C-Note

Instead of my usual shift at my own "liberry," yesterday I did some subbing at Town-C's branch. They were in the throes of their annual salad lunche0n and were short-staffed to begin with, so I agreed to come over and run the desk, provided they fed me. (They did, and quite well.)

It's been a few years since I subbed at Town-C's branch. It's a much smaller "liberry" than ours, essentially one large, meandering room. And while its librarian, Mrs. S (no relation to Ms. S) and our own Mrs. A are friends, there's still something of a rivalry between our two branches--much as there is between our two towns. I don't think the rivalry exists so much on our part, at Town-A, since we pretty much view ourselves as top dog of the whole area, and rightfully so. From what I'm told, though, Town-C's board of directors speaks ill of us every chance they get and encourages their branch to be as free-spirited and different from us as it can. I have to admit, in many ways, they are far more progressive than we are; they do a lot to serve their small community by offering lots of literacy training (we offer it too, but rarely do people take us up on it), and other public service style classes. There are other differences, too.

For instance, Town-C's shelving philosophy differs from our own in that its largely divided by subject, even beyond the Dewey nonfiction. There are separate sections for romance, westerns, inspirational, mystery, large print, classics, children's classics, children's award-winning classics (subdivided by award won), children's award-winning non classics (subdivided by award won), favorite children's authors (individually subdivided outside of the general shelves, by author), favorite classic children's authors who won awards, favorite non-classic children's authors who didn't win any awards and died of consumption, etc. In fact, the children's section is so subdivided that a newbie like me (or a patron, for that matter) can't find ANYTHING without three maps and a sherpa.

Much was the case when a lady came in looking for a copy of a juvenille book, today. The computer said Town-C owned a copy, said it was in, but we couldn't find it on the shelf where we thought it should live. She suggested it might be an award winner, so I looked at the computer again. Sure enough, there was the note "(AWARD)" out beside the call. We looked in the awards section and couldn't find it anywhere in the subdivisions, either. I decided to search the database of the entire county then and noted that that Town-C actually owned two copies, one of which did not show up in my earlier search. It was listed as being located in the Classics Section. Only I didn't know where the classics section was, as it didn't seem to be in the children's area or the general adult fiction area. The mom and I searched the library for a full six minutes before I found the classics section, located in the nonfiction area (not even the 823s) hidden in a floor shelf. There I found both copies of the book in question, both with the exact same call number even though the computer showed two different ones.

Who exactly is that helping?

The philosophical differences also extend to the public computers, of which Town-C has over twice as many as we do. Each patron is given an hour's worth of time, is not run off if no one is waiting, is not even timed and there are no passwords for staff to have to know. It's pretty much a self-serve operation. We had several computer patrons throughout the day, but never more then one at a time. They all knew the drill, came over, signed up on their own, logged off when they were finished and gave me no trouble.

The only rogueish patron was a kid I've long thought of as The Redneck Prince of Darkness. I've not seen this kid as a patron in my own library, but instead have seen him skulking along the streets of Town-C as I've driven through it on my commute to work. If its possible for there to be such a thing as a redneck goth metalhead, this guy is it. As should any true goth kid, he dresses exclusively in black, but in things like black flannel over black Carhartts and work boots. He's got the black knit-cap, too, and the whole thing covered by a long black trenchcoat. When you see him, your brain automatically starts playing NIN on a steel guitar with fiddle accompaniment. He does have the dark, vaguely angry thing down pretty good, but I just can't take him seriously, other than occasionally wondering if he's gonna start shooting. He came in, used the public computer furthest away from the circ desk, way in the back of the double row of them where prying eyes couldn't see his screen, then left.

Town-C also suffers from a similar ailment to my own branch in that it has a most unfortunate location for its public restroom. Town-C's is located directly across from the circ desk, has a paper thin door, no sound-proofing, loud echoey walls and anything that occurs within its confines is clearly audible to the entire library. Only three patrons used it while I was on shift, but I heard all their businesss. Particularly that of a mentally handicapped patron, who came in with many of the same Unobstructed Doors crowd who visit us. He went in the restroom, peed very loudly and cracked the loudest, longest fart on record. I had to retreat around a corner, least one of the aides catch sight of me giggling.

A-MINUS: 15

Christmas Parties, the fourth and third

We're back from our Christmas weekend, spent mostly near Fort Bragg, NC, where we had Christmas festivities at my sister-in-law Amber's house. Beyond just Christmas, we were there to see off my brother-in-law, Jim, who's headed to Afghanistan at some point in January. It was a good time, hanging out with family of both the two and four legged varieties, stuffing ourselves stupid on fantastic food and never-ending snack tables and getting to meet family-in-law I'd not met before. The entire weekend amounted to a fourth Christmas party.

As to the third...

Back on Friday, our 8 a.m. Christmas party at the "liberry" went very well. I had to get up ass-crack of 6:15 to bake up my breakfast egg dish, because I'd forgotten to prepare it the day before. So I baked some eggy, cheesy, potatoey, sausagy, peppers & onionsy goodness and hauled it in to work to take its place along side the breakfast foods of my coworkers. We were all there, except Ms. S, who had to work at her other job. We replaced her with Mrs. S, the "liberrian" from Town-C. Tasty breakfast was consumed and theme gift baskets filled and exchanged.

My theory that many cookies could be had for under $5 each was correct, though not quite in the way I expected. My basket was overflowing with cookies, but except for the mason jar full of dry cookie ingredients given to me by Mrs. B, none of them were home made and many were of the Christmas cookie variety. Being Christmas time, this was okay, though I must confess I would have been just as happy with six packages of Oreos or Nutter Butters. (No Droxies!)

My only miscalculation was how much eggy, cheesy, potatoey, sausagy, peppers & onionsy goodness to bring. I baked a full lasagna dish and was actually worried that it might not be enough. However, with ALL the other food we had on hand, most of us just took a small square of the egg dish and still had a plate full of other stuff. Our stomachs were quickly packed, so I wound up taking more than half of it home to my houseguests. I will note happily, though, that Mrs. J, possibly the pickiest human being on the planet when it comes to food, went back for seconds of my dish. That's a Christmas miracle on its own.

I Dream of Gene (Leaving)

Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine was in typical form last week. He came in Friday for a long haul session of research and was disappointed to hear it would be a 20 minute wait for a computer. So he plopped down in the front room and set about making us miserable, i.e. by talkin' at us. His topic at least varied from geneal0gy, centering instead on our lack of computers and our restrictive time limits, but these were subjects broached only in the most pleasant and genial manner he could muster. Then Gene asked how many computers the Town-C branch had, compared to our three. 

"A lot," I said in a hopeful tone. "At least five." 

"And are they as busy as these?" he asked. 

"Last time I was down there, they weren't," Mrs. C offered. 

Gene mused on this for a bit and then said that he didn't like having to drive to Town-C to do his work. Mrs. C then suggested that he try the local community college "liberry" because they didn't have any time limits whatsoever. It was only a short walk from our front door. 

Again, Gene decided he wasn't interested in actually going anywhere. Mrs. C then pointed out to him, in her own very pleasant and genial manner, that technically we still have a rule on the books that each patron is to receive a maximum of 3 computer sessions per day, but that we just haven't had to enforce that rule in several years. (This was a new one on me, otherwise I might have campaigned to get it reinstated beforehand. ) The rule itself, as Mrs. C later explained, stems from a time when we only had one public access computer which was constantly being fought over by the likes of Mr. B-Natural and The Untalented Mr. Ripley. It was actually Ripley who got the rule established, for he was even more hungry for computer time than Mr. B-Natural or even Crusty and would stay all day long as the machine's resident user, only taking temporary and highly reluctant breaks when bumped off for other patrons. 

Gene didn't seem to sense the veiled threat in Mrs. C's words. Eventually, he got a computer and stayed there for over 2 hours before the others filled up and it was time to boot him. He did his little frustrated laugh, gathered up his crap and made for the desk to sign up again. We did have another patron who was also out of time at that point, a kid who'd been on for over an hour. I didn't really feel like booting the kid off, either, because it seemed to me that as long as Gene had been on past his initial half hour, the kid should get some consideration too. Plus, it really annoyed Gene that we didn't immediately bump the kid off for him, who he HAD to know was out of time too. Unfortunately, not bumping the kid meant we had to listen to Gene go on and on about how much it would cost him to get good internet service in his neck of the county and about the massive crooks who ran his phone company. I tried to hold out for as long as possible, but after only five minutes of his patented good-natured complaining, I ran for the computer hall and told the kid he had to give it up. 

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Mrs. C said after Gene had hauled all his crap back to the computer hall. She'd been sitting in closest proximity to Gene and therefore received the brunt of his attention. 

I really shouldn't complain about Gene. As far as annoying patrons go, he's at a pretty low and inoffensive level. We should really pray for more just like him.

More Salad Days

Last week, we the "liberry" staff left our branch in the semi-capable hands of a greenhorn while we hoofed it down to Town C for their branch's first annual fund-raising salad lunche0n.

I think Mrs. A was a bit worried about how their salad lunche0n would go, since they've never done anything like it before. There was much hand-wringing over whether or not they had enough salads or whether the venue they'd chosen to hold this in was big enough. However, when we arrived, everything seemed to be going gangbusters business. Though the hall they used was small, there was sufficient seating space and patron turnover to keep things rolling right along. The salads were also outstanding. However, some of the dining company turned out to be every bit as quirky as you might expect from “liberry” patrons.

While there were enough seats to accommodate our employee delegation, the seating was not all together, so Mrs. A, Mrs. B and Mrs. J sat at one table while Mrs. C, Mrs. Publicist and I sat at another. Before we could even start in on our salads, a very wide middle-aged man sat down in the other spare place at our table bearing the most enormous plate of salad I’ve ever seen. The simplest and most accurate description of this man’s plate of salad is to call it convex; it was a heaping, rounded dome of salad and it retained that shape for quite some time because this man would not stop flapping his salad hole long enough to eat any of it. From the moment he sat down until the three of us were finally able to disengage from him and flee the building some fifteen minutes later, this man ate maybe–MAYBE—four bites of his salad.

“I thought at least one of you would have shown up to that meeting up in Morgantown,” the man said. This was his opening line to us as he sat down and it was made in a very accusatory tone for someone none of us knew at all, nor he us. However, none of us knew that none of us knew this man, so we all just sort of gave each other odd looks while the man proceeded to hold us personally accountable for not being at a meeting the subject of which none of us had any idea about. Turns out, the meeting was something to do with a possible new levee or dam which this guy claimed could somehow cause the river levels in our neck to rise by 30 feet. We’d never heard of any of it and said so, which seemed to irritate Mr. Wide & Mouthy. He paused to take his first bite, giving me the chance to try and steer the conversation away by asking Mrs. Publicist an unrelated question or two. Nope. In the middle of chewing his bite, Mr. Wide snatched the conversational reins back and began telling us his family history.

“See, me and my brothers are down here to take my granddaddy to the doctor. He’s 107 years old,” Mr. Wide said. He then went into more detail about his 107 year old granddaddy and how he was getting to be kind of a mean soul in his old age, unafraid to speak his mind. They practically had to trick him, B.A. Baracus-style, to get him to come to the doctor at all. (“No fly! No fly!”) We gathered that they were all visiting from a neighboring county. Mr. Wide then went on to detail how his grandmother had lived until just a few years previous and his great-uncle had lived to 114. Some of this was interesting enough, if a bit out of the blue, so we listened politely, nodding and trying like hell to get through our salads as quickly as possible. Minutes later, he was still at it.

“And then, granddaddy didn’t want to give his concentration pictures to his kids, so he gave `em to me. I wanted to make copies of them, but I don’t want to mail them anywhere cause they’re valuable and I don’t trust the mail.”

“Uh, what are concentration pictures?” I asked.

Mr. Wide looked at me as if I had just asked if cheesecake is tasty or if gasoline is expensive. “WHERE are YOU frum, buddy?” he said.

“Mississippi,” I said. I know, I know--hardly my best defense.

As Mr. Wide then irately explained, “concentration pictures” were photographs taken during World War II by soldiers who helped liberate German Concentration Camps. Despite my government-sponsored education, I was, of course, familiar with the history of World War II, and the fact that pictures had been taken at Concentration Camps. However, I had never once heard the term “concentration picture” associated with them nor do I think I should be expected to since “concentration picture” is clearly missing the necessary noun “camp” that might have given me a bit more of a clue as to the definition of the term. This didn’t stop me from feeling a bit smaller in intellect, though, particularly since I was now being lectured on the subject by the likes of Mr. Wide.

The next ten minutes passed very slowly, as Mr. Wide continued to jump from topic to topic, dominating the table chatter. (It was NOT a conversation, as that involves more than one person speaking; it was a lecture.) I eventually tried to change subjects to one where he would have no firm ground to stand, by asking Mrs. Publicist if she was writing any stories for a local publication she and I have both freelanced for in the past. Unfortunately, she was writing a story about a historic building in a neighboring county--the very neighboring county Mr. Wide was from. Once again, he had a conversational foothold. He immediately began interrogating Mrs. Publicist about the county and managed to learn that she used to live there herself and still owned property there. He then lectured us at length on the history of the county, the latest gossip as to who was doing who wrong and who was in trouble with the law, etc. It was painful.

We had completely finished our salads before Mr. Wide had even made a noticeable dent in his. Fortunately, we all like each other, so no attempt was made to flee the table and strand one of us in Mr. Wide’s gravitational pull. Instead, we had each other’s backs, and brought up the topic of how great the desserts looked and how we should all go see what was available. With that, we made our escape.

The Borrowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He'p!"

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

"HE'P!"

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

"HE'PP!"

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

"HEEEE'P!!"

($%#&!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Omens `04

No worries about material for the coming year.

Outside the door to our tiny little non-sound-proofed under the stairs cubbyhole public restroom is a tall white “privacy” screen extending from the edge of the stairwell wall out to around three feet from it. We keep it there to provide the illusion that the restroom door/sink/water-fountain area is actually separate from the rest of the computer hall/reference room area. This is, of course, not really the case, but we do it anyway because it amuses us.

When I came in yesterday, the screen had been pulled over in front of the restroom door itself, blocking it off. A note on the screen read, “This Restroom Has Been Closed For Cleaning.”

Aw, hell, I thought. This was bad news.

I went back up front, where Mrs. B, was womaning the circulation desk

“Uh… what’s up with the bathroom?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I think it got messed up by some of the UNOBSTRUCTED DOORS clients and MRS. A closed it off.”

Aw, hell, I thought again. My fears were now fully realized. The mentally handicapped clients of the local Unobstructed Doors group are infamous for voiding the warranties of restrooms throughout the Tri-Metro area. We don’t generally have many problems of this sort ourselves, though we’re absolutely certain that the legendary Serial Shitter is among their number. We have, however, heard horror stories about incidents at Town-C’s library branch, where the former librarian there, Mrs. V, once had to threaten one of the UD aides with a call to their supervisors to get the aide to go back in and clean up the fecal festival one of the clients had had in the restroom there.

Like I said, not a lot of that kind of thing at our branch, but on occasion it does happen. Typically, when it does, the UD aides wait until it is nearly time for them to leave anyway, then send their clients into the restroom for one last "johnny" session before they hit the road. On occasion, the clients use this opportunity to befoul our restroom in most unholy ways. Then the aides gather up their clients and flee the building before the mess can be discovered and anyone can tell them to go clean it up. And on these occasions, I'm almost always the guy to discover it, hours later, after everyone else has left, and am then the guy who has to clean it up. In fact, I'd say that if that restroom gets cleaned at all, it's usually me that does it. And this was precisely my fear yesterday, as I stood quaking at the circulation desk.

If Mrs. A had baracaded the restroom door it was obviously because it had not yet been cleaned. That she was saving it for later at all did not bode well for me. Still, I kept quiet about it and made no offers. I really didn't want to know what was in there.

Eventually, Mrs. A came downstairs. She saw the look on my face and said, "Don't worry. You don't have to do it."

Whew.

Just to help make me feel even better about it, Mrs. A described the carnage that awaited her in great detail. Evidently, the UD aides had not checked out the restroom beforehand and did not note that both the lid and the toilet seat had been left up. The first UD client to go in didn't lower them before having a squat and wound up defecating all over the porcelain rim as he slid around the bowl. The aide failed to check the room after the first client and sent the next one on in to add to the problem. It was a poo party chain-reaction from there.

Mrs. A said she now appreciated the tales I've spun about the horrors I've seen in there. She could scarcely imagine anyone, UD client or no, doing what was done in there by accident.

"Oh, I've seen things in that room that could not have been done without forethought," I assured her. I would certainly not count out the Artiste Factor in any of this.

Tracking the Serial Sh*tter.

I think we have a new Serial Shitter to contend with. Which, I guess, means I need to get off my ass and tell the story of the old one first. I don't know for sure who the new one is, but I suspect they are one of the "special" patrons who come in with the local Unobstructed Doors social services group. In which case it might not entirely be their fault that they keep shitting on the seat of our public toilet. All I know is, I'm a little irritated at having to clean it up.

As I've said in past entries here, Unobstructed Doors has made it policy that their aids have to bring their mentally handicapped clients to the library every week. So far, D-Day has been on Weird Wednesday and so far we've had S.S. incidents on the past couple of Wednesdays (and a Thursday or two to boot). Not conclusive, but enough to draw circumstantial evidence.

We're not the only library to have problems in this regard. Mrs. V, of a neighboring county library, reports that her public restroom is regularly befouled by the Unobstructed Doors crowd and in much more unpleasant ways than a dab of poo on the toilet seat. It seems the special patrons there have veritable Poo Festivals in her bathroom and she's fed up with it. In fact, she asked one of the Unobstructed Doors aids to clean up after her client. The aid said that she wasn't about to do anything of the sort, to which Mrs. V said, "It's not my job to clean up shit. It's yours." The aid protested that she disagreed with this assessment and believed it was indeed Mrs. V's job to clean up the shit. Mrs. V counter-protested that it was not and added the threat that if the aid didn't go in and clean up the shit right then, she, Mrs. V, was going to call the aid's superiors and tell them what had happened and insist that they have the aid come back down to the liberry and clean the shit up after all. That seemed to do the trick. We haven't had any such confrontations yet, but I fear they are not far off.