any ass, especially mine.
Around 2:30, at the height of the tumult, Mrs. A suddenly vanished.
There I was, swamped at the desk with a line of kids waiting to check books out and adults waiting to be told they have to leave the desk again and go fill out an application for a new card before they can check books out. Mrs. C came inside, walked around the desk and whispered to me that Mrs. A was currently indisposed as she was busy following the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester.
Chester! Dammit to hell, the absolute last person we needed coming in when we had a house full of preteen, elementary-aged girls was Chester the (Potential) Molester—a.k.a. public enemy #1 of the Liberry Rogues Gallery. When he comes in, we usually spread out the whole library staff in a Chester-watching dragnet, but today of all days we didn't have a soul to spare.
Chester's been conspicuously scarce over the past two months. In fact, seemingly since the day we learned of his recent arrest he's been cutting back on his visits. Oh, he's come in on occasion, but we've had no real problems out of him. Evidently he was just picking his moment.
Well, at least Mrs. A had spied him and was shadowing him. The trouble was, we had barely been holding back the tide of "liberry" chaos when both of us were manning the desk. Now I was left to face it alone, with a huge line stretching into the next room. Could it get any worse?
*RING*
Dammit!
ME: TRI-METRO County Public Library?
CALLER: Yes, is Mrs. A there?
ME: Yes she is, but I'm afraid we're incredibly busy at the moment. Can I take a message and have her call you back?
The caller identified herself as a librarian from a neighboring county. She said she was in the midst of a circulation software emergency and needed Mrs. A's guidance, stat.
ME: Um. She's in a bit of a... Well, she's... Er...
What could I say? Announce to the caller and the rest of the room, "I'm sorry, Mrs. A can't come to the phone right now, she's busy chasing down our resident pedophile"?
ME: Hang on a second and I'll see if she can come to the phone.
I put the librarian on hold, told the kid at the front of the desk to hang on a second and someone would be with him soon, then I marched through the front room, up the stairs and into the non-fiction room where I found Mrs. A and Chester.
Mrs. A was trying to look busy with some shelving while keeping an eye on Chester, who was seated at the nearest table. He was facing toward our shelves where a teenage girl in a short skirt was browsing with some friends. Mrs. A needn't have pretended to be doing anything official, because Chester was oblivious to her presence. His eyes were bulging, his mouth was grinning insanely and his entire head seemed to move in time with the girl's every motion. He was completely transfixed.
Mrs. A's eyes were wide too, though hers from shock. I don't think any of us had ever seen Chester this happy before. He was literally shaking, I presume with lustful glee, and looked to be in danger of falling out of his chair.
"This is a full time job, up here," Mrs. A whispered.
"You've got an emergency call," I said.
"What about..." she said, nodding toward Chester. He failed to notice.
I sighed. "You want to trade?"
"Okay."
Mrs. A left to take her emergency call and I was left to stand and watch this sicko ogling one of our young patrons. It was so odd too. He was staring directly at the girl and I was staring directly at him. Usually when he catches you staring at him staring at a kid he breaks off and pretends he was doing something else, but this time he didn't even register that I was there at all. This made me angry. I was also pissed because he was aiding the chaos downstairs by just being here. After all, I couldn't just leave him there while I returned to work, but I also couldn't afford to stay there and babysit Chester's pervert ass all day—and believe me, as overjoyed as he was to finally have girls to stare at in the library, there was no way in hell he was ever going to leave on his own unless all the kids left first. It was infuriating!
There's a speech I've wanted to give Chester for two years now. It's a speech in which all cards are laid on the table and where I tell him that we know what he's up to and that such behavior is not welcome nor tolerated in our library, nor for that matter is he. Even before Mr. X gave Chester a similar speech a few months ago, I had wanted to do it first. However, I have to admit that I've been too big a coward to actually confront him and give him that speech. I know I would be well within my rights to give it. I know I even have Mrs. A's blessing to give it. But I kept telling myself that giving him the speech would tip my hand too soon. I told myself that what I really wanted was to catch Chester actually doing something wrong, so we would have something to pin on him and the police could finally prosecute him. Trouble is, he's already been arrested in his home town for exposing himself to a girl in a park and somehow the charge was dropped.
I also remembered the advice of my friend Joe, a former teacher, who upon hearing my desire to give Chester that speech, recommended I go ahead and do so. I told him my logic in wanting to catch Chester at something, but Joe said, "No. You don't want that kind of thing happening on your watch."
No. I don't. And still I had not given the speech. So I'm back to a question of cowardice.
As I stood there, a mere seven feet from Chester, watching him grinning in apparent lust as he in turn watched one of my young patrons, I realized that if any moment was perfectly tailored to the application of the speech it was this one.
I walked over to Chester's table, leaned over it toward him and said, "I need to talk to you outside, right now."
I didn't wait for Chester to respond to my summons. I just turned around and started for the stairwell. Behind me, I heard Chester's chair slide on the floor as he stood to follow. He kept several paces behind me as I walked down the stairs, through the computer hall and out the back door into the sunlight.
The Summer Reading program itself was being held further out in the park area of the library's yard. I didn't want to get near it, so I stopped just outside the back door. I didn't want to cause a big scene in front of parents. In fact, the fewer parents to hear what I was about to tell Chester, the better off we all were.
I held the door open for Chester as he came out. His wide perverse grin had been replaced by a nervous frown. Frankly, my nerves were doing none too good themselves.
"I was... I was just..." he started.
"We don't have time for you today," I told Chester. "We do not have time to deal with you."
"I... I was..."
"We know what you're doing here. We know what your deal is. We know that you like coming in here to look at little girls and we don't like it."
Chester wrung his hands nervously in front of him. "But I was just waiting to use a computer... They were all full."
Through the glass of the back door I could clearly see two empty computer terminals.
"No, they weren't," I said, pointing at them. "There are two of them right there. You were upstairs to watch that girl."
"I was just..."
"Look..." I said, holding up a finger to get him to shut up. I could feel the momentum of my speech slipping away. "Look, you've been coming in here for two years now, staring at girls. We know it. We've watched you do it. And we also know about your little visit to the police department back home... from another library." Great, now my sentence structure was losing it. My hands were shaking from adrenaline and my thoughts weren't forming as logically as I wanted. I had to get through this speech before it completely fizzled. At least Chester had the decency to look scared now.
"I was just... I was just waiting..." he stammered.
"No. We know why you come in here. We know what you've been doing and we don't like it. It makes our patrons nervous. It makes us nervous. And we don't appreciate it. We're tired of it. And today, we don't have time to deal with you."
"I..."
"I think right now it would be best if you left and came back some other time."
Even as I said it, I knew how lame a closing line that was. Come back some other time? What happened to Get the Hell out and don't let us catch you here ever again? Fuck!
Still, it did get the job done. Chester didn't offer any more argument. Instead, he made a break for his car--which was parked half-way in the middle of the street, in a handicapped spot no less--and sped off.
I didn't even watch him go, though. My arms were shaking and I felt deflated. I headed back through the front door of the library, surprising Mrs. A who thought I was still upstairs. Mrs. C, who had watched my confrontation with Chester from afar, followed in behind me.
"Well," Mrs. C said. "I was going to come tell him he had to move his car out of the handicapped spot, but it looks like you took care of it."
"Yeah. We had a little chat," I said, trying to sound cool but still feeling mostly blistered. I picked up the date-due stamp and began stamping the books Mrs. A was scanning, but my hands were shaking so much that I kept getting it crooked. Dammit! This was supposed to be my greatest triumph over a rogue ever and here I was all jittery from it. I didn't even feel good about having done it. Sure, I got the message across just fine, which was the important part, but my execution had been a little off. Granted, I doubt Chester raced home to write up a scathing critique of my speech, but I still felt like it could have gone better. It bore little resemblance to the wonderful speech I'd planned out in my head. For one thing, I forgot to accuse Chester of stealing our Teen People's while I was at it.
I didn't have too much time to dwell on my flawed delivery, though, cause we were indeed still very busy at the desk and soon I was back in the thick of it. It wasn't until the last of the kids left at 3:30 that our library began to calm down once again. The staff then began to assemble at the circulation desk, looking at me expectantly.
"I think someone has a story to tell all of us," Mrs. C said.
"Lord," I said.
So I told them. Every lame ass detail of it. They didn't seem to think it was all that bad, though.
"All I could see was your mouth moving and his head nodding," Mrs. B offered.
"Yeah," Miss E said. "We were going to sneak around the building to see if we could hear what you were saying."
Turns out just about all the staff knew something was about to come to a head from the moment Chester pulled up.
"He couldn't even get his car parked right in the handicapped space before he was out the door of it and grinning at all the girls," Mrs. B said. "He just about stepped on one trying to get in the library."
"He looked SO happy," Miss E said.
"You should have seen him when that girl bent over to get a book in that short skirt," Mrs. A said. "He didn't know where to look first."
We all had a good laugh about it, for as horrible as Chester is there are comedic moments, particularly in how inept he is at his job of being a pervert. I still felt like I'd been run over, though. I wasn't shaky any more--just tired.
Before I left, Mrs. A said she wished she'd been there to hear the speech in person and that she was sure we'd seen the last of Chester. I don't know. I hope so. I really do.
I went home, did some housework and made supper, dwelling on my day the whole while. The wife came home around 7 and asked how my day went.
"It was very odd, but I think it turned out okay."
I told her what had happened. She laughed at all the funny parts and got sympathetically angry at all the infuriating parts. In the end, she congratulated me on doing what had to be done--what should have been done a long time ago.
"But I just don't feel very good about it," I said. "I don't feel triumphant, like I always thought I would."
"You don't need to feel good about it and you don't need to feel triumphant. But don't you feel bad about it either. Just know that you did what needed doing and got him out of there."
And that, I decided, was true. In my flawed, semi-lame way, I'd finally gotten the job done, laid the cards on the table and told Chester how things stood. And in the end, it shouldn't be about whether or not I feel good about having done it, but that I finally did it.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Patrons must follow the rules, unless they just don't want to.
My earlier assessment that we'd only had a few complaints from
parents concerning their inability to sign up for summer reading during
the allotted week proved woefully inaccurate. Also inaccurate was my
earlier guestimate that we would be having upwards of 80 children
participating. Turns out it's more like 200 when you combine our two
age-group days, (170 for the 6-13 year olds and 30 or so for the under 6
crowd). Thems a lotta kids.
Having so many kids participating is a major reason behind the cut-off on signing up for the program. If we let parents sign up late, we'd have 250 kids instead of just 200, and let me tell you that 200 is going to be utter chaos to deal with--particularly if any of the children from last year return, some of whom run directly into traffic whenever a back is turned. Granted, not all 200 will show up every week, but there will be plenty who do.
So throughout last week we were hassled by parents who were torqued off that they'd missed the sign up deadline. There were a wide and detailed bunch of reasons for this, which we know because each complaining parent felt it necessary to read us their dayplanner for the last month in order to justify why they should be allowed to break the rules and sign their kid up late.
The mantra we've repeatedly heard is, "But I have an excuse."
"Everyone has an excuse," we say. Whether the excuse is valid or not makes no difference to us. The fact still remains, they didn't sign their kid up during the ample time provided, nor did they have a friend come in and sign their kid up for them, so they're SOL. Hell, we would have signed them up ourselves if they had only asked.
"But I was in Los Angeles," they say, as though that changes something.
Or, "I was sick and couldn't get out."
Or, "We were on vacation."
Or, despite the fact that we ran two newspaper columns about signing up, plus about 5 school visits with flyers sent home about it, not to mention the huge frickin' sign that was staked out in front of the liberry for three days before the mayor threatened to make us take it down, "You didn't advertise it well enough."
Yeah, well you didn't call to find out details well enough, lady.
The library assistants like myself actually find it kind of fun to deal with these folks because we have no power to grant their wishes in the first place. They can rant on for half an hour if they want, but when they're done we still can't do a anything about it. We explain that we're not in positions of authority and that they must therefore speak to the Great and Powerful Librarians (who've been curiously scarce this week). We also tell them that the Great and Powerful Librarians won't be any more helpful in this regard, but they're welcome to try.
There is one kid, whose mom failed to sign up, that I actually regret won't be coming. He's an Indian boy named Vishna. He and I had a rapport last year in that I could never remember his full name and he liked to rag me about it. By the fourth week into the program, I finally had it down and then got to rag him that he didn't remember my name. I was all ready to rag him again this year, since I too the precaution of looking up his name in advance and have memorized it. Alas, his mom was out of town during sign up week, so he's not in the program.
It's not as though any of these parents are completely out of luck for summer reading. We tell all late-comers that they're welcome to sign up for summer reading programs at Town-C and Town-D's libraries, which are still open through late in the month. They don't like this though. Probably because it means having to drive 15 minutes instead of 5, which cuts into their THE KIDS ARE OUT OF THE FRICKIN' HOUSE FOR A WHOLE HOUR AND A HALF time.
Having so many kids participating is a major reason behind the cut-off on signing up for the program. If we let parents sign up late, we'd have 250 kids instead of just 200, and let me tell you that 200 is going to be utter chaos to deal with--particularly if any of the children from last year return, some of whom run directly into traffic whenever a back is turned. Granted, not all 200 will show up every week, but there will be plenty who do.
So throughout last week we were hassled by parents who were torqued off that they'd missed the sign up deadline. There were a wide and detailed bunch of reasons for this, which we know because each complaining parent felt it necessary to read us their dayplanner for the last month in order to justify why they should be allowed to break the rules and sign their kid up late.
The mantra we've repeatedly heard is, "But I have an excuse."
"Everyone has an excuse," we say. Whether the excuse is valid or not makes no difference to us. The fact still remains, they didn't sign their kid up during the ample time provided, nor did they have a friend come in and sign their kid up for them, so they're SOL. Hell, we would have signed them up ourselves if they had only asked.
"But I was in Los Angeles," they say, as though that changes something.
Or, "I was sick and couldn't get out."
Or, "We were on vacation."
Or, despite the fact that we ran two newspaper columns about signing up, plus about 5 school visits with flyers sent home about it, not to mention the huge frickin' sign that was staked out in front of the liberry for three days before the mayor threatened to make us take it down, "You didn't advertise it well enough."
Yeah, well you didn't call to find out details well enough, lady.
The library assistants like myself actually find it kind of fun to deal with these folks because we have no power to grant their wishes in the first place. They can rant on for half an hour if they want, but when they're done we still can't do a anything about it. We explain that we're not in positions of authority and that they must therefore speak to the Great and Powerful Librarians (who've been curiously scarce this week). We also tell them that the Great and Powerful Librarians won't be any more helpful in this regard, but they're welcome to try.
There is one kid, whose mom failed to sign up, that I actually regret won't be coming. He's an Indian boy named Vishna. He and I had a rapport last year in that I could never remember his full name and he liked to rag me about it. By the fourth week into the program, I finally had it down and then got to rag him that he didn't remember my name. I was all ready to rag him again this year, since I too the precaution of looking up his name in advance and have memorized it. Alas, his mom was out of town during sign up week, so he's not in the program.
It's not as though any of these parents are completely out of luck for summer reading. We tell all late-comers that they're welcome to sign up for summer reading programs at Town-C and Town-D's libraries, which are still open through late in the month. They don't like this though. Probably because it means having to drive 15 minutes instead of 5, which cuts into their THE KIDS ARE OUT OF THE FRICKIN' HOUSE FOR A WHOLE HOUR AND A HALF time.
Monday, June 14, 2004
History Lessons
Summer Reading season is upon us. This means that upwards of 200
children will soon descend upon the "liberry" on Mondays and Thursdays
to read books, craft crafts, play games and get new library cards. (Unfortunately,
the jury's still out on when exactly those new cards will be arriving.
Today is in fact D-Day for our new regional, 15 county, cataloging and
circulation computer system to go live, but as far as I know none of the
libraries in the 15 counties actually have the new library cards
they're supposed to start issuing. We'll somehow muddle through.)
That said, last week was sign-up week for Summer Reading. Mostly, it went pretty smooth and we only had a few of the usual complaints from irritable parents unwilling to jump through our oh so complicated process of "come to the library and sign your kid up, you've got an 8 day window in which to do so or you're out." We even had a giant sign printed up and laminated that we stuck in the yard of the library on stakes advertising the Summer Reading program to one and all. And, as is often the case with giant signs staked out within city limits, we had to get a permit in order to put it up. Fortunately, we have an in within the city department responsible for issuing such permits, so we got one right away. Unfortunately, the mayor got wind of it and threatened to walk up the hill to see whether the sign fit within the rigid guidelines of our town's historic character.
See, Town-A of the Town A/B/C Tri-Metro Area is something of a historic town. Part of its whole appeal is that it LOOKS like a historic town. This is due in large part to strict city ordinances governing how each building can appear, from architectural design to paint-color to lawn maintenance. Anything that falls outside of those boundaries is strictly prohibited. This isn't a town-wide ordinance, but does govern all the businesses in the down-town area. And as our library was constructed in 1834, we are even more definitely subject to the rules.
Mind you, I'm not really complaining. It's a system that seems to have worked and the town is quite the hopping tourist attraction due in no small part to it. Other towns in the area, where I live in Town-C, for instance, are actually far more historical but they don't have such ordinances. As a result, they are quite often look very ratty, soot covered and run-down.
However, when the mayor himself threatens to march up the hill and condemn a damn yard sign that's only going to be there for a week on the grounds that it might not look historic enough to match the town's character, it seems a bit much to me. It's not like we're colonial Williamsburg.
I suggested to Mrs. A that she tell the mayor to bite her historic ass, but she declined. Instead, she opted to just take the sign down in advance before it could be condemned.
It's just as well. We've already had well over 100 children sign up for Summer Reading, far more than last year. Granted, most of those kids are not going to show up every single week, but we have enough to keep us busy with the ones who will. The mayor probably did us a favor. We just don't have to like it.
We really don't have the worst of it. A local attorney we know has been fighting with the city for years over whether or not he can put up a sign on his office's property denoting his business. The city says he can put one up, but they're never happy with his choice of sign designs so they keep refusing to issue him a permit. His firm is also located in a semi-historic house which is in need of repainting. There is a list of a select few colors that any downtown structure can be painted and only two of those listed colors are allowed to be used on any one building. It has been suggested to the attorney that he should threaten to choose the two most ugly and contrasting colors from the list to use on his office.
See, as much as I agree with the need for such rules, I also agree with flaunting them to their very boundaries.
That said, last week was sign-up week for Summer Reading. Mostly, it went pretty smooth and we only had a few of the usual complaints from irritable parents unwilling to jump through our oh so complicated process of "come to the library and sign your kid up, you've got an 8 day window in which to do so or you're out." We even had a giant sign printed up and laminated that we stuck in the yard of the library on stakes advertising the Summer Reading program to one and all. And, as is often the case with giant signs staked out within city limits, we had to get a permit in order to put it up. Fortunately, we have an in within the city department responsible for issuing such permits, so we got one right away. Unfortunately, the mayor got wind of it and threatened to walk up the hill to see whether the sign fit within the rigid guidelines of our town's historic character.
See, Town-A of the Town A/B/C Tri-Metro Area is something of a historic town. Part of its whole appeal is that it LOOKS like a historic town. This is due in large part to strict city ordinances governing how each building can appear, from architectural design to paint-color to lawn maintenance. Anything that falls outside of those boundaries is strictly prohibited. This isn't a town-wide ordinance, but does govern all the businesses in the down-town area. And as our library was constructed in 1834, we are even more definitely subject to the rules.
Mind you, I'm not really complaining. It's a system that seems to have worked and the town is quite the hopping tourist attraction due in no small part to it. Other towns in the area, where I live in Town-C, for instance, are actually far more historical but they don't have such ordinances. As a result, they are quite often look very ratty, soot covered and run-down.
However, when the mayor himself threatens to march up the hill and condemn a damn yard sign that's only going to be there for a week on the grounds that it might not look historic enough to match the town's character, it seems a bit much to me. It's not like we're colonial Williamsburg.
I suggested to Mrs. A that she tell the mayor to bite her historic ass, but she declined. Instead, she opted to just take the sign down in advance before it could be condemned.
It's just as well. We've already had well over 100 children sign up for Summer Reading, far more than last year. Granted, most of those kids are not going to show up every single week, but we have enough to keep us busy with the ones who will. The mayor probably did us a favor. We just don't have to like it.
We really don't have the worst of it. A local attorney we know has been fighting with the city for years over whether or not he can put up a sign on his office's property denoting his business. The city says he can put one up, but they're never happy with his choice of sign designs so they keep refusing to issue him a permit. His firm is also located in a semi-historic house which is in need of repainting. There is a list of a select few colors that any downtown structure can be painted and only two of those listed colors are allowed to be used on any one building. It has been suggested to the attorney that he should threaten to choose the two most ugly and contrasting colors from the list to use on his office.
See, as much as I agree with the need for such rules, I also agree with flaunting them to their very boundaries.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Classic Lineup
Today pretty much set itself up as a classic "liberry" day, as far as these things go. And I got to live through a great deal more of it than on most Wednesdays because I had to work a full 8 hours of it. This was due to Mrs. A and Mrs. C being out all day at a meeting, with all the horror that entails, and needing a fill-in hitter at the desk.
At 8:55 I rolled in to work and found the photo-copier repairman camped out on the doorstep. The Devil Copier had been in fine form over the weekend, plaguing Miss E because a patron kept insisting on using it to photocopy the same page over and over and over despite the fact that each attempt resulted in a paper accordion jamming the copier. She finally told him to quit it and turned off the copier. Then, after two days of dealing with similar behavior from it, Mrs. C finally called the repair people and insisted that something was wrong. Over the phone, the Devil Copier repair guy told her to break off a little piece of plastic toward the rear of the paper output slot that seemed to be causing all the jamming. She did. It stopped jamming on the rear and began jamming at the front side instead. So the Devil Copier repairman promised he would come in for a personal repair visit. That was yesterday. Today, just as he'd promised, he was here to do mighty battle.
At 9:00 a.m., I opened up the shop and then noticed something addressed to me on the counter. They were two maps with a note attached. See, last week a couple of female tourists had come in on the local Tri-Metro walking tour and asked if we had any maps of the area. We usually do, but the map-restocking people haven't been in for a while so we were fresh out. However, I had one in my car, which I gave to the tourists since I can get a new free map as soon as more come in. Well the two maps waiting for me today included my original free-map as well as one of the `spensive, high-quality, glossy paper, county-maps that are sold locally. The Post-it note attached said the ladies thanked me for the use of my map and hoped I'd get some use out of the `spensive one. That was terribly nice.
At 9:01 a.m. my new good mood fell. I discovered that none of our computers were connecting to the network at all. This means our card catalog, our circulation software and the internet were all down for the count. I try to phone some other local libraries to see if they're in the same boat, but they're all lazy and don't open til later in the day. Finally, after having to beat back a few members of the internet crowd with the three-hole punch, Mrs. C called to tell me that everything was down and that she'd put in a call to the tech guys at home office. They called me shortly and walked me through some network troubleshooting. Turns out the UPS battery backup for our router had stopped working. I plugged the router into the other UPS we have and everything seemed to work hunky dory. Well, except for the fact that Patron Computer #3 refused to have anything to do with reconnecting to the network and I immediately became far too busy with patrons to do anything about it. After several patrons complained bitterly about not being able to check their e-mail on it, I finally just slapped a big sign on it that read "BAD COMPUTER" and just operated with the two good ones. The internet crowd was NOT happy about this and gave me dirty looks about having to wait to get on for the rest of the day. I even had to bust Mr. B-Natural off and he gave me a solid grumble for old times sake.
Back at the Devil Copier, the repair guy had made several accordions of his own. This is suprising, cause the copier usually behaves its best when the repair guy's around. Shortly, the repair guy pried open the Devil Copier and removed a large section of its guts which he took out to his truck and rebuilt from the ground up. Once reassembled, everything seemed to work fine. "That should satisfy the ladies," he said. Screw the ladies, what about me? Before he could get out of the parking lot, I grabbed the darkest book I could find, Stephen King's Skeleton Crew, slapped it on the glass and pressed the little green button for copying. I even left the lid ajar, which is a double no-no that usually causes the copier to self destruct. Instead, the copy came out just fine and very dark indeed. Perhaps the devils have been exorcised.
Lady, I know you didn't just park your big ass Ford Explorer in the middle of the damned road blocking the entire street. Oh, no, I see you did. And now you think you're gonna hop out real quick and pop that overdue book of ours in the drop box, don't you? Yup, you sure do. Oh, so sorry... it's locked! You're gonna have to come inside anyway. Ehhh heh! That's right, honey. Climb back in your truck and go find a parking space.
And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. B gone, the day just could not pass by without a call from our Board President, Mr. Kreskin, desperate to speak to them and pissed that they're both gone. And of course, I had no idea where they'd gone so I couldn't tell him when they'd be back, which is the only thing that pisses him off more than both of them being gone. I really need to take this act on the road and go find the Amazing Randi and collect my million bucks from him, cause if there was ever proof of psychic ability it's Mr. Kreskin. He truly ONLY calls when Mrs. A and Mrs. C are both gone. It's phenomenal.
I asked a patron named Siobahn how her name was pronounced. I knew it was Gaelic and was therefore just as likely to be pronounced "Earl" as what it turned out to be, which was Shavonne.
"Yeah, you gotta watch out for the Gaelics," I said, meaning the language but immediately realizing that I'd probably just insulted her. So I lamely backpeddled, "Um, I mean, the language."
"No, the people too," she corrected. "Especially if they're raging alcoholics with a mean temper."
"Well, y'know, I wasn't gonna say anything," I said.
And it also wouldn't be a proper day with no Mrs. A and C in house if I didn't get five hundred thousand questions I can't answer. The major theme in today's unanswerables was parents asking to sign their kids up for Summer Reading. Sounds easy, but we're not doing sign-ups this week. Furthermore, I have no clue WHEN we're doing it. None. Never do. This'll be my third year to be around for Summer Reading and I'm still out of the loop. Every year I ask, beg and plead for an information sheet that tells me all the stuff I need to be able to tell parents, but I never get one. Well, okay, eventually I get one, but usually at the last second and never weeks in advance when the questions actually start. And let me tell you, these parents get real agitated about it all for fear of getting burned on signing up. We only give them a whole week (nine days, really) to sign their kids up. We don't sign any up before that week and if the parents miss out on doing it during that week it's tough luck for them. But, of course, half the parents schedule a vacation for that week and then raise holy hell when they find out how strict we are about sign-ups. Or they raise holy hell because they screwed it all up the year before and still blame us for it. Every year we explain to them that it'll be okay, we're not trying to ruin their entire summer and they can have a friend come in and sign their kids up for them while they're gone. Even this they find unreasonable. It's like we're asking for a kidney.
At around 2:30, the Drifter noticed our BAD COMPUTER sign and offered to help fix it. Seems he used to do network installation and repair for a living. Unfortunately, the patron computers have security features designed to keep patrons from doing that, so he didn't get very far. I warned him that was the case, but he said he saw it as a challenge. We chatted for a bit after he got tired of fighting the computer. I asked him what kind of flute he had round his neck. "A bamboo flute," he replied. Ah. He said he bought it at the local New Age Crap shop. We also compared notes one how irritating it can sometimes be to work in a public service job. Still, as I explained to him, even on my worst day at the "liberry" it's far less stressful than just about any other job I've had. I may bitch and complain and write excessively lengthy blog entries about it, but I certainly don't hate it.
"Yeah, you gotta watch out for the Gaelics," I said, meaning the language but immediately realizing that I'd probably just insulted her. So I lamely backpeddled, "Um, I mean, the language."
"No, the people too," she corrected. "Especially if they're raging alcoholics with a mean temper."
"Well, y'know, I wasn't gonna say anything," I said.
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