Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #73

(A father and daughter approach the circ-desk. The little girl, cute as anything, puts her books up on the desk and looks up at me.)

ME-- Do you have your library card?

DAD-- She doesn't have one. I don't have mine either. Matter of fact, I don't think I ever got one.

ME-- (Thinking, I'd better check the computer just to be sure before I have him fill out an application...) Well, what's your name?

DAD-- Ignernt Q. Patron

ME-- (Ignernt Q. Patron pops right up, but I'd still better confirm...) And your mailing address?

DAD-- Route 1, Dumbass Holler.

ME-- Yep. We've got you in the computer.

DAD--Yeah, I know ya have me in the computer. I'm saying, I never got a card.

ME-- Sir, we don't create patron records without issuing a card to the patron in question. And we do require a card in order to check out materials.

DAD-- Can I get anuther?

ME-- We charge $1 for a replacement card.
Dad opens his wallet and throws down a dollar with something of a defiant air.

ME-- All righty.
After confirming some contact information, I get busy putting a new barcode into dude's record. While I do this, he starts digging around in his wallet until he stumbles upon, surprise surprise, his library card.

DAD-- (Adopting a tone of voice similar to one he might have used had Library Card Gnomes snuck the thing into his wallet) Oh. Uh, here it is here.

ME-- Ahhhh. (I take it from him and scan the old barcode over the new one I'd just done) Here's your dollar back.

Kayla + Summa Reading + Mom & Sis / Aggressive Ignorance = Crazed Staff

It's our penultimate week of Summa Reading `06, but already we're clawing our way toward the end with anticipation. Once again, our demonic little friend Kayla is in attendance. (See episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4.) Oddly, though, our troubles this year aren't due to little Kayla.

Mrs. C and Mrs. B began complaining a week ago that while Kayla was surprisingly well-behaved in Summa Reading, her mom and little sister are driving them mad. Mom insists on accompanying Kayla to the Summa Reading sessions, not to mention dragging little sister along with her. Once in attendance, though, mom doesn't really do much other than lay around. Literally. Mrs. C said that during craft time last week, Kayla's mom stepped out into the center of the ring of craft-assembling children and lay down in the middle of the floor for a nap. Meanwhile, little sister was allowed to run amok through the activity room, terrorizing everyone by stomping on the Summa Reading kids' crafts, or even on the Summa Reading kids themselves when they thoughtlessly allowed their hands to stay within Sis's stomping range. Mom didn't even attempt her usual ineffective, "No, no, mommy said `stop that,' " leaving it to Mrs. C and Mrs B to keep Sis from destroying everything.

After last week, it was Mrs. C's stated intention that the next time Kayla and crew arrived (late as usual, no doubt) that she would take the mom aside and tell her that we think Kayla will do fine by herself and that she, the mom, is welcome to take Sis and wait downstairs. And this is precisely what Mrs.C did yesterday. According to Mrs. A, who watched safely from her office, Mrs. C took Kayla from her mother before they could even make it to the top of the stairs, ran off with her and closed the activity room door firmly behind her. Kayla's mom then stood on the stairs looking worriedly up at the closed door, as though she could hardly stand not being in there to aid in the chaos.

So for an hour, I got to watch Mom and Sis mill around the children's room picking out books. Little sis hasn't quite reached the level of destruction capable by her older sister, but I'm sure she's just working up to it.

When Summa Reading was over, Kayla picked out nearly her weight in board books which she marched up to the desk with, announcing she wanted to buy them. Her mom tried to explain that she already had several other books picked out and that they could only take what they had room for on both her library card and Kayla's. Before they could check them out, though, Mom said they needed to fetch all their returns from the car to check-in. I was afraid this would mean Mom was going to leave the little ones in our care while she fled to the car for a much needed break. Kayla had already been trying her best to pop all our inflatable animals in the kids room by violently attempting to ride them. ("No, Kayla, don't ride the animals. No, Kayla, mommy said don't ride the animals. Kayla? Are you listening, Kayla? Kayla?") Fortunately for us, mom took both kids to the car with her for the search.

After ten minutes of blissful silence, during which I pre-date-stamped their books for added speed to their departure and during which no animals were menaced nor any little sister voices raised in spine-rending wail, they returned with their check-ins, which I then checked in. Afterwards, I looked up at them expectantly only to find expectant looks from them already.

"Um, do you have your library cards?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so," Kayla's mom said. Expectant look, expectant look.

"I'm sorry, but you do need your library card in order to check books out."

"Oh, really?" Kayla's mom said without any of the usual conviction of people genuinely surprised at this news. "Well, let me see." She began leafing through her wallet, occasionally gesturing other patrons around her, as the line at the desk was backed up by this point. Meanwhile, little sis had discovered the two brooms we keep beside the front door and was walking around with them. I wasn't worried, at first, as it gave me a chance to make the joke, "Are you going to sweep up for us?" Then she dropped one of the brooms and began swinging the other one with a force that, had she been a baseball player, would have got her brought up on charges of `roiding. One such swing nearly took off her sister's head and another nearly took out the glass of our front door. Mom ignored her and continued to search her wallet, leaving Mrs. A to bravely run over and disarm the child.

"Maybe they're in the car," Mom said. She gathered up kids and went to the car, but came back far sooner than a lengthy search would have taken. Little sister was now wailing again.

"I don't have the cards," mom said.

"Well, I'm sorry, but we do require a library card to check out books."

"All right, then," Mom said, looking downcast and without a friend in the world. "I guess we'll just come back some other time." Pause, then eyes flash up, full of hope.

"Okay," I said.

Mom stood there at the desk for several more seconds, as though waiting for me to relent. Little did she know, I am relentless. Meanwhile Kayla had returned to the children's room to pop more animals so Mom went in seemingly to collect her. She told Kayla to stop jumping on the animals because they had to leave. Next, she added that they wouldn't be getting any library books because they didn't have their library cards. I expected Kayla to freak out and burst into loud tears at this. In fact, I think Mom was counting on that reaction too, hoping a tantrum incident would give us added incentive to let them check out anyway. However, Kayla didn't take the bait and went right on happily squashing our plastic elephant into the floor.

Instead of collecting Kayla and leaving as she'd just said they needed to do, Mom stepped back into the main room, stood in the middle of the main room's floor and held screaming little sis in her arms there for a full five minutes. There was no indication as to why, she just stood there and let the toddler scream herself silly. Wail, wail, wail, spine-clench, spine-clench, spine-clench. Occasionally, Mom would glance pittifully in the direction of the circ-desk, leading me to again reach the conclusion that Kayla's mom was intentionally inflicting her children on us so we'd relent just to get them all out of the building. It was extortion, and brilliantly played. However, I became all the more determined that my administration would not give in to terror. I stayed planted at the desk. There was no danger of us letting her check out sans card, but there was the possibility that someone on staff would take pity on Mom and let her use one of their cards to check out. Wouldn't be me, but I could sort of see Mrs. A possibly offering just to make the screaming stop.

After five minutes of screaming, Mom approached the desk again. I'd stepped away from the computer and was speaking to Mrs. A back at the window. Mrs. J was now nearest to the computer, so mom tried to deal exclusively with her in a very low voice. Unfortunately for Mom, Mrs. J is hard of hearing. After a couple of low-volume failed attempts, Kayla's mom finally explained at full-volume to Mrs. J that she wanted to check out the pile of books that was still on the desk, but that she'd forgotten their library cards. Hopeful look, hopeful look.

"Ma'am, we cannot check books out to you without a library card," I said, stepping over.

"But I have a library card," Mom said, pointing at the computer.

"No. We have to have the physical card."

"If you like, we can hold these for you until you come back," Mrs. A offered.

Mrs. B then came over to join the crowd behind the desk and asked if the little sister had a card yet. Mom looked hopeful at this, but then Mrs. B pointed out that they would only be able to 10 books on that card and not the full 20 she wanted, so Mom decided not to get any extra cards at all.

"We'll just come back on Saturday," Mom said.

"We're not holding those until Saturday," Mrs. A said. "I thought you meant you would come back later today."

Mom adopted a sad tone and said they lived too far away to make a second trip back.

"Okay, well, maybe you can find them next time," Mrs. A said. We then collectively dispersed from the desk, our business concluded with no further need for discussion, leaving Mom to look unhappy. After Kayla and family finally left, a good ten minutes later, Mrs. A said that she was worried that she'd offended Kayla's mom by saying we wouldn't hold the books for two days. (It really wouldn't have been an issue had there only been a couple of books, but our hold bin is packed to the gills right now and there isn't room for 20 extra books in there.)

"So what if she is mad?" I said. "What's she going to do? Not come back next week? Yeah, that'll show us."

Hey, kid, isn't that attitude a little big for you?

I came in last Wednesday to find the library eat up with kids. It wasn’t even a summer reading program day, so I had no explanation. Soon I was told that this was a sort of class-visit from a local summer day-care program. The kids in this day-care program ranged from probably 6 to 12 years of age. It was a pre-planned event, one which allowed us to take contact information in advance with which we made new library cards for all the listed kids who didn’t already have one.

During the visit, Mrs. A noticed two girls trying to log themselves onto an idle patron computer. When she approached them, one of them was typing in “Heather” as the login name, thinking that was going to work.

Mrs. A related the following conversation to me.

MRS. A: Excuse me, girls. How old are you?

HEATHER: Twelve.

MRS. A: I’m sorry, but we don’t allow children under 13 to use the computers without their parents supervision. It’s library policy.

HEATHER: (Puffing herself up with plenty of attitude) No, but my mom signed a permission slip so I could use them.

MRS. A: The permission slips are to let kids 13 and older use the internet. You’re still 12.

HEATHER: (Getting in Mrs. A’s face—always a great idea) My MOM signed a permission slip!

MRS. A: Your mom does not override library policy.

HEATHER: You can call her and get her permission over the phone.

MRS. A: I’m not going to call her because it doesn’t matter if you have her permission; you’re still 12. Now get up and go back in the other room.

Little Miss Heather-pants was most unhappy about this and walked around wielding her newly blossoming 12-year-old-girl attitude like a 60 pound Claymore sword that she could scarcely yet lift. Her cohort in computer crime, a miss Holly Goheavily, was soon to develop into a troublesome pest as well.

When it came time to check out books, Holly Goheavily didn’t have her library card. We hadn't made her one because she already had a patron account with us in the system and her mother was in possession of the actual card. Holly was annoyed that she couldn’t check anything out and tried to argue with Mrs. C that she should be given a brand new card. Mrs. C explained that we wouldn’t be doing that, as she already had an existing card.

“But my brother already has a card and you just gave him a new one!” Holly countered. Sure enough, Holly’s little brother Bratt had just been given a new card, but this was because he DID NOT have one already listed in our database. Holly could not be reasoned with on this point and kept repeating that he already had one because her mom got cards for all of them at the same time.

“Well, he only has one card now and that’s the one we just gave him.”

Holly left angry.

After the class had departed, Mrs. A and C fled the building, leaving me and Mrs. B to run the place. Half an hour or so later, Holly Goheavily and Bratt Goheavily returned, accompanied by Mom Goheavily. Mom marched up to the desk and slapped down two library cards, both of which had Bratt Goheavily’s name on them and slid them toward me.

“How come my son has two cards but my daughter can’t have two?” she said. “This is the one he got today and this one I got months ago.”

I picked up our barcode scanner and zapped the indicated older card. A little window popped up on my screen indicating that this barcode number had no patron record associated with it.

“This one’s not an active card, Ma’am,” I said. “We did double check that your son didn’t have an existing card before we issued the new one and there wasn’t one in the system. Clearly he had one at one time, since we gave you this card, but I can’t say how the account for it disappeared.”

This seemed to satisfy her on that point. I took the dead card from her and threw it away.

After looking around a while, Mom Goheavily returned to the desk with a book from the children’s room's Young Adult section.

“Is there any way to tell what age group these books are for?” she asked.

“Well, sometimes they have a suggested age group printed on the back or on the inside cover,” Mrs. B said. They turned the book at several angles, but there didn’t seem to be an age guide on it.

“It’s just that some of those books in there are filthy,” Mom Goheavily said. “The language and the… the, well, I don’t want my daughter reading them.”

Mrs. B held the book up to show the spine-label on it.

“Ma’am, this is a Young Adult book. If you don’t want your daughter reading young adult material, you might want to tell her to stay away from it.” Mrs. B pointed into the children’s room, where Holly Goheavily was nose deep in the YA section. Mom Goheavily then proceeded to completely freak out on Holly, ordering her to put that book she had down right then and not to take any more from that section. Holly, for her part, tried to bring out her own 60 pound attitude sword, but couldn’t get much lift against such a forceful attitude as her mother’s.

When it came time to check out, Mom Goheavily asked for a parental permission form for her daughter to use the internet. We gave it to her and she filled it out while I checked out more books for Bratt. I was dubious about Holly’s age, though. Mrs. A had not said she was 12 in her earlier story, but I gathered that she likely was. With mom standing right there, though, I figured if I put the question to her she would have to tell the truth.

“And are you 12 or 13?” I asked.

“I’m 13,” Holly said.

“She’s 13,” Mom said at the same time.

“No she’s not,” Bratt said.

“Shhhh!!” Mom said, giving Bratt the look of death. Then, in a low whisper, like I couldn’t hear her clearly from a mere two and a half feet away, she said, “She’s thirteen! She’ll be thirteen in less than a month.”

Yes, that’s the lesson all parents should be teaching their kids: how to lie to get what you want.

We might have let Holly slide on this technicality had she and her mother not perpetrated such deception. Unfortunately for her, the entire staff now knows her true age and her birthday's been circled on her permission form. If she wants to use a computer within the next month, she'll be playing a lot of Mag!c School Bus and Barn3y games, but no internet.

Spot the Fake Shemp

This morning one of our regular kids came in to use the internet. He signed the clipboard as usual, but Mrs. A was manning the desk and carded him. Surprise of surprises, he didn't have a permission slip on file.

Our policy is that children under 16 have to either have a parent with them while using the internet or have a parental permission slip on file saying it's okay for them to use the internet. We're only mostly strict on this. Sometimes, a kid will sneak through, but not because we don't care. It's usually that we've assumed they have a permission slip when they don't.

"But I use the internet here all the time!" the kid protested. This was true. I've been logging him on at least twice a week since school let out and all he ever does is surf the Magic: The Gathering website. Still, Mrs. A didn't care how much illegal surfing he'd done already, he would be doing no more without a permission slip.

Kid asked if he could take a permission slip outside where his dad was waiting and have him sign it real quick.  Mrs. A gave him one, let him leave, allowed him enough time to start incriminating himself, then went outside to see what he was up to. 

Outside there was nary a dad in sight. Instead, kid was sitting at our picnic table filling out his own permission slip. He even looked up and saw Mrs. A watching him do it, then had the sac to come back in with it and try to pass it off anyway. 

"Um, my dad had to go run an errand, but he signed it first," kid said. He pointed to the parental signature blank where the letters "J.D." had been scribbled.

Mrs. A looked over his sad little forgery and then verbally pounced on his head. She told him she'd seen him fill it out himself and knew his dad was never there in the first place.  No, if he wanted to get on a computer ever again, he was going to have to drag Dad inside in person and have him fill out the slip with witnesses.  The kid then left, sans slip.

This all happened while I was down picking up lunch and they told me about it upon my return. I'd even passed the kid on my way back up the hill so I knew exactly who they were talking about.

Around 10 minutes later, kid returned with his mom and little brother in tow. Mrs. A explained to her about the earlier forgery, but Mom seemed unconcerned that her son had tried to forge Dad's name on the permission slip. She signed him right up and put him on a computer then signed her other son up while she was at it.
 
That's right, Mom--reward the bad behavior!  Why not, indeed?  After all, he's only just entering his teens, so it's only gonna get better from here on out.