As is evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of words that comprise this blog, I've never lacked for material to write about. Oddly, this used to frustrate me in the early days when I was attempting more of a real time blogging structure and would often have so many blogworthy events occur on a given afternoon that running multiple posts for that day seemed the only proper way to handle it. Eventually, though, I got over that. As in newspapers, with my particular blogging subject most of the blogworthy events had a pretty long shelf life and did not have to be posted immediately. There was, therefore, very little reason to blog in real time unless events in my life called for it. So I swiftly developed a backlog (backblog?) of material which I was able to parcel out, rewrite, refine, and often discard. I've been able to take entire vacations and continue to post on a week-daily basis.
It was because of this backlog that I had no fear about running out of material during our big move into the new building. What I was concerned about was whether or not to mention the move at all.
When I first began the blog, I didn't really care if people who read the blog knew who I was in real life. My thought was that anyone local who might not like what I was writing was unlikely to stumble upon the blog, but if outsiders traced it back what did it really matter? I even used the real last name of the now pseudonymous Fagin Family for a very long time claiming I didn't care if they found it because we had so much dirt on them that they'd never dare sue. And, by and large, this was not a problem for me for the first couple of years of the blog. As the old saying goes, though, it only takes one bad asshole to spoil the bushel. This being the internet, of course, the assholes did not come in single servings.
Keep in mind, when I say "assholes" I'm not talking about readers who've disagreed with me, who don't like the blog in the first place, who think I'm whining and aren't afraid to tell me in the comments or in an email. That kind of thing comes with the territory and I've always made it a point to publish such negative comments and to address issues made via the occasional negative email I've received. No, the assholes I'm talking about are those souls who have seen their way fit to drop pebbles into the pond of my real life. There have been quite a few of them and until this moment I've made it standard operating procedure not to mention their assholery because it seems unwise to give such behavior publicity. However, just as a for-instance, I will now break that rule twice..
Instance #1-- A gentleman phoned my "liberry" workplace, asked a co-worker of mine if he could speak to me, using my real name, and when I came to the phone he screamed, "This is Mr. Stanky! I love your blog!!!" at the top of his lungs. Then he hung up. (And with all the similar assholes I've dealt with, the level creativity never has never risen above the bar set by this guy.)
Instance #2-- This one was not so much an asshole as someone behaving unwisely. I received a phone call, again at work, again using my real name, from a lady who claimed to be calling from another state. She said she was doing research into the geneal0gy of the aforementioned Fagin Family (only she used their real name), being as how she too was named Fagin (again), had read about them on my blog, knew exactly where I was located, was pretty sure a branch of her particular Fagin clan had made their way here at some point in the past. Naturally, she wanted to know what I could tell her about the local crew and their origins. (This person also expressed confusion as to why I no longer used their real name when referring to them on the blog. She'd searched and searched but could no longer find the original reference.) I started to point out to her that anyone who'd read this blog for the length of time she evidently had should have long ago realized that there is no room in my heart for helping my OWN patrons with geneal0gy research, let alone out-of-state strangers calling me up out of the blue and interjecting themselves into my real life in an effort to get me to do geneal0gy research into the single most-hated family our county's library system has ever known. Instead, I politely explained that, other than their long-standing penchant for thievery, I knew very little about the Fagins and would therefore be of no help. I also pointed out that calls like hers were precisely the reason I no longer used the Fagins real name on the blog.
So because of instances like those above as well as some other minor online irritations, I dialed back the openness of the blog. This amounted to removing a few telling entries, moving all my graphics off of my personal website and setting up some security features that pretty much put a stop to the more troublesome online interactions. Was it perfect? No. But it did result in quite a few less pebbles in my pond. Documenting the big move, however, seemed like it might have the potential to produce rocks of a larger sort. With the backlog that I had at hand, however, I knew I didn't have to make any decisions on this for a while.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Showing posts with label The Fagins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Fagins. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
Innanet Crowd Onslought (Moving Days M)
As I mentioned, we only had four public internet terminals when we opened the new building. Our plan was to eventually have ten and we had already installed the desks for those--or, rather, we'd installed one gigantically long computer desk with room for ten stations and serious issues with picking up the squeezings of patrons on its surface. The other six computers did arrive within a couple weeks of opening, but the company we'd purchased them from neglected to stock enough monitors to accompany them and said they weren't expecting a resupply for months. We bought new monitors from another vendor, but before they could arrive we experienced several wonderfully fun conversations such as this...
PATRON-- So when are you getting your other computers?
ME-- Oh, they're here.
PATRON-- (Does doubletake. Looks at six empty desk spaces.) Uh, they are?
ME-- Yep.
PATRON-- Um... when are you going to install them?
ME-- Already did.
PATRON-- (Looks again. Completely ignores obviously present CPUs on the floor beneath each empty desk space.) Uh... what?
ME-- Yep. Installed the computers a few days ago. They're right there. (Points to CPUs) It's just the monitors we don't have yet.
PATRON-- (Looks again. Looks back. Appears confused and slightly irritated. Decides I'm an asshole, perhaps justifiably. Walks away.)
We decided early on that our old system of using kitchen timers to monitor the amount of time patrons were using the computers was probably not a workable system for ten machines; it was hard enough getting those accurate with only three computers in the old place, plus the idea of more than one of them going off at the same time made us edgy to even think about. So the new plan was to extend the time patrons had on a given machine from a half hour to a full hour (still with no kick offs if no other patrons were waiting), reserve two of the machines as 15 minute stations and then just keep track of everything on paper. This sounded like an enormous headache to me and I was actually quite panicked about it. I began begging Mrs. A to see if we could get some sort of computer-based monitoring system, one that would allow us to decide who lived and who died. Mrs. A said that the state techs were considering such a program to be used consortium-wide, but hadn't made any firm decisions, so we'd just try our new paper system and see how things went. And so I awaited the doom of our sanity at the hands of the innanet crowd.
Quite unexpectedly, the doom did not come--at least, not at first. Even after we had all ten stations up and running, the competition for them was surprisingly slim in the early weeks. We rarely had to enforce the 15 minute station rules and often just let users of them go for however long they wanted as there were almost always other stations open. We didn't even have to kick anybody off a machine for nearly a month into the new gig and even then it was a rare occurrence. Patrons basically could stay on as long as they wanted and there was enough turnover that we didn't have any problems with competition.
As the months passed, though, we began to have more and more innanet crowders more and more often. Word was getting around that we had a bountiful supply of computers and the crowders began to crawl from beneath their rocks and lurch in to use them. Patrons we'd not seen in years, such as Matilda the Cranky Wiccan, Mabel the Amateaur Geneal0gist, Sunday Bob, and the Formerly Sweatiest Woman in All the Land, began to become regular visitors again. Previously frequent innanet crowders such as Germaphobe Gary, Johnny Hacker, Mr. Little Stupid, Mr. Hinky, and Mr. Perfect began coming far more frequently, usually multiple times a day. And former repeat offender Innanet Rogues, such as Mr. B-Natural, Old Man Printer, The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, and Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine basically needed to have their ass roots cut out of our chairs each evening for all the innanet time they were hogging up. Sonofabitch, we even saw us a Fagin or two.
All of this increased traffic made for increasing problems with paper-based monitoring process. The way it was designed to work, patrons signed up on our sign-in clip-board with their name and time as usual; the staff then assigned them one of the vacant computers and then the staff noted which one it was beside their name on the sign-in sheet; when computer patrons departed, the staff was supposed to highlight their names to indicate their absence; then, if all computers were full, whichever patron was at the top of the list of non-highlighted names (usually Gene) was automatically up for being kicked off.
This system actually worked pretty well for several months, but as our traffic increased so did the problems inherent with it, such as the difficulties in keeping track of just who has to get off and when in addition to the other duties of our jobs. If you throw in a couple of patrons who refuse to put down what time they signed on, or incorrectly put down what time they signed on, it makes things a bit more tricky. Then add to this the complaints we began to get over the slowness of our connection speed (again, mostly from Gene) and the computers and their users quickly become an even deeper source of resentment to the staff than usual. It reached the point that we really didn't care when less than fragrant patrons, such as Mr. Stanky, paid us a visit because it gave us a nice chance to clear the decks, as it were. (Well, except for Gene. The only outside force we've ever found that could shift Gene off of a computer was the day the power went out and he had no choice.)
And on the topic of Mr. Stanky, our new computer area was equipped with vinyl upholstered chairs, the kind we could spray down with disinfectant spray and wipe clean as opposed to the old cloth chairs we had that tended to soak up his "essence." Yes, we planned the chairs around Mr. Stanky.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
PATRON-- So when are you getting your other computers?
ME-- Oh, they're here.
PATRON-- (Does doubletake. Looks at six empty desk spaces.) Uh, they are?
ME-- Yep.
PATRON-- Um... when are you going to install them?
ME-- Already did.
PATRON-- (Looks again. Completely ignores obviously present CPUs on the floor beneath each empty desk space.) Uh... what?
ME-- Yep. Installed the computers a few days ago. They're right there. (Points to CPUs) It's just the monitors we don't have yet.
PATRON-- (Looks again. Looks back. Appears confused and slightly irritated. Decides I'm an asshole, perhaps justifiably. Walks away.)
We decided early on that our old system of using kitchen timers to monitor the amount of time patrons were using the computers was probably not a workable system for ten machines; it was hard enough getting those accurate with only three computers in the old place, plus the idea of more than one of them going off at the same time made us edgy to even think about. So the new plan was to extend the time patrons had on a given machine from a half hour to a full hour (still with no kick offs if no other patrons were waiting), reserve two of the machines as 15 minute stations and then just keep track of everything on paper. This sounded like an enormous headache to me and I was actually quite panicked about it. I began begging Mrs. A to see if we could get some sort of computer-based monitoring system, one that would allow us to decide who lived and who died. Mrs. A said that the state techs were considering such a program to be used consortium-wide, but hadn't made any firm decisions, so we'd just try our new paper system and see how things went. And so I awaited the doom of our sanity at the hands of the innanet crowd.
Quite unexpectedly, the doom did not come--at least, not at first. Even after we had all ten stations up and running, the competition for them was surprisingly slim in the early weeks. We rarely had to enforce the 15 minute station rules and often just let users of them go for however long they wanted as there were almost always other stations open. We didn't even have to kick anybody off a machine for nearly a month into the new gig and even then it was a rare occurrence. Patrons basically could stay on as long as they wanted and there was enough turnover that we didn't have any problems with competition.
As the months passed, though, we began to have more and more innanet crowders more and more often. Word was getting around that we had a bountiful supply of computers and the crowders began to crawl from beneath their rocks and lurch in to use them. Patrons we'd not seen in years, such as Matilda the Cranky Wiccan, Mabel the Amateaur Geneal0gist, Sunday Bob, and the Formerly Sweatiest Woman in All the Land, began to become regular visitors again. Previously frequent innanet crowders such as Germaphobe Gary, Johnny Hacker, Mr. Little Stupid, Mr. Hinky, and Mr. Perfect began coming far more frequently, usually multiple times a day. And former repeat offender Innanet Rogues, such as Mr. B-Natural, Old Man Printer, The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, and Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine basically needed to have their ass roots cut out of our chairs each evening for all the innanet time they were hogging up. Sonofabitch, we even saw us a Fagin or two.
All of this increased traffic made for increasing problems with paper-based monitoring process. The way it was designed to work, patrons signed up on our sign-in clip-board with their name and time as usual; the staff then assigned them one of the vacant computers and then the staff noted which one it was beside their name on the sign-in sheet; when computer patrons departed, the staff was supposed to highlight their names to indicate their absence; then, if all computers were full, whichever patron was at the top of the list of non-highlighted names (usually Gene) was automatically up for being kicked off.
This system actually worked pretty well for several months, but as our traffic increased so did the problems inherent with it, such as the difficulties in keeping track of just who has to get off and when in addition to the other duties of our jobs. If you throw in a couple of patrons who refuse to put down what time they signed on, or incorrectly put down what time they signed on, it makes things a bit more tricky. Then add to this the complaints we began to get over the slowness of our connection speed (again, mostly from Gene) and the computers and their users quickly become an even deeper source of resentment to the staff than usual. It reached the point that we really didn't care when less than fragrant patrons, such as Mr. Stanky, paid us a visit because it gave us a nice chance to clear the decks, as it were. (Well, except for Gene. The only outside force we've ever found that could shift Gene off of a computer was the day the power went out and he had no choice.)
And on the topic of Mr. Stanky, our new computer area was equipped with vinyl upholstered chairs, the kind we could spray down with disinfectant spray and wipe clean as opposed to the old cloth chairs we had that tended to soak up his "essence." Yes, we planned the chairs around Mr. Stanky.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Monday, September 17, 2007
"Yeah, let's hire her."
An unfamiliar-looking mother and her eight-year-oldish daughter approached the circ-desk and announced they needed library cards.
I started with the daughter's card, reading the information from the form I'd had the mom fill out. As soon as I typed in the daughter's full name, our circulation system's backup warning functions kicked in and popped up a window warning me that there was a pre-existing patron record with the same name and contact information.
"Looks like we already have her in the system," I said. "She has a card listed with TOWN-C."
"Oh, yeah. We had cards there, but we've moved and we can't find them anywhere," the mom said.
I explained to her that I could make her replacement cards, but we would charge a dollar for each of them. She said that was fine and produced two bucks.
While changing the barcode of the daughter's card, I noted that there were fines in her record equalling $70. I clicked the fines window to see that Town-C had levied $35 fines for each of two videos the daughter had checked out in 2005. I pointed this out to the mom and let her know that while I could go ahead and replace her cards, we couldn't circulate anything on her daughter's card until those fines were taken care of with Town-C. Mom said she understood.
I then pulled up the mom's record to replace her barcode number and found the mom had been fined over $200 by Town-C for six books she'd not returned from 2005. I informed her of this and went ahead and printed off lists of both sets of listed unreturned items.
After studying her own list for all of two seconds, mom said, "No, no, no, we brought those back. Yes, we got the letter in the mail and we brought those..."
I held up a hand. "It's neither here or there to me. I have no control over those fines. That's between you and TOWN-C. And, like I said, we cannot check anything out to you until those fines are taken care of with TOWN-C."
The mom nodded, then immediately started back on her "we brought those back" theme, but stopped short of a full retelling, possibly because of my I've said my piece and set my foot and am now tuning you out expression.
My boss, Mrs. A, happened to walk behind the circ desk during this and saw generally what was going on with the mom and daughter. Then, perhaps sensing that the chief "liberrian" was present, the mom popped up with, "Hey, can I get a job up here? I need me a job in a place like this."
Mrs. A turned and smiled and told her we had no positions open at the moment.
The mom seemed to take no offense, but picked up the new cards I'd made for them (and which, moments after they left, I would load up with notes and warning flags indicating to anyone else in the consortium that they were to do no business with these people until their fines were paid) and departed.
"Yeah, let's hire her," Mrs. A said in a low voice as soon as they were through the door.
This probably marks the second major deadbeat patron that I've heard of to express interest in a job at the "liberry"; the first being Ma Fagin.
I started with the daughter's card, reading the information from the form I'd had the mom fill out. As soon as I typed in the daughter's full name, our circulation system's backup warning functions kicked in and popped up a window warning me that there was a pre-existing patron record with the same name and contact information.
"Looks like we already have her in the system," I said. "She has a card listed with TOWN-C."
"Oh, yeah. We had cards there, but we've moved and we can't find them anywhere," the mom said.
I explained to her that I could make her replacement cards, but we would charge a dollar for each of them. She said that was fine and produced two bucks.
While changing the barcode of the daughter's card, I noted that there were fines in her record equalling $70. I clicked the fines window to see that Town-C had levied $35 fines for each of two videos the daughter had checked out in 2005. I pointed this out to the mom and let her know that while I could go ahead and replace her cards, we couldn't circulate anything on her daughter's card until those fines were taken care of with Town-C. Mom said she understood.
I then pulled up the mom's record to replace her barcode number and found the mom had been fined over $200 by Town-C for six books she'd not returned from 2005. I informed her of this and went ahead and printed off lists of both sets of listed unreturned items.
After studying her own list for all of two seconds, mom said, "No, no, no, we brought those back. Yes, we got the letter in the mail and we brought those..."
I held up a hand. "It's neither here or there to me. I have no control over those fines. That's between you and TOWN-C. And, like I said, we cannot check anything out to you until those fines are taken care of with TOWN-C."
The mom nodded, then immediately started back on her "we brought those back" theme, but stopped short of a full retelling, possibly because of my I've said my piece and set my foot and am now tuning you out expression.
My boss, Mrs. A, happened to walk behind the circ desk during this and saw generally what was going on with the mom and daughter. Then, perhaps sensing that the chief "liberrian" was present, the mom popped up with, "Hey, can I get a job up here? I need me a job in a place like this."
Mrs. A turned and smiled and told her we had no positions open at the moment.
The mom seemed to take no offense, but picked up the new cards I'd made for them (and which, moments after they left, I would load up with notes and warning flags indicating to anyone else in the consortium that they were to do no business with these people until their fines were paid) and departed.
"Yeah, let's hire her," Mrs. A said in a low voice as soon as they were through the door.
This probably marks the second major deadbeat patron that I've heard of to express interest in a job at the "liberry"; the first being Ma Fagin.
Friday, April 20, 2007
FAGIN ATTACK!
It's been years since we last saw hide or hair of the infamous Fagin family–those rogues among rogues responsible for stealing hundreds of dollars of library books in our county and beyond. I was certainly not expecting one to appear this week, but appear he did.
It happened midway through my afternoon, shift. I had just been straightening up the periodicals section from where it had been attacked and rearranged by The Coot and various handicapped patrons. Afterward, while descending the staircase, I passed some teenage kid and his girlfriend, who were on the way up. Arriving in the front room, I found the circ-desk to be awash with staff-based activity. Mrs. A was seaching something up in our circulation computer while Mrs. C was digging frantically in a filing cabinet.
"Do you know if Karl Fagin is a Seefile?" Mrs. A asked when she saw me. She was referring to the files we keep, organized by year, of deadbeat patrons who've failed to return our books.
"Hell, yes, he's a Seefile," I said. "Why?"
"He's in the building and wants to check something out."
"No way," I said, pointing back over my shoulder. "That was him?"
"Yes. He's got a card from TOWN-D. And the community college."
Ah, yes. Now I remember. Two years back, when we switched over to our new patron circulation computer system, I was assigned the task of going through all the Seefiles and cataloging the worst offenders into a list of banned patrons we were never ever to issue new library cards to. Karl Fagin had been on that list. And, after a year or so under the new system, I rechecked every name on it and noticed young Mr. Fagin had been allowed a card in Town-D–a branch that has nearly as much reason to hate the Fagins as we do. At that time, I'd loaded his patron record up with notes and pop up warnings to the effect that no library in their right mind should ever check anything out to him, because he and his family owe pretty much every library in the area for "lost" books. Yet, here he was again. And not only did he still have a patron record with Town-D, but he'd managed to get one with the community college to boot. Not that this was surprising. Under the old computer system, the classic Fagin modus operandi was to go to one branch, aquire cards for every family member in their massive brood, check out their limit in books from that branch, then head off to another branch and do the exact same thing. Under the old computer system, this was possible because there were no security features to throw up red flags at repeated names. The security features of our newish circulation software, however, has put a serious crimp in their thievery over the past few years. Clearly there are still ways around our defenses.
All the Fagins really have to do to get back into the system is find a library with a new employee who is potentially unfamiliar with their familial empire of monograph mayhem, then send in a pre-driving age kid to fill out a library card application. Being a kid, they won't have to put down a driver's license number. They won't even be expected to have ID. Then, if the computer flags them by name, the kid will claim he or she is a different person with that same name. And because they've moved around a lot over the years, often their listed addresses don't match up to further send up warning signals.
Karl Fagin had apparently done this with the community college and was likely trying to do the same with us, except Mrs. A recognized his surname and double checked the computer in advance. She sent him off to find whatever book he was looking for to give us time to get our evidence in order, because she couldn't exactly ban him or keep him from buying a replacement card if we didn't have such evidence at hand.
And this was really the whole reason behind compiling a list of Deadbeat Patrons Never To Be Issued Cards Again, as I did two years back. Unfortunately, that original printed list, which used to live by the circulation computer, has gone missing. And because the computer I composed it on did not truly have all its files shifted over into the one that replaced it, as our tech guys told us they had, it no longer exists there either. I didn't learn this, though, until I'd joined the search for evidence. Meanwhile, Mrs. C was having to go through all the physical Seefile folders from 2002 back to confirm Karl Fagin's history of treachery. She was still looking when Karl and his girlfriend came back with his book.
Karl Fagin must have known the jig was up, because he didn't even try to press the issue on getting a new library card. He didn't bring up the subject at all. Instead, he passed his book into the hands of his girlfriend who produced her own library card and checked it out for him. There wasn't a thing we could do about it, either. Likely, we'll never see that book again and she'll soon join the ranks of patrons banned from checking out materials at our branch. They'll probably get married, spawn, and within a few years will be sending their brood in to visit us, too.
A minute after Karl and his girl had left the building, Mrs. C found one of his Seefiles from 1992.
It happened midway through my afternoon, shift. I had just been straightening up the periodicals section from where it had been attacked and rearranged by The Coot and various handicapped patrons. Afterward, while descending the staircase, I passed some teenage kid and his girlfriend, who were on the way up. Arriving in the front room, I found the circ-desk to be awash with staff-based activity. Mrs. A was seaching something up in our circulation computer while Mrs. C was digging frantically in a filing cabinet.
"Do you know if Karl Fagin is a Seefile?" Mrs. A asked when she saw me. She was referring to the files we keep, organized by year, of deadbeat patrons who've failed to return our books.
"Hell, yes, he's a Seefile," I said. "Why?"
"He's in the building and wants to check something out."
"No way," I said, pointing back over my shoulder. "That was him?"
"Yes. He's got a card from TOWN-D. And the community college."
Ah, yes. Now I remember. Two years back, when we switched over to our new patron circulation computer system, I was assigned the task of going through all the Seefiles and cataloging the worst offenders into a list of banned patrons we were never ever to issue new library cards to. Karl Fagin had been on that list. And, after a year or so under the new system, I rechecked every name on it and noticed young Mr. Fagin had been allowed a card in Town-D–a branch that has nearly as much reason to hate the Fagins as we do. At that time, I'd loaded his patron record up with notes and pop up warnings to the effect that no library in their right mind should ever check anything out to him, because he and his family owe pretty much every library in the area for "lost" books. Yet, here he was again. And not only did he still have a patron record with Town-D, but he'd managed to get one with the community college to boot. Not that this was surprising. Under the old computer system, the classic Fagin modus operandi was to go to one branch, aquire cards for every family member in their massive brood, check out their limit in books from that branch, then head off to another branch and do the exact same thing. Under the old computer system, this was possible because there were no security features to throw up red flags at repeated names. The security features of our newish circulation software, however, has put a serious crimp in their thievery over the past few years. Clearly there are still ways around our defenses.
All the Fagins really have to do to get back into the system is find a library with a new employee who is potentially unfamiliar with their familial empire of monograph mayhem, then send in a pre-driving age kid to fill out a library card application. Being a kid, they won't have to put down a driver's license number. They won't even be expected to have ID. Then, if the computer flags them by name, the kid will claim he or she is a different person with that same name. And because they've moved around a lot over the years, often their listed addresses don't match up to further send up warning signals.
Karl Fagin had apparently done this with the community college and was likely trying to do the same with us, except Mrs. A recognized his surname and double checked the computer in advance. She sent him off to find whatever book he was looking for to give us time to get our evidence in order, because she couldn't exactly ban him or keep him from buying a replacement card if we didn't have such evidence at hand.
And this was really the whole reason behind compiling a list of Deadbeat Patrons Never To Be Issued Cards Again, as I did two years back. Unfortunately, that original printed list, which used to live by the circulation computer, has gone missing. And because the computer I composed it on did not truly have all its files shifted over into the one that replaced it, as our tech guys told us they had, it no longer exists there either. I didn't learn this, though, until I'd joined the search for evidence. Meanwhile, Mrs. C was having to go through all the physical Seefile folders from 2002 back to confirm Karl Fagin's history of treachery. She was still looking when Karl and his girlfriend came back with his book.
Karl Fagin must have known the jig was up, because he didn't even try to press the issue on getting a new library card. He didn't bring up the subject at all. Instead, he passed his book into the hands of his girlfriend who produced her own library card and checked it out for him. There wasn't a thing we could do about it, either. Likely, we'll never see that book again and she'll soon join the ranks of patrons banned from checking out materials at our branch. They'll probably get married, spawn, and within a few years will be sending their brood in to visit us, too.
A minute after Karl and his girl had left the building, Mrs. C found one of his Seefiles from 1992.
Friday, June 04, 2004
...to the Seefiles, the Seefiles of Love
Welllllll, my evil joy at Seefiling may have come back to bite me.
Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Deadbeat Club
My major project of the day was creating new Seefiles.
Seefiles are the files we keep of deadbeat patrons who have kept our books well beyond the customary loan period, refusing to return them despite numerous attempts on our part to get them to do so. The name comes from the note we put in their patron record so that when they attempt to check anything else out we will notice "Seefile 97" and know that we are to SEE the FILE containing all the deadbeat patrons from 1997. We go to the filing cabinet, drag out Seefile 97, find the deadbeat patron's slip with the offending lost books on it and we show it to them. We then get to watch the deadbeat patron's feigned look of shock and horror that we might even think they've had eight of our books out for the past seven years.
Well, let's see... you're Irwin Wazonkowski, we only have one Irwin Wazonkowski in the system, nay, the state... we're betting it's you. Give us our money. What? No money? Okay, get out. That's right, get out. Get your crappy little car out from in front of the building and don't come back without our money.
(That last bit will only happen in the Tales from the "Liberry" movie version, but the point still stands.)
So, let's recap: Seefile people are scum of the earth. They are the lowest of the low. They are old crusty boogers found stuck to the bottom of our computer chairs. And the Fagins are their royal family.
Well, we didn't have any Fagins in today, but we're shoring up our defenses against them for when our new circulation computer system goes live in t-minus a couple of weeks. So my job today was to take our enormous stack of overdues from the past two years, write the barcode numbers of their books on each overdue slip so we can remove them from our records later, then check those books back into our computer and mark the patron records of the deadbeat patrons who still have them as Seefiles, thus preventing them from doing Jaqueline Schidt at the library until they pay up or return their books. It's incredibly tedious and boring work, but I tell you I absolutely love it. It's one of the most satisfying parts of my job. I know deep down that we're probably NEEEVER gonna see these people again. Hell, most of the ones in our Hopeless Causes pile have long since fled the state, or at least the county and will never again darken our door. Doesn't matter. Cause to me, Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of stickin' it to The Man...
...Actually, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, cause it's really more like The Man stickin' it to the little guy, when you think about it. Doesn't mean the little guy's in the right, but that's more like it...
...Okay, forget about the stickin' it to The Man part. That was just bullshit. Look at it this way...
...Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of fighting injustice in the world. There ya go. That's the analogy I want. I'm the superhero squashing the scum of the earth, wiping out the very toejam of the rotting foot of crime, putting right what once went wrong, beating the ever-living hell out of poop-brained morons with no regard for how a polite society is supposed to work. It is my joy of joys.
Even better... Mrs. C, who knows full well just how much I love Seefiling, intentionally didn't let Mrs. B and Mrs. J do much of it yesterday just so I could have the pleasure of Seefiling deadbeats all day today. It was wonderful! I spent my day giving off evil cackles of glee as I added loser after loser to the pile.
I suspect I'm really not supposed to get quite so much enjoyment out of this, but dammit, I do.
Seefiles are the files we keep of deadbeat patrons who have kept our books well beyond the customary loan period, refusing to return them despite numerous attempts on our part to get them to do so. The name comes from the note we put in their patron record so that when they attempt to check anything else out we will notice "Seefile 97" and know that we are to SEE the FILE containing all the deadbeat patrons from 1997. We go to the filing cabinet, drag out Seefile 97, find the deadbeat patron's slip with the offending lost books on it and we show it to them. We then get to watch the deadbeat patron's feigned look of shock and horror that we might even think they've had eight of our books out for the past seven years.
Well, let's see... you're Irwin Wazonkowski, we only have one Irwin Wazonkowski in the system, nay, the state... we're betting it's you. Give us our money. What? No money? Okay, get out. That's right, get out. Get your crappy little car out from in front of the building and don't come back without our money.
(That last bit will only happen in the Tales from the "Liberry" movie version, but the point still stands.)
So, let's recap: Seefile people are scum of the earth. They are the lowest of the low. They are old crusty boogers found stuck to the bottom of our computer chairs. And the Fagins are their royal family.
Well, we didn't have any Fagins in today, but we're shoring up our defenses against them for when our new circulation computer system goes live in t-minus a couple of weeks. So my job today was to take our enormous stack of overdues from the past two years, write the barcode numbers of their books on each overdue slip so we can remove them from our records later, then check those books back into our computer and mark the patron records of the deadbeat patrons who still have them as Seefiles, thus preventing them from doing Jaqueline Schidt at the library until they pay up or return their books. It's incredibly tedious and boring work, but I tell you I absolutely love it. It's one of the most satisfying parts of my job. I know deep down that we're probably NEEEVER gonna see these people again. Hell, most of the ones in our Hopeless Causes pile have long since fled the state, or at least the county and will never again darken our door. Doesn't matter. Cause to me, Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of stickin' it to The Man...
...Actually, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, cause it's really more like The Man stickin' it to the little guy, when you think about it. Doesn't mean the little guy's in the right, but that's more like it...
...Okay, forget about the stickin' it to The Man part. That was just bullshit. Look at it this way...
...Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of fighting injustice in the world. There ya go. That's the analogy I want. I'm the superhero squashing the scum of the earth, wiping out the very toejam of the rotting foot of crime, putting right what once went wrong, beating the ever-living hell out of poop-brained morons with no regard for how a polite society is supposed to work. It is my joy of joys.
Even better... Mrs. C, who knows full well just how much I love Seefiling, intentionally didn't let Mrs. B and Mrs. J do much of it yesterday just so I could have the pleasure of Seefiling deadbeats all day today. It was wonderful! I spent my day giving off evil cackles of glee as I added loser after loser to the pile.
I suspect I'm really not supposed to get quite so much enjoyment out of this, but dammit, I do.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Training Day
The "liberry" was closed today so that we its staff could journey to a
neighboring county where we sought to be trained to use our rapidly
impending brand new computer system.
There are a lot of things I'm not looking forward to regarding the transfer of power from VTLS (a.k.a: the Devil) to Millennium (a.k.a.: the helpful and blessed savior), but the Millennium system itself is thankfully not one of them. It's certainly more complex than our version of VTLS, but in this case that's a good thing. It will let us do some pretty amazing and useful things that will make our job a lot easier in many respects. Course, most of what I saw today was the shine and glitter of a brand new system with none of the down sides, but so far the upsides are pretty up.
What's going to suck is the few weeks we're going to have to have both VTLS and Millennium running at the same time as we try to check all our books back in through VTLS, but check them out using only Millennium. We'll also have to issue each and every patron who walks through the door a new library card, which will mean huge lines at the desk while we do this. We'll also have to thoroughly reeducate our patrons that, yes, we really are serious when we say "YOU MUST HAVE YOUR NEW LIBRARY CARD WITH YOU IN ORDER TO CHECK OUT BOOKS. NO, WE WEREN'T KIDDING ABOUT ALL THAT."
And when are we scheduled to do this? Oh, only the second week into our Summer Reading program, which is our busiest time of the entire year as far as new patrons and mass circulation goes.
Nevermind the fact that the New Library Computer System committee has decreed that all patrons must have photo ID and a drivers license number in order to get a library card, which are two things most nine year olds aren't going to have. We've been assured that a solution to this problem is in the works, but there are very few other permanent numbers that we can legally use to help differentiate our patrons.
In the training session today we set up patron records for fictional people (mine was "Freely, Ichabod Phineas"), checked out books to them, put them on hold for books, pretended to be them putting themselves on hold for books online, put nasty little notes in their patron records ("Pees Freely"), levied fines against them for overdues and bad checks and blocked them from checking anything out just for spite. We also discussed our branch's conspiracy to pre-bury certain problem patrons who have been pissing us off for years before they get the chance to get new library cards and piss us off some more by stealing another load of our books. I've suggested and it has now officially been adopted that we call this little maneuver a "Fagin block", named in dishonor of our least favorite family of patrons ever. The scary thing is that we had 8 different libraries represented in the room and at least 6 of them had personal experience with the Fagin clan and their thieving, deceptive ways. The other two were pretty sure they'd escaped by the simple fact that the Fagins seem to be unaware of their existence.
After the training was finished, we all sat around and bitched about problem patrons for a good half hour. We decided that what we really need is some more creative fines to levy, such as an Annoying Patron Fine, a Stinky Patron Fine and the ever popular He Who Must Not Be Named Fine. We also probably need a Get the Hell Off the Computer Fine.
I was amazed at how much trouble some of the other libraries have with patrons refusing to get off the computers when asked. I thought we had it bad with the Dufus and Parka, but there are far worse patrons out there. Surly patrons, who get angry when their half-hour runs out, who then stand around shaking like an addict in withdrawal when they can't get a turn and who irritate and bully other patrons into relinquishing their computers. Frankly, it sounds to me like these people need the soothing medicine that can only be gained by firm and repeated applications of a stout "library stick".
There are a lot of things I'm not looking forward to regarding the transfer of power from VTLS (a.k.a: the Devil) to Millennium (a.k.a.: the helpful and blessed savior), but the Millennium system itself is thankfully not one of them. It's certainly more complex than our version of VTLS, but in this case that's a good thing. It will let us do some pretty amazing and useful things that will make our job a lot easier in many respects. Course, most of what I saw today was the shine and glitter of a brand new system with none of the down sides, but so far the upsides are pretty up.
What's going to suck is the few weeks we're going to have to have both VTLS and Millennium running at the same time as we try to check all our books back in through VTLS, but check them out using only Millennium. We'll also have to issue each and every patron who walks through the door a new library card, which will mean huge lines at the desk while we do this. We'll also have to thoroughly reeducate our patrons that, yes, we really are serious when we say "YOU MUST HAVE YOUR NEW LIBRARY CARD WITH YOU IN ORDER TO CHECK OUT BOOKS. NO, WE WEREN'T KIDDING ABOUT ALL THAT."
And when are we scheduled to do this? Oh, only the second week into our Summer Reading program, which is our busiest time of the entire year as far as new patrons and mass circulation goes.
Nevermind the fact that the New Library Computer System committee has decreed that all patrons must have photo ID and a drivers license number in order to get a library card, which are two things most nine year olds aren't going to have. We've been assured that a solution to this problem is in the works, but there are very few other permanent numbers that we can legally use to help differentiate our patrons.
In the training session today we set up patron records for fictional people (mine was "Freely, Ichabod Phineas"), checked out books to them, put them on hold for books, pretended to be them putting themselves on hold for books online, put nasty little notes in their patron records ("Pees Freely"), levied fines against them for overdues and bad checks and blocked them from checking anything out just for spite. We also discussed our branch's conspiracy to pre-bury certain problem patrons who have been pissing us off for years before they get the chance to get new library cards and piss us off some more by stealing another load of our books. I've suggested and it has now officially been adopted that we call this little maneuver a "Fagin block", named in dishonor of our least favorite family of patrons ever. The scary thing is that we had 8 different libraries represented in the room and at least 6 of them had personal experience with the Fagin clan and their thieving, deceptive ways. The other two were pretty sure they'd escaped by the simple fact that the Fagins seem to be unaware of their existence.
After the training was finished, we all sat around and bitched about problem patrons for a good half hour. We decided that what we really need is some more creative fines to levy, such as an Annoying Patron Fine, a Stinky Patron Fine and the ever popular He Who Must Not Be Named Fine. We also probably need a Get the Hell Off the Computer Fine.
I was amazed at how much trouble some of the other libraries have with patrons refusing to get off the computers when asked. I thought we had it bad with the Dufus and Parka, but there are far worse patrons out there. Surly patrons, who get angry when their half-hour runs out, who then stand around shaking like an addict in withdrawal when they can't get a turn and who irritate and bully other patrons into relinquishing their computers. Frankly, it sounds to me like these people need the soothing medicine that can only be gained by firm and repeated applications of a stout "library stick".
Monday, March 15, 2004
I Shall Rule Them All With An Iron Fist!
A few days back, a mom and her daughter were in to check out some
books. Once daughter had her selection chosen, Mom told her to take em
up to the desk to check out.
"But I don't have my card," Daughter said.
"Oh, it's all right. You don't need it here," Mom said.
Mrs. C smiled at this and politely said, "That's right. At the moment you won't need your card. But in a couple of months when we have our new computer system you will need your card to check out books."
"Whaaaat?" Mom said in a shocked tone.
Mrs. C explained that this was going to be a new requirement with the new circulation and cataloging computer system. Reason being, all the liberries in our multi-county liberry cooperative are going to be combining their patron records in order to more efficiently serve the public. This means every patron in all of those libraries will be added to one central database which all the libraries will access. So instead of us looking up a patron and seeing only those patron's in our library's database, we'll see all of the library cooperative's patrons. If your name is John Smith, it will be vital to have your card so that your books don't get stuck on some other John Smith's patron record and so that guy's don't get stuck on yours.
Another choice feature of this new collective database is that it will be helpful in keeping track and punishing deadbeat patrons (*cough*cough*cough*THE FAGINS*COUGH*!) At the moment, if a deadbeat patron wants to fill up their card with books at our library, they can turn around and go down the road to Town C's library and fill up there too. When we get the new system, that deadbeat patron will be in for a surprise as it's all gonna be one record. And when their books are overdue by several weeks/months/years/decades they'll also find that they won't be able to simply shun one library and continue checking books out at the others cause it's, all together now, one big happy database.
And when super-deadbeats like Kammy K abuse their interlibrary loan privilages, they'll find they're blocked at not only their local library... but ALL REGIONAL LIBRARIES TOO! Bwahahahahaha!
In fact, the only major drawback to this (other than the almost certainly inevitable fact that this system will NOT work properly for the first several weeks/months/years/decades after it goes online) is that we're going to have to issue new cards to all of our patrons. On the upside of that, we're not going to reissue cards to everyone in our current database, in the same manner we had to rebarcode every book in our collection last summer. Instead, we'll just do it one at a time for the folks who regularly come in, building a new patron database from the ground up. Their cards will be good at all libraries in our cooperative, so they'll only have to get one and won't have to keep being entered into everyone else's.
I'm sure there are going to be intense headaches to follow all this, because nothing this complicated can go smoothly. But hopefully, the pluses will outweigh the many minuses I foresee.
And I can rule them all with an iron fist.
"But I don't have my card," Daughter said.
"Oh, it's all right. You don't need it here," Mom said.
Mrs. C smiled at this and politely said, "That's right. At the moment you won't need your card. But in a couple of months when we have our new computer system you will need your card to check out books."
"Whaaaat?" Mom said in a shocked tone.
Mrs. C explained that this was going to be a new requirement with the new circulation and cataloging computer system. Reason being, all the liberries in our multi-county liberry cooperative are going to be combining their patron records in order to more efficiently serve the public. This means every patron in all of those libraries will be added to one central database which all the libraries will access. So instead of us looking up a patron and seeing only those patron's in our library's database, we'll see all of the library cooperative's patrons. If your name is John Smith, it will be vital to have your card so that your books don't get stuck on some other John Smith's patron record and so that guy's don't get stuck on yours.
Another choice feature of this new collective database is that it will be helpful in keeping track and punishing deadbeat patrons (*cough*cough*cough*THE FAGINS*COUGH*!) At the moment, if a deadbeat patron wants to fill up their card with books at our library, they can turn around and go down the road to Town C's library and fill up there too. When we get the new system, that deadbeat patron will be in for a surprise as it's all gonna be one record. And when their books are overdue by several weeks/months/years/decades they'll also find that they won't be able to simply shun one library and continue checking books out at the others cause it's, all together now, one big happy database.
And when super-deadbeats like Kammy K abuse their interlibrary loan privilages, they'll find they're blocked at not only their local library... but ALL REGIONAL LIBRARIES TOO! Bwahahahahaha!
In fact, the only major drawback to this (other than the almost certainly inevitable fact that this system will NOT work properly for the first several weeks/months/years/decades after it goes online) is that we're going to have to issue new cards to all of our patrons. On the upside of that, we're not going to reissue cards to everyone in our current database, in the same manner we had to rebarcode every book in our collection last summer. Instead, we'll just do it one at a time for the folks who regularly come in, building a new patron database from the ground up. Their cards will be good at all libraries in our cooperative, so they'll only have to get one and won't have to keep being entered into everyone else's.
I'm sure there are going to be intense headaches to follow all this, because nothing this complicated can go smoothly. But hopefully, the pluses will outweigh the many minuses I foresee.
And I can rule them all with an iron fist.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Miscellaneous Losers
After all the slow/no liberry news last week, this week is off to a hearty good start.
When I arrived today, Mrs. C the liberrrian told me I'd just missed a visit from my least favorite patron in all the world, Mrs. Carol Satan. Carol was in to return some books, but not ALL of her books. Seems there are two books left on her card that are WAY overdue. Of course, on Carol's planet she returned those books months ago. ("No, decades ago. In fact, I never checked them out in the first place. I don't read books! I can't even read at all! I have glaucoma from smoking too many cigarettes! Hell, I've never set foot in the library before and I'm not even here now! I've never been treated so rudely in all my life!"... etc. etc.) She said she put `em in the drop box outside, cause she always puts her borrowed books in the same place in her house and they're not there so she HAD to have returned them. (Try looking under the cigarette crate sometime, lady!)
Mrs. C said Mrs. Carol Satan didn't actually throw her usual hissy, but the threat of one was definitely there.
It's probably for the best that I wasn't around for her visit. I'm finding it more and more difficult to resist the idea of returning fire at full bore upon her next verbal onslaught.
We also were paid a visit from another patron who is usually one of our nicer patrons, but today he was the messiest patron. Let's call him Luigi. He's usually harmless enough and mostly comes to the library to look up gardening information, as, I'm pretty sure he's a member of our local Back to the Land movement. From what I've gathered from talking to a couple of friends in the movement, Back to the Landers pretty much live off the land, farming and eschewing such amenities as electricity and running water in favor of living like our forefathers from early last century and before. Many of them are, understandably, former 60's hippies who didn't ditch their ideals at the first sign of 80s prosperity.
I don't pretend to know what Luigi's exact situation is. I'm not even entirely sure he's a Back to the Lander. All I do know is that he tracked a great deal of that land into my library in the form of intensely muddy footprints.
See, we've had something of a cold spell for the past three months here, with loads and loads of snow which has now piled up into great heaping, road-grime and pollution absorbing mountains of ice. Over the past few days, however, we've had a warming trend, with temperatures reaching the upper 50s and lots of sunshine. Much of the ice has started to melt, mingling with the soil and churning up mud in its place. So now, at the liberry, we no longer have to constantly vacuum due to the road-salt being tracked in and the idiot patrons who somehow always manage to avoid the perfectly good door mat outside in favor of using the runner carpet from the door to the circulation desk, no now we have to deal with mud.
When Luigi came in, he somehow managed not to get much mud on the runner itself, which means he didn't even attempt to wipe his feet. He stepped across it and left muddy footprint after muddy footprint through the main room, then through the carpeted children's room, up the carpeted stairs and into the uncarpeted non-fiction room upstairs where he proceeded to a table beneath which he left a sizeable puddle of mud and filth. Unfortunately, we didn't notice what he had done until some time after he'd already done it. We had to follow the muddy footprints up the stairs and to his table to determine that he, Luigi, was the culprit.
And the thing is, while there is mud outside, it's all in the library's lawn and NOT on the perfectly clean and well-swept cut-stone sidewalk and walkway leading right up to our front door from the equally unmuddy parking area. For Luigi to track in as much mud as he did, he would have had to go walk around in the muddy portion of the lawn, which is NOT even near the library's front door and which he would have to go out of his way to get to in the first place, and really put some effort into getting his boots truly good and muddy whilst there. It seems like this muddying of our floors would almost have to be intentional.
Rather than cleaning the mess up right away, we decided to wait until Luigi had left, as he was just going to track more mud in the process.
Much mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing of carpet on hands and knees later, we managed to get most of the mud up and are now considering boot-checks as standard library policy.
But those two losers, terrible as they are, pale in comparison to the joy I had in getting to mail a letter to a completely different patron whose tale I have not yet chronicled here.
When I arrived for work, Mrs. C told me I needed to take all our interliberry loan packages to the post office to send out. That's the kind of grunt work I occasionally have to do. You just have to lug a bunch of bulky packages down the street to the post office, dump em on the desk and wait ten minutes for the postal employee to get em all processed. It's a hassle but it's not difficult.
In addition to this, though, Mrs. C needed me to send a certified letter to a particular problem patron whom I have not yet discussed on this blog. I speak of none other than Kammy K: the Book Hoarding Bizatch.
Kammy K. is a local employee of the county. In fact, she's one of the higher-ups in a local county-run office, which I will omit from naming so as not to soil their good name. She's not an elected official, by any means, but still a higher up in her particular neck of county business.
In May of 2003, Kammy K. asked us to interlibrary loan a book for her called "Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?" We ILLed it from another county and gave it to Kammy K when it came in.
That was the last time we saw that book.
Now, most interlibrary loans give patrons a month to read the book and return it to the library that borrowed it for them. Rules such as this evidently do not apply to Kammy K., for she ignored them.
Kammy K. kept the book beyond her month limit. When she passed into overdue status, we phoned her to remind her to bring it back. We could never seem to get through to Kammy K. herself, but we were able to leave messages asking her to please return it.
Kammy K. ignored the messages.
Weeks passed and many more messages followed.
Kammy K. ignored them too.
Next we sent non-certified cards and letters to Kammy K. asking her to please return the book or at the very least contact us regarding it.
Kammy K. ignored the cards and letters.
The loaning library from another county, annoyed that we had not yet returned their book, BLOCKED our library from borrowing any more books from them until its return. We weren't offended by this; it's standard procedure for most libraries and if the tables had been turned we would have blocked their collective butt too.
So, again, we sent more letters to Kammy K. and loaded down her office and home voicemail with messages explaining our situation of being unable to borrow books from the loaning library BECAUSE of her book-hoarding ass.
Kammy K. ignored them all.
Next up, we started leaving messages with her co-workers, hoping that the embarrassment of having her entire office staff know that she's borrowing books with titles like Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be? might cause her to reconsider ignoring us.
Nope. Kammy K. began ignoring us with renewed vigor.
About this time, I suggested that instead of leaving messages with Kammy K.'s co-workers complaining that she had an overdue book called Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be? we should really be leaving messages about a book called "STD-Ridden Anal Lice: How to Cope." This idea was shot down.
I then suggested we needed to start putting the names of problem patrons, such as Kammy K., in the newspaper. Hey, it works for all the property-tax-evaders, traffic-offenders, bad-check-writers and deadbeat-dads around here. Why not asshat-patrons? Besides, Mrs. A is always stressing over having to come up with material to put in our weekly column in the local paper so why not just spend one week a month running Liberry Deadbeats on Parade? This idea hasn't been shot down yet, per se, but I'm thinking it's not going to be enacted any time soon.
After all that, we began trying personal visits to Kammy K.'s office, which is just down the road from us. However, Kammy K. was mysteriously never in when we visited, so we were forced to leave more messages.
About three weeks ago, Mrs. A complained about Kammy K. to the liberry's board of directors. One of our board members, Mrs. Emm, knows Kammy K. personally. I think their husbands used to work together or something. Mrs. Emm figured it would be no problem to pop down to Kammy K.'s office and ask her about the book. It would turn out to be a big misunderstanding, they'd have a laugh and Kammy K. would produce the book for Mrs. Emm to take back to us. No problem.
Evidently, when Mrs. Emm went down to Kammy K.'s office, Kammy was there. Kammy K., however, refused to see Mrs. Emm. Gave her the brush off, if you'll allow. Shunned her, if you will. Blew her off, if you catch my drift. Said, "F**k All Y'all," if you suss my meaning.
This was NOT to be done, nor forgiven in the eyes of Mrs. Emm.
Mrs. Emm is now on the warpath. She's pissed and no longer in the mood for dicking around with book-hoarding bizatches. This book is getting returned even if we have to pull the blasted thing from Kammy K.'s cold dead hands. An example is now going to be made of this woman that the liberry is not to be trifled with nor ignored. The impending battle promises to be terribly fun or at least funny.
According to the WV Code of Law, once a patron has been notified in writing that they have an overdue book, that patron has one month to return it or the "liberry" is well within their rights to take said patron to small claims court over the matter. This has never, to my knowledge, actually happened with our library, though Lord knows it should with folks like the Fagins walking the earth. Mrs. Emm has made it clear, though, that going to court is very much an option she intends to exercise if she doesn't see a certain book come back. I couldn't be happier.
I also couldn't have been happier to have the privilege of mailing Kammy K. an envelope full of threats to this effect, return receipt requested.
Kammy's envelope includes another letter, hopefully the last, explaining that we're now sending her a bill for Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?, which she has had since May, along with instructions that she is to either return the book NOW or pay the bill NOW. Also included is a copy of the above library-related law code concerning small claims court and our obligations, which we've now fulfilled 20 times over, in the matter before hauling her in.
My guess is she'll pay for it, but if not then the next letter she receives may be a subpoena.
When I arrived today, Mrs. C the liberrrian told me I'd just missed a visit from my least favorite patron in all the world, Mrs. Carol Satan. Carol was in to return some books, but not ALL of her books. Seems there are two books left on her card that are WAY overdue. Of course, on Carol's planet she returned those books months ago. ("No, decades ago. In fact, I never checked them out in the first place. I don't read books! I can't even read at all! I have glaucoma from smoking too many cigarettes! Hell, I've never set foot in the library before and I'm not even here now! I've never been treated so rudely in all my life!"... etc. etc.) She said she put `em in the drop box outside, cause she always puts her borrowed books in the same place in her house and they're not there so she HAD to have returned them. (Try looking under the cigarette crate sometime, lady!)
Mrs. C said Mrs. Carol Satan didn't actually throw her usual hissy, but the threat of one was definitely there.
It's probably for the best that I wasn't around for her visit. I'm finding it more and more difficult to resist the idea of returning fire at full bore upon her next verbal onslaught.
We also were paid a visit from another patron who is usually one of our nicer patrons, but today he was the messiest patron. Let's call him Luigi. He's usually harmless enough and mostly comes to the library to look up gardening information, as, I'm pretty sure he's a member of our local Back to the Land movement. From what I've gathered from talking to a couple of friends in the movement, Back to the Landers pretty much live off the land, farming and eschewing such amenities as electricity and running water in favor of living like our forefathers from early last century and before. Many of them are, understandably, former 60's hippies who didn't ditch their ideals at the first sign of 80s prosperity.
I don't pretend to know what Luigi's exact situation is. I'm not even entirely sure he's a Back to the Lander. All I do know is that he tracked a great deal of that land into my library in the form of intensely muddy footprints.
See, we've had something of a cold spell for the past three months here, with loads and loads of snow which has now piled up into great heaping, road-grime and pollution absorbing mountains of ice. Over the past few days, however, we've had a warming trend, with temperatures reaching the upper 50s and lots of sunshine. Much of the ice has started to melt, mingling with the soil and churning up mud in its place. So now, at the liberry, we no longer have to constantly vacuum due to the road-salt being tracked in and the idiot patrons who somehow always manage to avoid the perfectly good door mat outside in favor of using the runner carpet from the door to the circulation desk, no now we have to deal with mud.
When Luigi came in, he somehow managed not to get much mud on the runner itself, which means he didn't even attempt to wipe his feet. He stepped across it and left muddy footprint after muddy footprint through the main room, then through the carpeted children's room, up the carpeted stairs and into the uncarpeted non-fiction room upstairs where he proceeded to a table beneath which he left a sizeable puddle of mud and filth. Unfortunately, we didn't notice what he had done until some time after he'd already done it. We had to follow the muddy footprints up the stairs and to his table to determine that he, Luigi, was the culprit.
And the thing is, while there is mud outside, it's all in the library's lawn and NOT on the perfectly clean and well-swept cut-stone sidewalk and walkway leading right up to our front door from the equally unmuddy parking area. For Luigi to track in as much mud as he did, he would have had to go walk around in the muddy portion of the lawn, which is NOT even near the library's front door and which he would have to go out of his way to get to in the first place, and really put some effort into getting his boots truly good and muddy whilst there. It seems like this muddying of our floors would almost have to be intentional.
Rather than cleaning the mess up right away, we decided to wait until Luigi had left, as he was just going to track more mud in the process.
Much mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing of carpet on hands and knees later, we managed to get most of the mud up and are now considering boot-checks as standard library policy.
But those two losers, terrible as they are, pale in comparison to the joy I had in getting to mail a letter to a completely different patron whose tale I have not yet chronicled here.
When I arrived for work, Mrs. C told me I needed to take all our interliberry loan packages to the post office to send out. That's the kind of grunt work I occasionally have to do. You just have to lug a bunch of bulky packages down the street to the post office, dump em on the desk and wait ten minutes for the postal employee to get em all processed. It's a hassle but it's not difficult.
In addition to this, though, Mrs. C needed me to send a certified letter to a particular problem patron whom I have not yet discussed on this blog. I speak of none other than Kammy K: the Book Hoarding Bizatch.
Kammy K. is a local employee of the county. In fact, she's one of the higher-ups in a local county-run office, which I will omit from naming so as not to soil their good name. She's not an elected official, by any means, but still a higher up in her particular neck of county business.
In May of 2003, Kammy K. asked us to interlibrary loan a book for her called "Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?" We ILLed it from another county and gave it to Kammy K when it came in.
That was the last time we saw that book.
Now, most interlibrary loans give patrons a month to read the book and return it to the library that borrowed it for them. Rules such as this evidently do not apply to Kammy K., for she ignored them.
Kammy K. kept the book beyond her month limit. When she passed into overdue status, we phoned her to remind her to bring it back. We could never seem to get through to Kammy K. herself, but we were able to leave messages asking her to please return it.
Kammy K. ignored the messages.
Weeks passed and many more messages followed.
Kammy K. ignored them too.
Next we sent non-certified cards and letters to Kammy K. asking her to please return the book or at the very least contact us regarding it.
Kammy K. ignored the cards and letters.
The loaning library from another county, annoyed that we had not yet returned their book, BLOCKED our library from borrowing any more books from them until its return. We weren't offended by this; it's standard procedure for most libraries and if the tables had been turned we would have blocked their collective butt too.
So, again, we sent more letters to Kammy K. and loaded down her office and home voicemail with messages explaining our situation of being unable to borrow books from the loaning library BECAUSE of her book-hoarding ass.
Kammy K. ignored them all.
Next up, we started leaving messages with her co-workers, hoping that the embarrassment of having her entire office staff know that she's borrowing books with titles like Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be? might cause her to reconsider ignoring us.
Nope. Kammy K. began ignoring us with renewed vigor.
About this time, I suggested that instead of leaving messages with Kammy K.'s co-workers complaining that she had an overdue book called Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be? we should really be leaving messages about a book called "STD-Ridden Anal Lice: How to Cope." This idea was shot down.
I then suggested we needed to start putting the names of problem patrons, such as Kammy K., in the newspaper. Hey, it works for all the property-tax-evaders, traffic-offenders, bad-check-writers and deadbeat-dads around here. Why not asshat-patrons? Besides, Mrs. A is always stressing over having to come up with material to put in our weekly column in the local paper so why not just spend one week a month running Liberry Deadbeats on Parade? This idea hasn't been shot down yet, per se, but I'm thinking it's not going to be enacted any time soon.
After all that, we began trying personal visits to Kammy K.'s office, which is just down the road from us. However, Kammy K. was mysteriously never in when we visited, so we were forced to leave more messages.
About three weeks ago, Mrs. A complained about Kammy K. to the liberry's board of directors. One of our board members, Mrs. Emm, knows Kammy K. personally. I think their husbands used to work together or something. Mrs. Emm figured it would be no problem to pop down to Kammy K.'s office and ask her about the book. It would turn out to be a big misunderstanding, they'd have a laugh and Kammy K. would produce the book for Mrs. Emm to take back to us. No problem.
Evidently, when Mrs. Emm went down to Kammy K.'s office, Kammy was there. Kammy K., however, refused to see Mrs. Emm. Gave her the brush off, if you'll allow. Shunned her, if you will. Blew her off, if you catch my drift. Said, "F**k All Y'all," if you suss my meaning.
This was NOT to be done, nor forgiven in the eyes of Mrs. Emm.
Mrs. Emm is now on the warpath. She's pissed and no longer in the mood for dicking around with book-hoarding bizatches. This book is getting returned even if we have to pull the blasted thing from Kammy K.'s cold dead hands. An example is now going to be made of this woman that the liberry is not to be trifled with nor ignored. The impending battle promises to be terribly fun or at least funny.
According to the WV Code of Law, once a patron has been notified in writing that they have an overdue book, that patron has one month to return it or the "liberry" is well within their rights to take said patron to small claims court over the matter. This has never, to my knowledge, actually happened with our library, though Lord knows it should with folks like the Fagins walking the earth. Mrs. Emm has made it clear, though, that going to court is very much an option she intends to exercise if she doesn't see a certain book come back. I couldn't be happier.
I also couldn't have been happier to have the privilege of mailing Kammy K. an envelope full of threats to this effect, return receipt requested.
Kammy's envelope includes another letter, hopefully the last, explaining that we're now sending her a bill for Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?, which she has had since May, along with instructions that she is to either return the book NOW or pay the bill NOW. Also included is a copy of the above library-related law code concerning small claims court and our obligations, which we've now fulfilled 20 times over, in the matter before hauling her in.
My guess is she'll pay for it, but if not then the next letter she receives may be a subpoena.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
The Secret Origin of The Untalented Mr. Ripley
Tis time to tell the tale of The Untalented Mr. Ripley, one of the liberry's former Rogues Gallery members. (Mind you, he should not be confused with The Even Less Talented Mr. Ripley, who is someone else entirely.)
Much like his literary namesake from the Patricia Highsmith book, the Untalented Mr. Ripley was something of a local con-man in our area who also happened to be gay. His is also a somewhat unfortunate tale.
From what I'm told, several years ago the Untalented Mr. Ripley had been living with his ailing father but was booted out of the house wholesale by his disapproving brother following his father's death. He became something of a drifter after that, living with friends or at local shelters or occasionally renting rooms when he had the money. On the surface, he seemed to exist by doing odd jobs around town, such as helping out with heavy lifting at the local antique stores and art galleries that dominate our down town area. He was also a frequent patron at the library.
Having met the man, I must say that Mr. Ripley was a charming and disarming fellow, albeit sometimes a bit grubby. Back in his hey day, he mainly enjoyed reading and chatting with the staff when he wasn't busy fighting turf wars with Mr. B-Natural for use of what was then our one patron computer. Mr. B-Natural hated the Untalented Mr. Ripley, not only because Mr. B is the grumpiest man in all the world, nor because they were competing for the same computer, but for other reasons entirely that we shall get to shortly.
The Untalented Mr. Ripley ingratiated himself to the library staff early on by helping to defeat a member of the dreaded Fagin family. The Fagins, you see, are a huge family with a long and colorful history of theft and trechery of their own when it comes to the library. They first moved into the area probably 10 years ago and began borrowing lots of books, most of which were never seen again. Overdue notices were showered upon them only to be ignored. After so many months of begging for them to bring books back, the library simply blocked the offending Fagin-patron-record so as to prevent them from borrowing anything else. This only worked in the short term. Ma Fagin would come in and be confronted by "liberry" staff as to the many tomes she had in her possession and would be told her status as a BLOCKED patron. She would then claim she had returned all her books, we would deny it, then she would leave, sans any more books. Then, days later, she would get Pa Fagin to come in for books. Months down the road, when his card had also been blocked, they would start sending in their children--and they have LOTS of children. Eventually, every last Fagin was blocked, so they tried to start over. They would wait for an unsuspecting and unfamiliar liberry assistant (not me, mind you) to be at the circ desk then claim they had just moved to the area and needed cards for the entire family. If the library assistant didn't check the computer ahead of time to make sure they weren't already in there, the Fagins would suddenly have a full roster of cards again and would immediately fill them to capacity with poor, doomed books. Their trechery would eventually be discovered and all their new cards blocked. Why we haven't just called the cops on this family, I have no idea.
(A funny aside: Ma Fagin once tried to apply for a job with one of the other libraries in the area. She managed to make a very good impression on the head librarian there, who called Mrs. A to let her know she'd finally found someone she thought would be a good replacement for a previous deadbeat employee. Upon hearing Ma Fagin's name, Mrs. A told the other director to look up the Fagin's patron records in her own computer and see how many books she had checked out. Ma Fagin, and indeed her spawn, were blocked multiple times in that branch's computer, nixing her hiring right away.)
Some time later, according to Mrs. A, she was lamenting that some of our more expensive and irreplacable books were still in Pa Fagin's possession and would likely never see the inside of the library again. The Untalented Mr. Ripley happened to be listening to this lament and spoke up.
"I can get them back for you," he said.
"You can? How?" Mrs. A inquired.
Mr. Ripley explained that Pa Fagin was actually a friend of his who he visited frequently. (This should have been our first clue not to trust this clown.) Ripley said he'd even seen the very books we wanted back at Chez Fagin the last time he was there. So upon his next visit, the Untalented Mr. Ripley managed to slip away with those books and returned them to us, cementing his reputation as a trusted "liberry" friend. The fact that he so easily displayed a knack for theft and cunning himself while rescuing them should have been our second clue. It was one which would soon come back to haunt him, though.
Having already ingratiated himself to the library staff at the time, no one thought much about leaving Mr. Ripley by himself in the main fiction area on the frequent occasion when a staff member might have to go elsewhere in the library. He wasn't even a suspect when the cashbox began coming up short. That is, until he was caught with his hand in it some weeks later and banned from the library entirely.
I'm not sure how much time passed before Mrs. A, who felt sorry for the man, finally allowed him to return. But his return was strictly limited to the computer area. He was no longer allowed to hang about near the circulation desk where temptation might prove too great.
Years passed.
My first encounter with the Untalented Mr. Ripley was shortly after I began working at the library over two years back. At that point, I knew very little about Mr. Ripley including his former status as cash box thief nor his habit of looking for gay porn on the computers. To me he was just a guy who came in and used the computer every day and was someone Mr. B-Natural seemed to dislike quite a bit. The way I saw it, if Mr. B-Natural is your enemy how bad can you really be?
Granted, we had three patron computers by then so fighting over just one computer was no longer the issue between them, but this didn't seem to matter to Mr. B-Natural. He would come in, write his name on the computer sign in sheet (upside down, as usual) and look to see who else had signed in. If he even saw Mr. Ripley's name on the sign up sheet he would growl at it--actually growl at it. And if he knew which computer Mr. Ripley had been sitting in he would utterly refuse to sit there even if it was the only free computer. Such behavior is what helped solidify Mr. B-Natural's title as grumpiest old man in all the world.
One day Mr. B-Natural decided to issue a warning to me, as the new guy on staff.
"You gotta watch out for that RIPLEY," Mr. B said.
"How come?"
Mr. B-Natural dropped his voice down to a low growl. "He gets on the computers and looks for pictures of naked men."
"Oh," I said. At that early "liberry" career point I had yet to see anyone looking for porn on our computers of any sort. Still, I wasn't about to give Mr. B the satisfaction of seeming at all positive about his warning. "Well, what patrons do on the computers isn't really our business," I told him.
"It better be your business!"
"Why? It isn't illegal to look at porn."
"Yeah, but sometimes..." Mr. B continued, "... sometimes he prints them out."
"Again, not illegal," I said. "Not as long as he pays for the prints, at least."
Mr. B-Natural huffed and puffed and waved a dismissing paw in my direction before stomping out of the library.
What I had said was true, though. Our policy at the time was strictly hands off when it came to what patrons looked at. I mean, if he'd been trying to lure kiddies over to the computer to make them look at it, it would be one thing, but Mr. Ripley mostly used his internet time in chat rooms from what little we could tell. (Of course, now we have all sorts of filtering software to guard against kids accessing porn in the library and all kinds of hoops and parental permission slips a kid has to jump through in order to get on the internet in the first place. Of age patrons can still access porn, if they're willing to come up to the desk and request that we come turn off the filter for them. The filters have been in place for about seven months now and so far not one patron has ever made such a request.)
But I digress...
What we didn't know at the time was that the Untalented Mr. Ripley had not given up his con-man thieving ways, he had just limited it to locations other than the library. I think he saw in Mrs. A an ally he couldn't afford to piss off again. After all, she let him back in the library in a limited fashion, was friendly toward him and occasionally gave him rides to Wal-Mart. Of course, once he was in Wal-Mart he would make an excuse to go off on his own, meeting Mrs. A later at the front counter where he bought one or two small items. What Mrs. A didn't realize was that Mr. Ripley had probably stolen several others while out of her sight, effectively making her an accomplice to his theft. This was a theory we all put together a few days following Mr. Ripley's eventual arrest... not for stealing stuff from Wally World, but elsewhere.
It seems that for months Mr. Ripley had been burgling things from peoples homes and even from the downtown businesses he occasionally worked at. Many of these items were of little use to him personally, being antiques or art, but they were something he could sell later on, or give to people as gifts to help further ingratiate himself to them. He would store them away in abandoned houses in the hinterlands of the county. The police eventually got wise to him and the Untalented Mr. Ripley was arrested and packed off to jail where he remained for several months.
The last we heard, he had been released or paroled and had even been seen at Mrs. V's library, using the computers. We warned her to keep an eye on her cashbox. However, as of this writing, he has not darkened our door again. He remains a former rogue.
Much like his literary namesake from the Patricia Highsmith book, the Untalented Mr. Ripley was something of a local con-man in our area who also happened to be gay. His is also a somewhat unfortunate tale.
From what I'm told, several years ago the Untalented Mr. Ripley had been living with his ailing father but was booted out of the house wholesale by his disapproving brother following his father's death. He became something of a drifter after that, living with friends or at local shelters or occasionally renting rooms when he had the money. On the surface, he seemed to exist by doing odd jobs around town, such as helping out with heavy lifting at the local antique stores and art galleries that dominate our down town area. He was also a frequent patron at the library.
Having met the man, I must say that Mr. Ripley was a charming and disarming fellow, albeit sometimes a bit grubby. Back in his hey day, he mainly enjoyed reading and chatting with the staff when he wasn't busy fighting turf wars with Mr. B-Natural for use of what was then our one patron computer. Mr. B-Natural hated the Untalented Mr. Ripley, not only because Mr. B is the grumpiest man in all the world, nor because they were competing for the same computer, but for other reasons entirely that we shall get to shortly.
The Untalented Mr. Ripley ingratiated himself to the library staff early on by helping to defeat a member of the dreaded Fagin family. The Fagins, you see, are a huge family with a long and colorful history of theft and trechery of their own when it comes to the library. They first moved into the area probably 10 years ago and began borrowing lots of books, most of which were never seen again. Overdue notices were showered upon them only to be ignored. After so many months of begging for them to bring books back, the library simply blocked the offending Fagin-patron-record so as to prevent them from borrowing anything else. This only worked in the short term. Ma Fagin would come in and be confronted by "liberry" staff as to the many tomes she had in her possession and would be told her status as a BLOCKED patron. She would then claim she had returned all her books, we would deny it, then she would leave, sans any more books. Then, days later, she would get Pa Fagin to come in for books. Months down the road, when his card had also been blocked, they would start sending in their children--and they have LOTS of children. Eventually, every last Fagin was blocked, so they tried to start over. They would wait for an unsuspecting and unfamiliar liberry assistant (not me, mind you) to be at the circ desk then claim they had just moved to the area and needed cards for the entire family. If the library assistant didn't check the computer ahead of time to make sure they weren't already in there, the Fagins would suddenly have a full roster of cards again and would immediately fill them to capacity with poor, doomed books. Their trechery would eventually be discovered and all their new cards blocked. Why we haven't just called the cops on this family, I have no idea.
(A funny aside: Ma Fagin once tried to apply for a job with one of the other libraries in the area. She managed to make a very good impression on the head librarian there, who called Mrs. A to let her know she'd finally found someone she thought would be a good replacement for a previous deadbeat employee. Upon hearing Ma Fagin's name, Mrs. A told the other director to look up the Fagin's patron records in her own computer and see how many books she had checked out. Ma Fagin, and indeed her spawn, were blocked multiple times in that branch's computer, nixing her hiring right away.)
Some time later, according to Mrs. A, she was lamenting that some of our more expensive and irreplacable books were still in Pa Fagin's possession and would likely never see the inside of the library again. The Untalented Mr. Ripley happened to be listening to this lament and spoke up.
"I can get them back for you," he said.
"You can? How?" Mrs. A inquired.
Mr. Ripley explained that Pa Fagin was actually a friend of his who he visited frequently. (This should have been our first clue not to trust this clown.) Ripley said he'd even seen the very books we wanted back at Chez Fagin the last time he was there. So upon his next visit, the Untalented Mr. Ripley managed to slip away with those books and returned them to us, cementing his reputation as a trusted "liberry" friend. The fact that he so easily displayed a knack for theft and cunning himself while rescuing them should have been our second clue. It was one which would soon come back to haunt him, though.
Having already ingratiated himself to the library staff at the time, no one thought much about leaving Mr. Ripley by himself in the main fiction area on the frequent occasion when a staff member might have to go elsewhere in the library. He wasn't even a suspect when the cashbox began coming up short. That is, until he was caught with his hand in it some weeks later and banned from the library entirely.
I'm not sure how much time passed before Mrs. A, who felt sorry for the man, finally allowed him to return. But his return was strictly limited to the computer area. He was no longer allowed to hang about near the circulation desk where temptation might prove too great.
Years passed.
My first encounter with the Untalented Mr. Ripley was shortly after I began working at the library over two years back. At that point, I knew very little about Mr. Ripley including his former status as cash box thief nor his habit of looking for gay porn on the computers. To me he was just a guy who came in and used the computer every day and was someone Mr. B-Natural seemed to dislike quite a bit. The way I saw it, if Mr. B-Natural is your enemy how bad can you really be?
Granted, we had three patron computers by then so fighting over just one computer was no longer the issue between them, but this didn't seem to matter to Mr. B-Natural. He would come in, write his name on the computer sign in sheet (upside down, as usual) and look to see who else had signed in. If he even saw Mr. Ripley's name on the sign up sheet he would growl at it--actually growl at it. And if he knew which computer Mr. Ripley had been sitting in he would utterly refuse to sit there even if it was the only free computer. Such behavior is what helped solidify Mr. B-Natural's title as grumpiest old man in all the world.
One day Mr. B-Natural decided to issue a warning to me, as the new guy on staff.
"You gotta watch out for that RIPLEY," Mr. B said.
"How come?"
Mr. B-Natural dropped his voice down to a low growl. "He gets on the computers and looks for pictures of naked men."
"Oh," I said. At that early "liberry" career point I had yet to see anyone looking for porn on our computers of any sort. Still, I wasn't about to give Mr. B the satisfaction of seeming at all positive about his warning. "Well, what patrons do on the computers isn't really our business," I told him.
"It better be your business!"
"Why? It isn't illegal to look at porn."
"Yeah, but sometimes..." Mr. B continued, "... sometimes he prints them out."
"Again, not illegal," I said. "Not as long as he pays for the prints, at least."
Mr. B-Natural huffed and puffed and waved a dismissing paw in my direction before stomping out of the library.
What I had said was true, though. Our policy at the time was strictly hands off when it came to what patrons looked at. I mean, if he'd been trying to lure kiddies over to the computer to make them look at it, it would be one thing, but Mr. Ripley mostly used his internet time in chat rooms from what little we could tell. (Of course, now we have all sorts of filtering software to guard against kids accessing porn in the library and all kinds of hoops and parental permission slips a kid has to jump through in order to get on the internet in the first place. Of age patrons can still access porn, if they're willing to come up to the desk and request that we come turn off the filter for them. The filters have been in place for about seven months now and so far not one patron has ever made such a request.)
But I digress...
What we didn't know at the time was that the Untalented Mr. Ripley had not given up his con-man thieving ways, he had just limited it to locations other than the library. I think he saw in Mrs. A an ally he couldn't afford to piss off again. After all, she let him back in the library in a limited fashion, was friendly toward him and occasionally gave him rides to Wal-Mart. Of course, once he was in Wal-Mart he would make an excuse to go off on his own, meeting Mrs. A later at the front counter where he bought one or two small items. What Mrs. A didn't realize was that Mr. Ripley had probably stolen several others while out of her sight, effectively making her an accomplice to his theft. This was a theory we all put together a few days following Mr. Ripley's eventual arrest... not for stealing stuff from Wally World, but elsewhere.
It seems that for months Mr. Ripley had been burgling things from peoples homes and even from the downtown businesses he occasionally worked at. Many of these items were of little use to him personally, being antiques or art, but they were something he could sell later on, or give to people as gifts to help further ingratiate himself to them. He would store them away in abandoned houses in the hinterlands of the county. The police eventually got wise to him and the Untalented Mr. Ripley was arrested and packed off to jail where he remained for several months.
The last we heard, he had been released or paroled and had even been seen at Mrs. V's library, using the computers. We warned her to keep an eye on her cashbox. However, as of this writing, he has not darkened our door again. He remains a former rogue.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Best Patrons EVER
I spend a lot of time here telling tales about the worst patrons who visit the "liberry" and writing up Rogues Gallery lists for them, but I've not spent much time on the best patrons.
If I were to write a Best Patrons EVER list, the Asners (not their real name) would be at the top of the list. Unlike some families who frequent the library (such as the Fagins--which is not their real name, though I shouldn't care if I wrote their real name here as we have documented proof of their many years of treachery and theft), the Asner's are simply wonderful, wonderful patrons.
Mr. and Mrs. Asner have five or six kids, (they're hard to count because they're never all in at once, though frankly we wouldn't mind if they were). These kids must come from some kind of angelic genetic stock, cause they're all just the best-behaved, most polite, loving, cherubic, bright and beautiful children you'd ever care to know. Most of them are probably around year or two apart in age, ranging from, I'm guessing, 12 down to 2 (and the youngest is, in fact, the Cutest Baby in all the World, bar none). They're always just quiet and helpful and polite and everything you could ever wish for in children. I've never seen them angry or even a little upset. I've never seen them sad or crying. They obey their parents without question, with nary a tantrum if the don't get to check out something they want. I think I can say with full conviction that the Asner kids are the best children I've ever encountered. They're just a joy. I've told Mrs. Asner exactly that.
And better patrons have yet to be born! Most patron families of their size load up each and every child's card with the full limit in books and videos, which makes for a freakin' long checkout time and check in time, should they return with all they borrowed, which they never do. The cards of most families of that size are a tangle of overdues and even blocked patron records due to unreturned books from decades past (See: The Fagins). Not so with the Asners. They're a librarian's fantasy come to life. They never take more than they need in books or videos, almost always less than half the 10 item limit, and they always bring them back well before the due date or call to renew. There's never a fine to be seen or a lost book unfound. And they read quality stuff. Even the little ones, who love the Magic School Bus series and Winn!e the P00h, but never get mindless pap like Barn3y or T3letubbies.
I don't know how Mr. & Mrs. Asner managed to do it, but I know their house is a loving one.
And it's been something of a family tradition that as they reach the front door to depart, the Asner girls almost always turn around and sweetly tell us, "God bless you" before leaving. (They even say it on their answering machine.)
Now I know this sounds like a very Ned Flandersy sort of family, but it SO does not come off like that at all in person. It's utterly genuine. And for me, a guy who has to suffer through bitter patron after bitter patron (some of whom are the grumpiest people in all the world), the Asners are refreshing.
As to the Asner's secret behind their amazing family-skills, I firmly believe it lies somewhere in their daughter's parting quote.
If I were to write a Best Patrons EVER list, the Asners (not their real name) would be at the top of the list. Unlike some families who frequent the library (such as the Fagins--which is not their real name, though I shouldn't care if I wrote their real name here as we have documented proof of their many years of treachery and theft), the Asner's are simply wonderful, wonderful patrons.
Mr. and Mrs. Asner have five or six kids, (they're hard to count because they're never all in at once, though frankly we wouldn't mind if they were). These kids must come from some kind of angelic genetic stock, cause they're all just the best-behaved, most polite, loving, cherubic, bright and beautiful children you'd ever care to know. Most of them are probably around year or two apart in age, ranging from, I'm guessing, 12 down to 2 (and the youngest is, in fact, the Cutest Baby in all the World, bar none). They're always just quiet and helpful and polite and everything you could ever wish for in children. I've never seen them angry or even a little upset. I've never seen them sad or crying. They obey their parents without question, with nary a tantrum if the don't get to check out something they want. I think I can say with full conviction that the Asner kids are the best children I've ever encountered. They're just a joy. I've told Mrs. Asner exactly that.
And better patrons have yet to be born! Most patron families of their size load up each and every child's card with the full limit in books and videos, which makes for a freakin' long checkout time and check in time, should they return with all they borrowed, which they never do. The cards of most families of that size are a tangle of overdues and even blocked patron records due to unreturned books from decades past (See: The Fagins). Not so with the Asners. They're a librarian's fantasy come to life. They never take more than they need in books or videos, almost always less than half the 10 item limit, and they always bring them back well before the due date or call to renew. There's never a fine to be seen or a lost book unfound. And they read quality stuff. Even the little ones, who love the Magic School Bus series and Winn!e the P00h, but never get mindless pap like Barn3y or T3letubbies.
I don't know how Mr. & Mrs. Asner managed to do it, but I know their house is a loving one.
And it's been something of a family tradition that as they reach the front door to depart, the Asner girls almost always turn around and sweetly tell us, "God bless you" before leaving. (They even say it on their answering machine.)
Now I know this sounds like a very Ned Flandersy sort of family, but it SO does not come off like that at all in person. It's utterly genuine. And for me, a guy who has to suffer through bitter patron after bitter patron (some of whom are the grumpiest people in all the world), the Asners are refreshing.
As to the Asner's secret behind their amazing family-skills, I firmly believe it lies somewhere in their daughter's parting quote.
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