Actual Semi-Paraphrased Second-Hand Information Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #2

*RING*

MRS. C: Tri-Metro County Public Library.

FEMALE CALLER: (Angrily) What?

MRS. C: (Annunciating) Tri-Metro Public Library.

FEMALE CALLER: (Still angry) Do you do inter loans?

MRS. C: Interlibrary loans?

FEMALE CALLER: (Angrily) What?

MRS. C: (Annunciating heavily) Do you mean INTERLIBRARY LOANS?

FEMALE CALLER: Whatever. Do you do them?

*CALL WAITING BEEP*

MRS. C: Yes, we do.

FEMALE CALLER: Do you do them out of state?

MRS. C: No, ma'am, I'm afraid we don't.

FEMALE CALLER: (Angrily) Why not?

MRS. C: Well.... I'm not exactly sure, ma'am, except that we don't have access to book databases in any other state but West Virginia.

*CALL WAITING BEEP*

FEMALE CALLER: (Angrily) Why not?

MRS. C: We just don't. We're a state library system. We only have access to West Virginia databases.

CALLER: (Intensely angrily) Well, no wonder people say this state is so backwards! (*SLAMS DOWN PHONE*)

At this point Mrs. C hit the phone's flash button to see who the other call was from. It was one of the State Reference Librarians with the head office in Charleston calling to warn Mrs. C about an impending call from the above angry woman. It seems the angry woman had just called Charleston's branch a few minutes earlier because she entirely failed to find our library's phone number in the local phone book. (I don't know why so many people have trouble finding us. We're a county library. Our library's name has "County," "Public," and "Library" as it's last three words with the the actual county name as the first. We're therefore listed as OURCOUNTYNAME County Public Library in the phonebook. I've had people call me to complain that they had looked and looked and looked and couldn't find our number ANYWHERE in the phone book and that they had to call another library to get it. When they say this, I open up our phonebook and quote them the page number our phone is listed on and suggest they try again.) Angry woman had asked about out-of-state ILLs and had been told by this reference librarian that such things were completely at the discretion of each individual library according to their policy. When asked by the caller if the reference librarian's branch did such things, the librarian responded that yes they did, but only for State Employees as her library services the state capital.

"That's discrimination!" the angry caller had shouted before slamming down her phone.

Do you love Kayla like I love Kayla?

Today a little two year old girl named Kayla came in the library with her mom.

How do I know her name was Kayla? Because her mom said that name seven thousand times! I think this child had been loaded up on Red Bull and Runts just prior to coming in because from the time she came through the door to the time she left Kayla did nothing but run and stomp and squeal and scream and drive everyone crazy, especially her mom.

At the time, I was upstairs shelving, a task that doesn't get done quite as often since Mrs. J, our resident shelver, has been out with a bad heart. (And believe me, that's a post unto itself.) From downstairs I hear stomping and screaming and girlish squeals with an underlying soundtrack of Kayla's mom pleading... "No Kayla, don't run. No, Kayla, put that back. No, Kayla, don't leave the children's room. Kayla we need to use our inside voice. Kayla stop running. Kayla stay off the stairs. No, Kayla don't press the buttons on the computer! Kayla we need to use our inside voice!!! No, Kayla, we don't take the stuffed animals from the kid's rom. Kayla don't run! No, Kayla, stay in here. Stay in here, Kayla. Stay in here, Kayla!!! Kayla stop it! Kayla..."

After a few minutes of waiting for the inevitable *SMACK* "WAHHHHHHHHHHH!" it didn't come. Kayla was still running and stomping and squealing at full force. She even ran, stomped and screamed her way upstairs and into the non-fiction room, dashing past me clutching a yellow stuffed chick toy. A moment later, her mother came huffing and puffing after her and herded Kayla back down the stairs.

Now, our library is one of the loudest libraries in the world. We don't have a whole lot of rules about being quiet because most of our patrons are quiet naturally and we usually only have to shush people when other patrons complain, which is rare and often involves Ron the Ripper. However, we aren't beyond asking parents to keep their kids in line when the kids are doing their bull in a china shop routine. I knew that any patrons who were downstairs would be crazed by the antics of this little girl by this point, so I decided as the senior staff member in house that it was my job to go and try and do something about it.

I made it to the landing of the stairwell before I saw Kayla blindly careen around the corner from the children's room and stomp full-speed down the computer/reference hall, turn around and stomp back. By the time she made it back, her mom had reached the doorway and was there to catch her when she arrived.

"Now, Kayla, you have to stay in THIIIS room," Kayla's mom said, pointing to the children's room. "See that line on the floor? You can't cross that line."

Well, at least mom is trying, I thought. However, Kayla's wild-eyed expression of ADHD-addled glee told me that she wasn't listening. I wasn't even back to the top of the stairs before she plowed around the corner and stomped through the reference hall again. Fortunately, no one was using any of the computers and there wasn't another patron in the building save for Kayla's mom's friend and her daughter (who, though not as rambunctious as Kayla, was trying her darndest to emulate her friend).

I went back downstairs and pulled the computer chair out from the first computer desk by the stairs, providing something for Kayla to smack into when blindly plowing around the corner. I know, I should be horribly embarassed to have done such a thing, but kids are very often quiet after having knocked themselves senseless. Before Kayla had a chance to give this a try, though, a computer patron arrived and so I had to slide the chair back out of the aisle to make room. Probably for the best.

Soon after, Kayla fled the carpeted children's room again and into the main fiction room, her little stomping footsteps echoing from our hardwood floor in there. I stepped into her path and squatted down. Let me assure you now, the following tactic would only work in the film version of my life.

"Kayla? Hey, how bout doing me a favor," I said in my best charmingly sing-song voice. "How bout don't run when you're in the library, okay? Library's are supposed to be quiet... Quiet like a little mouse. So you have to move slowly, and quietly, like a mouse, okay?"

Kayla regarded me curiously for a moment, like one might briefly regard a dully-colored fish in a tank. Then she revved her engines and sped off.

"We already tried that. It doesn't work," Kayla's mom said with weary irritation.

Kayla stayed for another 20 minutes. In that time, her little tightly wound spring gradually began to run down. Before leaving for good, her mother hauled her to the restroom to change Kayla's diaper. Kayla emerged triumphantly announcing to all, "I went Poo Poo!" before colapsing onto the foam chair in the children's room where she declared she wanted to take a nap. Her mother and I exchanged expressions that said, "Oh, now she wants to take a nap?"

"Next time we're taking her to the park first before coming here," her mom said as they were walking out the door, Kayla's limp form draped over her shoulder.

As a childless wonder myself, I can only laugh and make fun of situations like this. Karma working the way it does, though, I'm sure it will come back to haunt me when the wife and I eventually grump out a critter of our own.

Wal-Mart Jesus Won't Leave Me Alone

Mrs. A and Mrs. C will be away for the next few days as they attend the Spring Fling the WV Liberry Assoc. throws every year. For something being billed as a "fling" the reality of it is not nearly as exciting as one might expect.

They lit out about midway through the day shortly after I arrived, assuring me that they'd contacted our board president to alert him to the fact that they'd both be away and where they were should he suddenly develop a desperate need to get in touch with them. That's probably the most of our worries, as all the other librarians and sundry state-office officials who might want to call them will be at Spring Fling and can bloody well hunt them down at their leisure.

Before leaving, Mrs. C gave me a sympathetic look and whispered, "By the way, Jesus is in the reference room."

"Really? Wow. Haven't seen him in here in a while."

That's right, it's the return of one of our oldest rogues at the "liberry", none other than Wal-Mart Jesus.

Wal-Mart Jesus has been coming into the library at least as long as I've worked there. He's called Wal-Mart Jesus because... well, he looks an awul lot like the real Jesus, or at least how our Western sensibilities have come to think Jesus looked. He's not Jim Caviezel, but not too far. Plus, he stokes his general air of Jesusness by dressing like a low-rent Arab sheik, with the long flowing robes complete with a long flappy turban. However, his robes look as though they were pulled directly off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. They're white with blue stripes and look like they'd be more at home covering, say, a picnic table than a man. Wal-Mart Jesus also has the full beard and peyo curls, which I believe denote him as a Chasidic Jew.

Now I've visited parts of this country where he wouldn't look terribly out of place, (well, provided someone got him a decent set of robes), but small town West Virginia is NOT one of those parts. I didn't even know the man was simply Jewish at first. The first time I saw him was not too long after 9/11 and I initially thought his mode of dress was some sort of overt statement of pro-Islamic protest. I wasn't angry about it, but I did worry that the local bubba population might not take kindly to it and might administer a beating upon the man's head. I couldn't have been more wrong, though, at least the part about pro-Islamic protest.

Wal-Mart Jesus isn't actually a "liberry" rogue, per se. He's just barely makes it as a benign irritant. I actually kind of like him, cause I'm all for colorful library patrons and he certainly qualifies. Wal-Mart Jesus is, as you might expect, a pretty nice guy to deal with, even though he seems a bit on his guard much of the time. Every time he comes in, though, he's deeply involved in researching a wide variety of topics the reference material for which he has no prayer of finding on the shelves of our tiny library. He's often in the market for lots and lots of information about centuries dead Jewish philosophers that can only be found in a Centuries Dead Jewish Philosopher Encyclopedia which we don't own. We've searched around and found one at another WV library, but they're not keen on loaning it out to us. We've subsequently made requests on his behalf that the other library simply photocopy the pages from their encyclopedia pertaining to the centuries dead philosopher he wants and send them to us. Despite repeated attempts at this, it has yet to come off properly. Usually the other library conveniently loses our request, which annoys both Wal-Mart Jesus and us. And if they actually manage to photocopy what we want they don't actually manage to send it to us, as though we're planning to drive seventy miles to come pick it up. And, on the one occasion they managed to both photocopy it and send it to us, we had already managed to lose the by then crinkly and ancient Interlibrary Loan slip on which we'd written Wal-Mart Jesus's real name and home number and so we couldn't call him about it. I think he may have given up on us at that point, cause until today he'd not been in for several months.

Wal-Mart Jesus can be something of a needy patron. He's back and forth from the reference hall, dragging out volume after volume of the encyclopedias for photocopying, which he doesn't like to do himself. That's okay, though. Serving needy patrons is what I'm there for, so serve I do. Sure, it's a bit irritating to have to drop what you're in the middle of to go run off pages on our devil copier every five minutes, but frankly I can manage to be irritated at just about anything so it's no great slam against Wal-Mart Jesus.

Today I made several photocopies of West Virginia Code regulations, encyclopedia entries on Frederick Nietzsche and some pages from a West Virginia history book. This was pretty much par for the course with Wal-Mart Jesus. However, when he made an interlibrary loan request for a non-specific book that specifically had to contain photos of Nietzsche's Aunt Rosalie, I knew we were in for some fun. Not only did he want Aunt Rosalie but he also wanted a few other Nietzsche family photos and some pictures of Nietzsche's friends, including Lou Andreas-Salome, Rainer Maria Rilke and a few others. He had no idea what book these might be found in, but he wanted the book all the same.

"Have you tried the internet?" I asked. I was already envisioning the headache we were about to send to some other poor bastard reference librarian, not to mention Mrs. C who would have to coordinate this from our end.

"No, I've not tried that yet," he said. "I don't have time right now. I have to catch a bus." Much like the real Jesus, Wal-Mart Jesus doesn't drive.

"How bout this," I said, "I'll dig around on the internet and see if I can find pictures of these folks. If they're out there, I should be able to find them."

Wal-Mart Jesus thanked me, then departed after gathering up his leather satchel as well as the stout, cudgel-like section of a tree branch he carries--one with the stumps of smaller branches spiking out from its gnarled head just perfect for laying a beat-down on any Temple sales-clerks he comes upon. (Perhaps the Bubba Patrol hasn't left him alone after all?)

A few minutes of work on the internet and I'd located pictures of everyone he was looking for. I printed them out, clipped his ILL slip to them and left a message on his answering machine about it. He called back later and seemed very pleased to hear of my success.

Seeing him back, though, reminds me that soon I need to chronicle the tale of our late lamented quintessential "liberry" rogue the Purple Nun.

Tickle-Me-Terror-Alert

This terror alert was brought to you by the letters K, X and by the number 4.

Ohhhhh!

Found out our board president is down with a cold. That explains why he didn't call Tuesday when Mrs. A and Mrs. C were out.

Too bad he hasn't given the cold to the 8000 other people who keep calling. And Mrs. A and Mrs. C both keep putting themselves into positions where they can't be contacted. Yesterday they were both in a meeting upstairs and were not to be disturbed. At one point during this, I was trying to help a patron at the desk and the phone kept ringing and interrupting us. No one else was available to answer it, so I had to keep excusing myself to take these calls, all of which were for Mrs. A who I had to keep explaining was unavailable. And while I was on these calls, other people kept calling in and giving me the Call-Waiting beep before I could finish taking the first caller's message. Our policy is that when we get a beep we're supposed to ask if we can put the first caller on hold while we take the second call, cause God forbid the Board President should call and not be able to get through immediately. During the one call I had to take three separate Call-Waiting beeps, all of which were for Mrs. A and all of which sounded desperate.

This happens every year. For some reason, our library is the processing hub for registration forms for the upcoming "liberry" association conference. In the defense of the "liberrians" who have to send in their forms, the form itself isn't the least confusing form in the world, but if you actually follow the directions and fill it out properly it should be a no-brainer. I suppose most of them actually do fill it out properly, but there are so many "liberrians" sending them in that there are still plenty of folks who don't fill them out right, or they fill it out incompletely and have to call to give us the rest, or they have to add another person to their list of attendees and have to call us about it. Meanwhile, none of the "liberry" ass.es has any answers for any of the issues these folks are calling about and they only seem to call when our "liberrians" are unavailable to take the call.

I wish our system would get with the 21st century, or even the 20th and just do online registrations so we don't have to hassle with it all.

Librarians Against the Apocolypse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, shit," Calvin said.

"Calvin!" his aid snapped.

"Oh, my," Calvin corrected.

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

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

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.

Dawn of the Cheerful Bizatches

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

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

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

"Hello? Hello?"

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

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

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

Doin' the Pedophile Conga

Today was one of the slowest days on record. We only checked out maybe 40 books the whole day and only had around 30 check-ins. We're usually well over 100 in both. Not that any of us was bored, mind you. We had plenty of new books to process and a raging pedophile/magazine thief to chase around the library to boot.

That's right, Chester the (potential) Molester, the patron who must not be named, graced us with his foul presence once again. Actually, today we were foully graced thrice.

Foul Grace #1: This morning Chester popped by for his usual tally of the population of early teenage girls in house. His tally came to zero, so up the stairs he went to scope out which of our magazines prominently featuring early teen girls he might like to steal. Oh, we had a few, but Mrs. A's office is right there at the magazine rack and she saw him lurching up the stairs and came out of her office to watch him. She's getting really good at this. I'm proud of her. Chester, however, is not. He broke off his (potential) attempted theft of a copy of Rolling Stone, (which didn't have a girl on the cover, but did have a picture of Andre 3000 from Outkast, who is something of a dandy, so maybe Chester was confused), and escaped to his fall back position of the non-fiction room. Finding yet another goose egg in our teenage girl population, Chester soon came back through the reading area, where Mrs. A still stood vigil, engrossed in conversation with Mrs. J. Chester was foiled again, so he retreated down the stairs where Mrs. C picked up his trail and followed him through the still empty kid's room, into the main room and saw him flee out the door. I learned of all this after I came in for work a while later.

Foul Grace #2: Shortly after hearing the above story, Chester came in again. I must say, he's not looking all that great these days. Granted, he didn't look great to start with, what with his uncanny resemblance to a bloated, syphilis-addled Chris Penn gone to seed. (I guess I should say Chris Penn gone to seed even more than the real Chris Penn already has. I like Chris and all, but daaaaamn. Oh, and Corky Romano was simply unforgivable.) Chester was wearing his usual filthy fleece vest today, but had traded his ratty little short-brimmed cap for a ratty blue toque that was even rattier. So ratty was it that there were actual gaping holes in his toque's surface, allowing greasy tufts of brown hair to poke through them. Once again Chester came up goose-egg on the teen population and teen magazine population due to the efforts of Mrs. A and Mrs. C, who immediately began hounding his every step as soon as he hit the door. To try and draw attention away from them, Chester had to snatch up one of the free county real-estate brochures, which he hauled out the door with him, pausing only briefly to ask me if the brochure was free.

I suggested to Mrs. A that we needed to abandon all pretense with Chester and simply have every library employee file in behind him in a conga line the next time he came in. One of us could have a little boom box with some music and we could just dance along behind him as he makes his way through the library. We practically do it anyway, so why not add music and choreography. At least with the pedophile conga we could all keep an eye on him. What's the worst that could happen? He gets confirmation of his suspicion that we don't like him? He gets offended and never comes back again? We should only be so lucky.

Foul Grace #3: Shortly after I went on break and left the building, Chester returned for round three. This time there was a teenage girl in the children's room, but Chester didn't have time enough to notice her at first as he was once again on the run from Mrs. A. She followed him upstairs and he had to snatch up yet another real-estate brochure to deflect attention from himself. (It's obviously working.) Then down the stairs he came only to discover the girl in the children's room. It was a short lived joy, for Mrs. A and Mrs. C both stepped into the room and set about staring at him, causing him to immediately flee the room and indeed the building.

I learned of this too after returning from break.

After relating her Chester update, Mrs. C said, "Oh, guess who else came in to return a book this morning?"

"No way! Not Kammy K?!"

Oh, yes, it had been Kammy K: The Book Hoarding Bizatch, who's had a neighboring county's interlibrary loan copy of "Real Age: Are You As Young As You Can Be?" since last May, causing us no end of problems.

"She brought it back?"

"Came in with the book and her checkbook," Mrs. C said.

"Well, what did she say about it?"

"She said she got a letter from us about her late book." Only one? "She said her family had moved recently and she'd lost the book until now."

"Uh huh."

"Tried to write us a check for it, but we didn't take any money since she brought the book back," Mrs. C continued. (Let me just say, I would have taken that woman's money in a heartbeat. At the very least, it could pay postage for sending it back, plus rental charges for keeping the book a full 10 months beyond its due date. And it would help soothe our newly bruised collective sense of outrage over the whole matter. I mean, after 10 months of making us fume and pull out our hair and break our teeth-a-clenching over stupid Kammy and her stupid book and her stupid intentional dismissal of the great and mighty power of the library, she has the sac to come right in and just GIVE us the book back? And to be nice to us and offer to pay for it anyway? What the hell? After months of ignoring us and actively avoiding us and refusing to communicate in any way with us, this woman doesn't even have the basic human decency to stomp through the door and throw her book at us in a curse-strewn fit of defeat? How are we expected to maintain our justifiable rage over the matter if she refuses to be nasty? How dare she end this in an anti-climax like that! And how dare she make me have to take her name off the rogues list.

What a bitch!

All mobbed up

Just want to give a brief shout of joy that new episodes of the Sopranos are now being broadcast.

Last night's was a pretty good start to the season. My prediction is that the Russian mob threat from a couple of seasons ago will finally reemerge this season. It's already being foreshadowed by not only the bear problem Carmella's having but the fact that Paulie and Christopher were talking about the very incident in question in their first scene of the season.

Bout time, I say.

Last night's episode also marks the countdown to the series end, as this season's 12 episodes and a short 6th season with 6 episodes are all that remains. I can almost see Tony surviving the series, but I sure hope Christopher and Paulie meet messy ends. They're absolutely irredeemable characters that I'd hate with passion if they weren't so fun to watch.

This season's additions of Robert Loggia and Steve Buschemi look like they'll be fun characters all the way.

Grump Day II

Yesterday also marked both the appearance of and activity with a couple of Rogue members.

I learned that Kammy K, the book hoarding Bizatch, has received her letter from us demanding she return or pay for the ILL she's been hoarding since May (along with our less than subtle threat of legal action should she continue to ignore us). Actually, one of her fellow employees signed for the letter, so we technically don't know that Kammy has read it. Doesn't matter. It's still padding for our Kammy K. file, which we'll be hauling into court against her should that day come.

Thursday was also distinguished by an appearance from Mr. Big Stupid, one of the low on the totem pole members of the Rogues Gallery. Mr. Big Stupid is a big, stupid-looking and sounding fellow who is still somehow a member of the Liberry Intanet Crowd. Mr. Big Stupid's claim to fame is the way he lumbers into the "liberry," usually after 6 p.m., very often after 6:40, approaching the crack of closing time, and belches out the phrase "Heybuddy, how'sitgoin? Yougot'ney`puters?" Mind you, he doesn't actually wait to hear what your answer is. He's already made his X on the sign up sheet and is headed back to get him a `puter before you have a moment to tell him that, No, we don't have any `puters free, he's gonna have to wait. As with most of the Intanet Crowd, such news makes him cranky and causes him to give you a dirty look. And when, more often than not, he rolls in at closing time to use a computer, he also gets cranky and dirty-looking when you have to tell him he doesn't have any time to go online. He's also been known to throw a minor fit when asked to get off the computer when his time has run out. Fortunately, when he ambled in the door Thursday, at the unusual hour of 5:20 pm, our computers were free and he was able to attach himself to one right away, sparing me the dirty look.

Grump Day

Not real sure why, but I got into something of a grumpy mood today at work. I think it had to do with a patron who drives me nuts. She's not on the Rogues list but I can't see how she'll be able to avoid it for long.

I started my Thursday upstairs reading the shelves, going book by book, making sure they're in proper Dewey Decimel order and putting right what once went wrong. It's a thankless task, but it's part of the gig. After nearly an hour of this, I heard a loud and grating voice coming up the stairs.

"Now, you're looking for books about Steinbeck himself, right? Not just his books?" With nary a pause to allow a response from her still unseen companion, the grating voice continued, "...because if you need books about Steinbeck himself you're probably going to need a biography on him. Or you could look in the 800s, which is the literature section and might have some books about him as well."

You might assume the voice to be that of a librarian, but this is not the case. By then the owner of the voice had entered the upstairs area and I could see clearly who it was. Let's call her Joan Crawford.

Our Joan Crawford is not nearly as menacingly overbearing nor as beautiful as her actress namesake was portrayed to be in Mommie Dearest, though if she really committed to it I think she could pull it off. (And, yes, I realize Joan's character didn't look all that beautiful in the film either, you do the math here.) If anything, our Joan Crawford is guilty of loving her daughter too much and her overzealous style of parenting methods, in my childless opinion, is something of a major irritant to the library staff whenever Joan and her daughter come in.

Joan's daughter, let's call her Christina just to continue the theme, is a junior high-aged girl who evidently has something of a hard time with reading. I don't know if she's dyslexic or has a similar condition that prevents her from reading at her best, but she's got some such problem going on. In person, she seems like a mature and very intelligent girl who you would never think would have any such problems with school. (My personal theory is that her dibilitating condition is spelled MOM, but that's just an observation.) Whatever the case, whenever Christina is assigned to read a book for class, her mom, Joan, wants her to have not only the assigned tome but the book on tape of it as well, and the woman hounds us mercilessly until we produce them.

That's okay. If that's what she wants it's our job to find it and I have no problems in our doing so. However, our audio collection is hardly a one for one match up of our book collection and most of what we do have is abridged. So, if we need to get a specific book on tape that we don't already own, we have to interlibrary loan it. Again, no problem. That's what we're here for.

Unfortunately for us, Joan Crawford is not to be trusted when it comes to ordering books on tape for Christina. See, if Joan so much as hears a title or catches sight of a reading list that MIGHT contain a book that Christina MIGHT need at some point in the next, say, 20 years, Joan's on the phone to us to get the book on tape ASAP. And in the past we've dutifully ordered the requested books on tape and called Joan to let her know they had arrived only to find out that Christina wouldn't be needing the book for several months yet so they wouldn't be picking it up. When we then pointed out that we went to the trouble and expense of ordering it for her only to have to turn around and send it back, Joan's solution was to try and have us hold the other library's book on tape for the three month stretch until Christina actually needed it.

We, naturally, said, "Uh, no!" and Joan Crawford has traditionally not been pleased with this response. In fact, Joan got downright pissy with us about it and threatened to call the "liberry" c0mmission and tell them that we weren't doing our jobs. Since it was the "liberry" c0mmission's main library that had loaned us the book on tape in the first place, we said, "Go right ahead."

And she did!

The c0mmission explained to her that we were very much doing our jobs and that we couldn't hold the book on tape indefinitely nor repeatedly reorder it just because Joan misjudged when Christina would need it.

A few days later, Joan and Christina came in to cast eyes on the book on tape and make sure it was indeed the one that she wouldn't be needing for several months. It was.

"Well, why don't you just read the book now?" I suggested to Christina. "You're going to have to read it anyway, so if you get it out of the way now you'll have more time later."

Christina didn't like that logic and pointed out that doing so would interfere with all the other books she had to read right now. That was probably true.

So today, they were looking for some Steinbeck books and Joan was busy dragging Christina from shelf to shelf in an effort to find them. Of course, Joan spied and recognized me and I suddenly found myself drafted into the search. This was fairly fruitless, as Christina had already found most of the books we had on Steinbeck in her school's own library. (See, she can do research on her own!) While I was taking Joan and Christina downstairs to look through our literary criticism volumes in the reference hall, Christina spied a classmate of hers who was at the library to research her own author.

"Oh, do you need help with your report as well?" Joan asked in a hopeful tone.

No, I thought. What they both need is to be able to learn how to do this on their own since that's the WHOLE POINT of doing research papers.

By the time they left, some 45 minutes later, most of the library staff was nearly bald from pulling our hair out.

"Sadderdee"

I have something of a love/hate relationship with working Saturdays at the "liberry."

On the one hand, it's usually fairly quiet and peaceful, as opposed to most week days. On the other hand, I gotta get up early on a Saturday and come in. Plus I have to deal with mailing out all the interlibrary loan returns that have accumulated throughout the week. It's not the least complicated process and it's one I don't usually have to fuss with. Miss E, our weekend "Liberry" Ass. is usually responsible for doing it, but I'm subbing for her today since she was nice enough to sub for me during the play. Trouble is, I work Saturdays so infrequently that I have just enough time to forget how to do the ILLs before I have to come back to do them again.

But we have had a parade of colorful patrons today.

Mr. B-Natural popped in for his daily visit to his favorite computer crossword puzzle website. For a guy who's the grumpiest man in all the world, he's usually far less grumpy on Saturdays and has even been known to help us carry books in from the book return box of his own volition. Not today, when I'm working, mind you, but Miss E says he helps her all the time.

Matilde the Cranky Wiccan followed shortly thereafter. I've not spoken of Matilde before, cause there's really not much to speak of. She drives around in a beat up old car with lots of pro-pagan bumper stickers, like "Goddess Bless America" and "Wiccans Rule!" She's not a Liberry Rogue, per se, as she rarely does anything rogueish outside of occasionally being cranky. See, Matilde's one of the full-fledged members of the Liberry Internet Crowd, a loose and varied group of people who only come to the library for our internet access and may or may not even have cards with us. As such they tend to be very cranky about anything that interferes with them getting their Internet Fix. They get cranky when the computers are all full and they can't use one immediately. They get cranky if they have to wait ANY length of time for one to open up. They get cranky when the internet isn't working properly, as has been the case for over a week now. They get cranky when their time runs out and you tell them they have to get off the computers and let someone else have a turn. Mr. B-Natural is, of course, their king. We've not really had a queen before, but Matilde the Cranky Wiccan might fit the bill, not only for her computer useage but for her relationship to Mr. B-Natural as well. See, they actually LIKE one another. In fact, just about the only time either of them have been observed to display traits of happiness and good will is when they're in one another's presence. Scarier than that is the way they greet one another. Matilde walks in, see's Mr. B-Natural and issues forth a gutteral, sultryish, "Hey, baby" or "Hey, Sexy" to which Mr. B-Natural smiles and appears friendly. This is disturbing on so many levels.

Mr. Smiley, the second grumpiest man in all the world, also popped in for a visit. He wasn't particularly grumpy today either, but didn't seem too happy that none of his many interlibrary loans had come in. I was thankful that he brought one of his old ones back, just in time for me to pack it up and send off. I was laying money that I'd get all the ILL stuff packed up and then nine people would walk in with more, but it didn't go down like that.

And, finally, we had a visit from Cap'n Crossdresser, who was decked out in a knee-length little black skirt with matching pumps and a darkish coat that I'm sorry to report I didn't get a good look at. Not sure why he's on the Rogue list, come to think of it. He's actually one of the nicer patrons we have and has never given us any trouble. He just likes to dress up in women's clothing. No crime there.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #1

(*RING*)

ME: Tri-Metro County Public Library.

FEMALE CALLER: Yeah, um, what's the number of the fifth Harry Potter book?

ME: What's the number of the fifth Harry Potter book?

CALLER: Yeah.

ME: That would be five.

(LONG PAUSE)

CALLER: What?

ME: Five. The number of the fifth book in the Harry Potter series is five.

CALLER: Oh. I meant, `what's the title?'

ME: That would be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

CALLER: No, the fifth book!

ME: That is the fifth book.

CALLER: Really? Well, what's the sixth one.

ME: There is no sixth one.

CALLER: Yeah there is.

ME: Nope. There will be seven but she's still got two books to go.

CALLER: Really?

ME: Really. (SENSING DISBELIEF) There's Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That's all five.

CALLER: Oh. Well.... Thanks.

The Defeat and Utter Humiliation of Mrs. Carol Satan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...for now.

Now that's EVEN MORE Monday for your ass!

The rest of my Monday went pretty typically for a Monday, which is to say bursts of chaos followed by periods of downtime, punctuated by incessant phones ringing with caller after caller saying either "What time do you close?" or "Can I renew my books?" or "Is Mrs. C/Mrs. A there?" I knew that was going to happen. Every single time Mrs. A goes out of town, the world comes apart with people who seem to think their butts are going to implode if they don't speak with her right this very minute. When Mrs. A's not in, they'll settle for Mrs. C. But Mrs. C was out of town too and Mrs. A is on the other side of the country on vacation at the moment. So I got to hear the sound of several asses imploding throughout the day. The truly frustrating thing is that most of the people who call to ask to speak to A or C know good and damn well neither are in. As soon as you say it, they tell you, "Oh, yeah. I knew that." Then why did you bother to call?

I also had to interrupt making copies for a needy patron to answer a call from a guy who said, "Do you know the number to the DMV? I tried looking it up in the phone book but I couldn't find it."

"No, I don't know the number to the DMV," I said, deciding not to point out to him that we were a library and NOT directory service and therefore should not be expected to know such things. Story of my life, really. When I worked in radio people called for even goofier numbers than that. Somehow if you're in mass media or library work you're considered a depository of knowledge to be consulted at whim and leisure.

I tried looking up the DMV's number for the guy in the phone book myself, trying the WV STATE LISTINGS section and giving him a play by play of my phone-book. In the guy's defense, the DMV seems to have gone out of its way to remain unlisted. All I could find was an 800 number for a statewide line where anyone calling it had about as much hope of speaking to a real person as I did calling my bank this morning.

At 4:30 I started trying to get my closing duties taken care of, calling the holds, counting the till, trash taking, etc. But I couldn't count the till. Mabel the Amateur genealogist was still back on the computer, printing out dozens of pages that at .10 a pop were going to become a factor in my end of the day tallying. Why bother to count the money in the cash box when I'd just have to make change with it for Mabel's prints, destroying my count and making me have to do math?

At 4:56 the last wave of patrons began. Like I said, none of them are aware of our Monday 1-5 p hours despite their decade long existence, so 5 O'Clock is no reason for them to slow down. Fortunately, most of the people who walked through the door at 4:56 were with my favorite patrons, the Asner family. I whispered to them that we were about to close, but gave em free reign to go find some books quickly. Right on their heels, at 4:59, was a couple I'd not seen before, returning their books. I've dubbed them Mr. and Mrs. Thrill. After dropping the books on the desk, they began slowly meandering around the room in browse-mode.

"Uh, just to let you know we're closing in about one minute," I said.

The man gave me a deeply dirty look and said, "Whuut?"

"We close at 5 on Mondays," I said. "You're welcome to look around quickly and find something, if you like," I added--after all, I had a children's room full of Asner kids who weren't exactly rushing. The man wasn't happy about this, though. His dirty look got even dingier, bordering on and then crossing over into insulted.

"That ain't no good. People don't get off work til fiiiive," he said.

"I understand, sir. That's why we only close at five on Monday. The rest of the week we're open til 7, but we do close at 5 on Monday."

This didn't help. His wife, meanwhile, was in a tizzy-panic trying to decide what to look for in the ten whole seconds I'd allotted her to find a book. After the inner egg-timer in her head dinged off, she turned to her husband and threw up her hands in defeat.

"Pick you something out," he said.

"But, I don't... I... They... They're closed," she said.

"Go on and pick you something out," he told her, but she was too far gone to even try. "We ain't coming back," he told her on their way out the door. Hmm. Our loss.

After the Asners had gone at 5:05, it took another 10 minutes to close the rest of the joint down. I half expected patrons to continue pounding on the door to get in, but there was nary a knock.

Got home to find out Ice.com has canceled the order of pendants that our smarmy CAsshole made with our card. They're also crediting our account the amount they'd charged, so it looks as though we won't have to contest anything. We'll just have to file the police report and hope their brethren in San Diego can figure out what's going on and hopefully prosecute whoever did it.

We're still not sure how they got the credit card number in the first place. Ash had used it on-line early the morning of the new mystery purchases, but the site she used it at was a secure one. We're thinking she may have gotten an e-mail worm virus that could have spied it and mailed it on. So now we're having to erase and reinstall her laptop to try and get rid of any creepy crawlies.

Chester and the Narrowly Averted Trip to the Hurt Locker

Mrs. C was out of town on yet another meeting today, so Mrs. B and I held down the fort at the liberry, taking turns listening to asses implode during phone calls from those desperate to talk to Mrs. A or Mrs. C.

I regaled Mrs. B with my recent tale of woe and financial difficulty. Then I told her a bit of what went on during our typical Monday Mass Chaos, specifically about Chester's dumb ass. Mrs. B hates Chester even more than I do, which is a considerable amount to start with.

I also began to tell Mrs. B about Mr. & Mrs. Thrill, the couple who came in at the crack of 5 yesterday and got all worked up and threatened to never come back because I told them we were closing. Before I could even start to speak of them, though, they walked in the door.

(ADOPTS HOMER SIMPSON VOICE) Mmmm... Synchronicity.

I don't think they were expecting, nor hoping I would be there when they came in because both of them looked suddenly sheepish at having their feet caught being set in a building they had said they weren't coming back to. They quietly mosied around the room and eventually chose a couple of movies to borrow. I was glad I hadn't been in the middle of my story to Mrs. B when they came in, because I had a hard enough time not cracking up laughing while they were there as it was.

Luigi was back for much of the day, though with considerably less muddy boots this time. I gave em a good once-over at-distance inspection when he first came in. He came and went throughout the afternoon. Finally, at 4, he came back and asked if any of us had any kind of automotive repair knowledge in our heads. Seems his truck wouldn't start.

"What's it do when you try to start it?" I said, armed with a cache of broken car knowledge from my many years as owner and driver of unreliable vehicles.

"It just clicks."

"Sounds like the starter," I told him. "Happened to me once. I had to have mine replaced."

Luigi phoned a repair shop he knew. They told him it was the starter and that he should go and hit it with a hammer. We loaned him a hammer and watched him go, but neither Luigi nor any of us actually knew WHERE the starter was. Finally, we told him to phone the repair shop down the road and see if they would come up and hit his starter with a hammer for him. They did. Luigi's truck started right up.

While most of this was going on, I was trying to take my break and was using the internet. Our internet connection is still very unfaithful as LOCAL ISPnet has still not finished replacing its routers, or some such. So the net is up and down and up and down throughout the day, which just pisses off our usual internet crowd something fierce. While I was trying to use it, someone came in, but I didn't look up at them since I was technically on-break. Still, my Spidey-sense got a tingle.

After failing to get the net to do anything I wanted, I gave up and returned to the circulation desk. A few minutes later Mrs. B came through the children's room carrying a small stack of kids books on tape. She looked irritated. She began mouthing words to me. After a couple of tries, I read her lips to say "CHESTER's in the children's room."

I bolted around the desk and caught sight of Chester's ratty vest and stupid little short-brimmed cap. He was indeed standing in the kids room. Why? Cause there was a pre-teen girl in there, that's why. Dammit!

Mrs. B knows that I have no problem making Chester's life miserable by following him around conspicuously, so she passed her kid's tapes off to me so I'd at least have an excuse to harass him. When I entered the kids' room, Chester was gamely trying to look like he was engrossed in one of our Who's Who in West Virginia books we keep on a high shelf in there. He had his back turned to the little girl, so he couldn't be suspected of doing anything untoward. This just pissed me off. I wanted to grab him by the arm and say, "Can I have a word with you outside?" then drag him out before he could even reply. I wanted to hurl him out the door and give him the speech I've been writing in my head for the past two years. I want to tell him that we know good and damn well what his game is, that he likes looking at little girls and that he has no business being in the children's area. Oh, and we also know his sick ass has been stealing our Teen People's. I wanted to tell him that I better not see him so much as fart in the kid's room EVER again or even look in the same direction as another patron, let alone a little girl, or I won't hesitate to call 911.

The trouble with this is, no matter how much we KNOW in our heart that this truly is his game, he has still done nothing illegal. It would be one thing if a patron complained to us about him. I'd be on his ass like carbs on potatoes if someone would just complain about him. But I can't exactly throw him out for leafing through a Who's Who in WV which can only be found in the children's room. I didn't even see him staring at the girl this time. I just know he was doing it before I got there.

So instead of assaulting the man, I parked myself in the doorway and stared at him. When he saw me, he put the book back on the shelf and gathered up his notebook and a cluster of loose paper that he'd put on the kids-books on tape shelf and wandered back toward the computer hall. I didn't even have time to move before he was back, though.

"Uhm, can I... Do the computers... Uh, How do I?" he stammered, jutting a thumb back toward the computer hall.

"You have to sign in on the clip-board up front," I said, jutting my own thumb behind me. It's only the 834th time I've had to tell him this, because he asks that EVERY SINGLE %$#!ing time he wants to use a computer. Chester went to sign up and I went back to log him on. As I did, I noticed the top page of his stack of loose paper was from the local community college. I don't normally snoop, but this is %*#!ing Chester, after all. The page was a note giving him instructions on how to apply for financial aid. Hmm. Maybe all those FAFSA forms he's been taking from us were for something after all? More likely, he just wants to take classes so he'll have an excuse to sit and stare at girls. I guess at least the girls would be of age then, but he's still a sick #%&*!

After Chester sat down at the computer, Mrs. B loudly announced that she thought she'd just stay in the children's room to straighten up a few books. I went back to the circulation desk, where I had a good view of the door between the computer hallway and the children's room. I still had Luigi's borrowed hammer and I decided to keep it on the desk, if for no other reason than Chester might notice it and speculate as to what I was planning to gavel with it.

I expected Chester would start his traditional slow walk through the children's room in a quest for a pencil routine, but he stayed put for at least 10 minutes. Finally, he did get up and come to the desk, carrying his stack of stuff.

"Is there something wrong with the computer?" he asked. "It won't go anywhere."

I smiled. "It's been up and down all day. LOCAL ISPnet's working on it."

"When will they get it fixed?"

"Who knows?" I said. "We'd hoped they'd have it fixed already. It's been a week."

Chester looked irritated. I love seeing Chester irritated. He stood there for a few more seconds, allowing me to bask in his frustration, then he left for good, or at least as good as it got today.

He didn't seem to notice the hammer, though.

Adventures in Tri-Metro Land

This morning, Ash took all the little scraps of paper, on which I'd been scribbling vital information about our debit card theft, down to the bank to confer with them on our next step. So far none of the charges the thieving CAsshole made have hit our account, likely due to the fact that they've been canceled at the source. Still, we don't want this weasel to get away with it, so after consulting the bank, Ash popped down to see the police. Unfortunately, you can't just pop into ANY police station for this sort of thing.

"We can't do anything," the policeman at Town-A's police department said. "You're not in our jurisdiction. You're in Town-C's jurisdiction so you need to go see their department."

See, we live in the Town-A/Town-B/Town-C Tri-Metro area of small West Virginia towns. The towns are very small, but they're so close together that you'd hardly notice you'd moved into another town unless you paid attention to the signs. So Ash piled in the car again, traveled from Town-A through Town-B and to the Town-C police department, a journey of no more than 4 miles, and was hardly shocked to find Town-C's police station was empty of all life.

Town-C, which we live closest to, is not large enough to have a full fledged police force, you see. They have a handful of officers who have to both patrol in the cars and come back to run the desk. They can't do both at the same time, so they don't even pretend to. It's not at all uncommon, therefore, to see the police station sitting empty and locked up with all its lights out. In the department's defense, Town-C is a very poor community. It used to be the hub for all lumber activity and the money that came with it and for most of its life was actually something of a Flourishing High Society mecca. But logging dried up and most of the high-society crowd moved over to the more clean and historic-looking Town-A, leaving Town-C to dry up.

So poor is Town-C's police department that some of its officers have been known to moonlight as police officers for Town-D, 11 miles down the road. And, a year or so back, a couple of these Town-C/D officers did a wildly intelligent thing. They pulled over a woman over for speeding, she offered them sex in exchange for a free-pass on the speeding ticket and they took her up on it. They then proceeded to head back to one of the officer's apartments where they VIDEO TAPED the "encounter". Then, in some kind of endorphin-fueled haze of fraternal camaraderie, one of them decided it would be a great idea to show the tape TO THEIR BOSS back at the station the next day. Fortunately, their boss WAS a good cop and he had the pair charged, prosecuted and ultimately fired. Mayberry, this is not.

In order for Ashley to file a police report today she had to first come home and CALL the police. This evidently routes through 911's dispatcher who forwarded the call to an officer who then agreed to come back to his station for a few minutes so someone would be there to let her in and help with the report.

So now the report is filed and will soon be winging its way to San Diego where we'll see what happens. As I said before, it seems phenomenally stupid that our CAsshole debit-card number thief would actually ordered stuff off the internet and sent it to his own home. If he's smart enough to have gotten the number, it stands to reason he has some sort of plan for not getting caught. I'm thinking we're not likely to find him. But maybe, just maybe he really was that stupid and the cops in San Diego can nail him to the wall for this.

Now that's some MORE Monday for your ass!

Sure enough, as I drove up to the liberry, a full seven minutes before we were scheduled to open at 1 p, there were already three patrons pounding on the door to get in despite the whole really obvious hours of operation sign on the door. I parked and then made a point of walking past them on my way to the back door.

"We'll be opening in just a few minutes," I said. They looked suitably irritated with me.

I went through all the opening duties then watched the chain-smoking rubes who were still impatiently waiting outside. I'd worn my bright red "DO NOT DISTURB: I'M DISTURBED ENOUGH ALREADY" t-shirt today. It didn't work at all.

The front door opened at 1 p.m. exactly and not a second before. The flood gates opened with it and a steady stream of patrons poured through the door. Three of them immediately and hungrily signed up for computers, leaving two latecomers to stand in slack-jawed frustration at the half-hour wait time. The internet crowd can be especially irritating on Mondays. Most of them are used to being able to come in at 9 a.m., but on Monday's they have to wait an extra four hours to get their e-mail fix. They don't like it one bit. Makes em cranky. They were also irritated that our internet connection has been intermittent at best for the past week. Our ISP has been replacing servers or routers or something and the service keeps going down. I understand how frustrating that can be, but we've had patrons threaten to punch their monitors because of it. I keep having to explain that their inability to check their e-mail and play their on-line crossword puzzles is not our fault.

The patrons who didn't want computers or tax forms or my help with either seemed to desperately need my help finding books. ("Um, hey, I uh, got a book here a long time ago. It was about this girl and she wrote in her diary. The book was about this thick, you see? Whuuut? No, I don't know the title or author.") or making photocopies with the devil-copier, or try to find books we don't have for their kids' book reports, all of which were due tomorrow, of course.

Bout the time I'm neck deep in needy patrons, who walks through the door but the patron who must not be named, Chester the (potential) Molester. He headed through on his inspection rounds and went upstairs. Now, there were three teenagers in the library at that moment two of which were guys--one in the kid's room and one reading at the top of the stairs. They were hopefully off Chester's radar. However, we did have one who was upstairs somewhere herself. Fortunately, there were several mentally handicapped patrons and their aides upstairs by this point and I didn't figure Chester would try anything with so many witnesses. Still, as soon as I could shed myself of needy patrons I grabbed a stack of non-fiction and went up to see what he was doing.

As I put my books on the cart by the door, I could see Chester sitting alone at one of our tables. He was facing our front outer wall with his back to the handicapped patrons. He was still able to swivel his head, and did in my direction as I walked in. Chester looked terribly pleased with himself for some reason. He was smiling in that Chris Penn gone to seed sort of way he has. (I know, I know, this is really insulting. I mean, have you seen Chris Penn lately?) A happy Chester is not a good Chester, though and it wasn't until I was back downstairs that I realized why he was so happy. The teenage girl must have been sitting at one of the closer table's on Chester's side of the room. I hadn't seen her because that table is blocked from doorway view by shelves, but it's the only place she might have been had she been sitting up there. Before I could worry about it too much, the girl came down the stairs, gathered up her backpack and left. She didn't seem angry or worried, so maybe she was just leaving already. But it made me wonder if she found it difficult to bear the Chester's happy stare.

After a bit, (long enough for the girl to have gotten away) Chester came down, looking far less happy than before. I openly watched him as he passed through and toward the door, looking for signs that he had any stolen magazines stuffed into his vest. I figured the guy at the top of the stairs might serve as a deterrent for Chester to do any pilfering, but who really knew.

TO BE CONCLUDED...

Now that's some Monday for your ass!

Sweet merciful crap, where do I even start?

Okay, shortly after I made the below post, I get a call from Sony. Not Sonny, mind you, but Sony the corporation. It seems someone ordered $302.12 worth of headphones, Walkmen and memory sticks using my wife's debit card number and wanted it shipped to an address in San Diego. Sony just wanted to know if this was legit, as the address did not match ours here in WV. (ADOPTS AMBASSADOR KOSH VOICE: "And so it begins.")

I assured Sony that the charge was indeed a fraudulent one, as they suspected, and they in turn said they were cancelling it and would not be charging our bank account after all. As an added bonus, they gave me the home address that this merchandise was to be shipped to in case I wanted to pursue the matter legally. I thanked them for watching my back on this one and said keep up the good work.

I immediately hung up and spent the next 15 minute on hold with various operators trying to get through to have Ash's debit card cancelled.

It was maddening!

I called my bank and got the recorded message runaround for a couple minutes before realizing their voice-message system had no intentions of connecting me to an actual human. So I called one of the branch offices instead and got a person right away. She couldn't take care of the problem from her end, but was happy to transfer me to the right department and assured me that I just needed to tell them what happened and they would cancel the card right away. One transfer later, I was on hold with Fraud Claims. A few minutes later and I get to tell them my sad tale. In retrospect, I think they must have misunderstood what I wanted them to do, or I had been transferred to the wrong department in the first place, because they decided to transfer me to Mastercard proper. So I get to tell Mastercard my story. They decide that they can't handle me either and want to transfer me to the Global Distribution Mastercard department. Another transfer and I get to repeat my story again. They start asking me questions about whether Ashley needs a new card to replace her lost one and I realize that they completely don't Get It.

"No," I told them. "Her debit card is not lost. Her card number has been stolen somehow and someone is sending stereo equipment to San Diego with it. She still has her card, we just want it cancelled. Quickly."

"Ohhhh, it's a debit card," they said. "Well we need to transfer you to your bank's card department."

Son of a....

So, a full 15 minutes after I began my quest to speak with my bank, I'm finally transferred to them and start the process over.

The lady at my bank was really cool, though and just like the first bank lady said she shut down the card ASAP. She said that she could see a few more charges on their way in through Ash's account number, specifically a $400 charge to Staples and a $250 charge to Ice.com, an internet diamond broker and a $1 charge to set up a Yahoowallet account, into which they no doubt intended to funnel the rest of our money. Bank-lady said we needed to wait for the charges to hit then we could come in and dispute them and file a police report against the smarmly little asshole in San Diego who'd ordered all this stuff. (And I wonder if the guy at the address all this stuff was going to is even the perpetrator at all. It seems colossally stupid for someone to do what has apparently been done, so perhaps someone is setting him up for a fall somehow. I don't know. I don't care. I just know that we don't have $1000 to shell out on colossally stupid smarmy little assholes. I'm the poor spouse of a poor medical student, we're well over $100,000 in debt as it stands and I work in a frickin' library! No, sir, our smarmy asshole budget is $0.)

After hanging up, I decided to call Sony back and make sure I had all the contact information for the smarmy asshole correct. Sony confirmed it all and even gave me the order number, the asshole's e-mail address and told me how to go to their website to print it all out to hand over to the cops. I thanked Sony's fraud rep again for being so vigilant on my behalf, as there were three other companies which had, as of then, not. He suggested I try to call the other companies and get the orders halted. Great idea!

I called Staples and Ice.com and spoke with fraud representatives who put a stop to the orders, confirmed that they were both being sent to the same smarmy West-Coast based asshole's address and assured me that while my account might be charged initially, a credit for the full amount would follow shortly thereafter. They said this was the sort of thing they usually caught, but we just happened to beat them to it. Mighty nice of em.

That done, I got ready to head in to work.

I thought my day couldn't get any worse. I was wrong.