Final Monday

While at lunch with the wife, today, I mentioned that it was the final Monday I would work at the "liberry." She asked if I was saddened by this fact. I had to admit: not even a little. Cause, as has been well-chronicled here, I hate me some Monday.

What's there to miss?

• The incessant banging on and repeatedly trying of the handles of the doors to see if we're open yet despite the obvious sign clearly stating otherwise? Gone from my life.
• The annoyed expressions when we at last do unlock the doors? Gone from my life.
• The mad rushes by innanet crowders to get to the computers before they all fill up? Gone from my life.
• The endless procession of extraordinarily needy patrons, many of whom have questions that can only be answered by a person of authority, on a day when the people in authority are NEVER present? Gone from my life.
• Long time innanet crowders who have used the computers nearly every single day for the past couple of years yet still cannot get it through their head that we close at 5 on Mondays and act all shocked and amazed every week when we tell them they don't actually have another four hours at their disposal, but have to get off in ten minutes; or patrons who walk in the building at ten til 5 with the same expectations and literally smack themselves in the head because once again their poor, swiss-cheesed memory has failed them? Gone. From. My. Life.
  

As Mondays go, today was actually not terribly problematic. Sure, we had the usual Monday Madness, but not infuriatingly so. I tried to just go with the flow and live in the moment and enjoy it as much as I could. The major incident of the day came around 4p, when one of our computer patrons tripped and fell while trying to walk across a level section of floor. In this man's defense, he did suffer a stroke a while back and walks with a pronounced limp. I had just asked him to relinquish his computer for a new patron and he had been in the process of walking toward the circ desk when he fell. I was looking right at him as he dropped like a sack of dead, wet, marmosets, but I was powerless to do anything about it beyond giving off a sympathetic yelp. He fell hard, right on his arm and I was sure it would probably be broken, or dislocated or otherwise in need of an ambulance.

I rushed around the desk and over to where he'd fallen. Mr. B-Natural, who'd been seated at the computer directly beside the place where he fell also rushed over. The man was writhing on the floor, clutching at his arm. Quite intelligently, I asked, "Are you all right?"

The man looked up at me and then at Mr. B-Natural and, through a very painful-looking expression, said he was indeed all right. Mr. B-Natural began trying to help him sit up, but the man waived him off, saying, "I'm all right. I'm all right."

"Well, here's your glasses," Mr. B-Natural said, gathering them up and handing them over.

"I'll get them. I'm all right!" the man said.

"Well here's your hat," Mr. B-Natural added.

"I'll get them! I'm all right!" the man said, now practically screaming. "Please! I'm all right. I'll get them!"

"Can I help you up?" I asked.

"No! I'm all right!"

The more we tried to help, the angrier he got. But it felt very odd not trying to help him, particularly with everyone across the main floor was staring at us. I think, though, that the attention being directed at him was the problem. The man was embarrassed at having fallen and didn't want any more attention than he'd already caused himself. Slowly, Mr. B-Natural and I backed away, but not too far. This was good, because as soon as the man had clambered to his feet, he tipped over again and Mr. B-Natural was near enough to catch him.

"I'm all right!" the man hissed as Mr. B set up upright again. "I'll be fine, as soon as I can sit down for a minute," he said. Then, as though he needed further explanation for being annoyed with us, he added, "The physical therapists say it helps to do everything for myself."

"Do you need a chair?" I offered, looking for the nearest one.

"No! I'm all right! I'll get it! I'll be fine!"

So I walked away and the man hobbled over to the circ desk and leaned there for a moment. He left his hat and glasses there, then hobbled back over to Mr. B-Natural to apologize for being so gruff. I thought, if only you knew you were apologizing to the grumpiest old man in all the world, dude. Then the man hobbled off to the bathroom, where he stayed, in a seated position (if you get my drift) for quite a while.

"That guy really needs a cane," I told Mrs. B.

She agreed.

"Liberry" Glossary: Needy Patron

Needy Patron

-noun

1. A patron incapable of helping themselves with even the most minor of tasks, but who is usually intent on accomplishing the most major of tasks and will often require your help over the course of a period of hours to make this a reality. This might take the form of having no knowledge whatsoever about how to operate a computer, yet need to fill out extensive forms online. Other times, they might need to do complicated legal research on a deadline, yet have no actual idea what they are looking for, or, worse yet, merely some random numbers and letters written on a piece of paper by a possibly mentally-challenged third party all of which they expect you to not only recognize but immediately spew forth the requisite information those random characters are supposed to correspond to. Often the desired tasks of the needy patron are impossible to achieve given our limited resources, but communicating this to them is often impossible in direct proportion to their neediness. The neediness of the needy patron is also often in direct proportion to how utterly swamped you already are with other pressing tasks or other needy patrons--in other words, they love to appear on Mondays.
   

The Anti-Monday?

I arrived at work yesterday to find NO cars in the parking lot, let alone innanet crowders banging on the door to get in. Very very odd for a Monday. So odd, in fact, that I immediately wondered if I'd somehow missed that it was a holiday on which we were closed. It's not the first time I've had schedule issues recently because I'd failed to look at my schedule. I actually turned up for my shift last Friday only to discover I wasn't on schedule in the first place--a fact I might have realized had I the good sense to have taken home a copy of the work schedule. I'd made a copy right then and there, but have somehow misplaced it, for it's not in the house.

I parked, went inside and found Ms. M setting up for the day and my name on the schedule beside hers.

Our 1p Monday opening time arrived and two patrons turned up just as I went to unlock the door. Neither of them wanted computers. In fact, it was a few minutes before the first of our usual innanet crowders arrived. And while we did eventually fill all the computers, it took nearly three hours before Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine showed.

The Poop List Regains a Lost Member

Yes indeedy, annoying patron Ms. Green is back on the poop list. I don't understand how a human being who is so reliant on computers to do just about everything she comes to the library to do can be so inept at operating them.

I should have known it was going to be a bad day of it with her when her kid asked to borrow the phone, called home and told his mother that he'd found a book he wanted and would be needing "the library card," and could she bring it with her when she came to pick him up? Understand, Ms. Green and her two kids have had MULTIPLE LIBRARY CARDS each throughout the years we've had our current circulation system, but now they've apparently lost all but one of them. Nice.

At around a half hour to our Monday five o'clock closing time, Ms. Green herself arrived, signed up for a computer and began typing something in Word. The other computers were packed solid with patrons, so much so that at twenty minutes from closing I had to boot Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine off for yet another new arrival patron. I then announced to the entire innanet crowd that we were indeed closing at five and so they would have only ten more minutes of innanet time before I needed to shut down their computers. And I noted at that moment that each of these people instantly became very concentrated on not wrapping up their shit.

At pretty much ten `til close, Ms. Green waved me over to help her. She wanted to print the document she'd composed once, then make some changes to it and print it again. However, despite all the school reports she's written and printed for her kid over the past few months, she claimed she didn't know how to print the current one. So I showed her again how to do so and then showed her how to click on the OK button in the print dialog box.

Nothing happened.

I stepped over to the printer, expecting it to be out of paper, but it was full and seemed to be at the ready. I asked Ms. Green if she'd truly hit OK and she said she had. She then tried to print a couple more times just to show me.

"Listen. Don't hit print any more. I don't know what's wrong with the printer, but it will just print multiple copies of your page when it finally starts printing if you keep doing that and we will have to charge you for them." To prevent this, I opened up the print queue on her machine and canceled out the jobs. I then personally hit print again and waited.

Nothing happened.

Then Ms. Green tried to hit print again and I had to stop her, though not by the method that immediately came to my mind. Meanwhile, it was now five minutes until closing time, which was five minutes after I had told everyone they needed to be off. Not a soul had moved. After all, I was helping another patron with a computer problem and if she got to stay on the computer, so could they. I reiterated to them that we were nearly closed. Only then did one of them begin to wrap up their shit.

"I don't know why this isn't printing," I told Ms. Green.

"So, can I save it?"

Knowing full well the answer to what I was about to say: "Only if you have a disc or a jump drive. If you save it to the machine, it will be erased when we shut it down."

"Well, can I email it to you?"

Also knowing where this was headed. "You should probably just email it to yourself."

"I know, but I tried to access my Verizon account here and I can't get into it unless I'm at home."

"Then I don't know what to tell you," I said. "If you can't access your email from our computers, then it's hard to email it to anyone."

Granted, I could have logged onto my own email and emailed it to myself, or to her, or to Al Gore, but I really wasn't feeling like being very helpful to helpless people who've been through this very situation multiple times in the past and have clearly not learned anything from the journey. I've suggested she get a Gmail account several times before, but she's not heeded, so this was the consequence.

After noting for Ms. Green that she should not try printing any more, I marched back to the printer and hit the GO button, just for shits and grins. Instantly it said it had a job in the hopper, but indicated it required legal-size paper in order to proceed. Now, I knew that Ms. Green had not chosen legal-size paper on purpose because that was far, far, FAR beyond her capabilities. What I suspected was that our printer had lost a good bit of its mind and was in need of a reboot, for it had insisted on trying to print on legal paper for another patron earlier in the day. I overrode the insistence and it spat out Ms. Green's document on regular paper. The printer then indicated it had another job that it wanted to print on legal paper. I overrode that too and out came another copy of Ms. Green's document.

I went and gave them to Ms. Green. And while I was at the computers, I began shutting down the few empty terminals we had and pointed out to the remaining innanet crowders that we were, in fact, officially closed now. Mr. W. Perfect looked up from his conversation with another `crowder and then went right back to talking. That `crowder's wife, also on a machine, then called me over and asked me how to center the phone numbers she'd lined up on a flyer she was working on. My match-strikin' hand began to itch.

"Okay, I'm printing again," Ms. Green said. I returned to the printer, hit GO again and another copy of Ms. Green's first document came out. Another followed before her second document finally printed. Soon there were five copies of it in total. (Lady, what part of "STOP. HITTING. EFFING. PRINT." don't you understand????!!!!) I passed the pile of them over to her. She looked them over, perhaps noted the wild look in my eyes and decided not to complain about paying for multiple copies of the same document.

"I'll just need to step out to the car to get the money," she said.

Again, if you've come to the library at the crack of closing time and intend on printing ANYTHING, you must have known in advance that you would have to pay for what you were going to print. On what planet, therefore, does it make any sense to leave all your money in the car?

Meanwhile, it was now five minutes past closing time, a fact I then indicated to Mr. W. Perfect and the two remaining innanet crowders when I went to shut the rest of the computers down. They looked up at me as though this was the first they'd heard of it, but they at least began paying lip service to wrapping up their shit.

The printer light was flashing again when I returned to the circ desk. I overrode the legal size again and it was another of Ms. Green's pages. The document that followed was as well, so I canceled the next one after that and the printer gave up. Now, I don't know which of the two documents I canceled actually belonged to the OTHER innanet crowder who was printing flyers, but no more documents came out so evidently I'd canceled it, too. When they came to pick up their prints, I had to then explain to them that they were basically SOL, as nothing was printing.

"Do you still have them up on your screen?" I asked.

Nope, she's shut the machine down and logged off, cause I'd told them we were closing. Ah, so now it's doubly my fault. Fortunately, they weren't mad that all the work they'd just done had vanished and said they'd come back another day.

I never saw Ms. Green return to pay us. She'd taken her initial set of prints with her, as well. My theory is that she'd gone to the car for money, discovered there wasn't any there to begin with and had done a runner, resolving to "get us next time. " Yep, back on the poop list she goes.

After we finally got rid of Mr. Perfect, who'd hung around to watch all the chaos, and then stood around making small talk with Ms. D, it was nearly fifteen minutes after closing.

On my way to check the men's room, I passed by our local history room and noted that there was still a patron sitting at the desk within it. He wore a hearing aid, which evidently wasn't in good working order, cause he'd not heard any of my many announcements about being closed. So I tapped him on the shoulder and informed him we'd closed quite some time back and apologized that this was the first time I'd noticed him. He graciously wrapped up his research, but then wanted us to look up a few more books for him before he left. I was all for being very rude to the man and kicking him out, but Ms. D stepped in and agreed to do his searches. After five minutes of this research, though, I began to wonder if I was going to have to finally give my long-chambered AFTER-CLOSING, GET-THE-EFF-OUT speech and scream, "Excuse me, but we have been closed for TWENTY MINUTES, now! You are abusing our good will!!!! I now have no alternative but to return this abuse in full!!!! Instead, I kept my back to him and busied myself counting the cash box. Mid- way through his next search request, he paused and then said he wouldn't take any more of our time and left. Wise man.

After I'd counted the cash box, we discovered a lone dollar tucked beneath one of the barcode scanners. I don't know for sure if Ms. Green left it there when I wasn't paying attention, but I'll assume she did. It was more than enough to pay for her prints, including the ones that printed after she went to get money.

The following day, I told Mrs. A we need an emergency power cutoff switch at the circ desk for not only each individual computer but the whole lot of them as well. As it stands, we'd either have to crawl under the computer desks to turn off the power strips, or go down to the basement to unplug the data cables. I want remote control Kill Switch access and I want it now.

The Good Monday 2008

Ahh, that was refreshing!

We had a nice, mostly unchaotic Monday, for once. Okay, sure, seven people assaulted the front door in an attempt to get before our 1p opening and most of them demanded computers after we actually opened, but we weren't packed full for the whole day as usual. The book return had only one armload of books in it and Ms. M and I were able to stave off and/or help the usual amount of needy Monday patrons, "assisted" occasionally by Lennie, (whose major conversation theme of the day was how well WVU is doing in sports).

The only real challenge of the day came when Ms. M became entangled in a telephone conversation with someone for the better part of ten minutes. I didn't know who she was speaking to on our main circ-desk phone, but from her answers of "No... yes... no... no... yes..." and occasional recital of vital "liberry" contact information I knew that it had to be some sort of telemarketing situation. From the sound of it, it was for some national directory listing. While it's always nice to have the library properly listed in such directories, I couldn't see why they needed to grill her for 10 minutes on other minor points better left answered by officially licensed librarians, I'm still not sure, but grill her they did and tenaciously so. Not wanting to do the wrong thing or be perceived as rude, Ms. M held still while they applied her to the coals, but her expression changed from nervous to frustrated to bewildered during it. I kept giving her the international sign-language for "hang the hell up" but she wouldn't do it. I even offered to tell the person off for her, but she again refused.

Then the other line began to ring and I whispered to her that this was her grand opportunity to get off by telling them she had another call she had to take. She attempted this, but their little Telemarketer-teeth hung on fiercely as the line continued to ring. After three rings, I gave up on Ms. M and went to answer it in the staff workroom. As soon as I picked it up, though, Lennie bellowed, "It's okay, JUICE got it!" This, as I later learned, was easily overheard by the telemarketer who tightened her grip on Ms. M's phone ear and said, "Oh, so you can keep talking, then."

Fortunately, the call I took was from a patron looking to renew a book and with the circ-desk phone being the only one near a circ-desk computer, I was able to convey to Ms. M that I would be needing that phone and that she had to wrap it up with the telemarketer. I tell you, it took a hot match-head to remove that particular phone parasite, but eventually they let go of Ms. M and scuttled back under their rock.

"Who the hell was that?" I asked.

"The Yellow Pages," Ms. M said.

"Wow," I said. "I got a call from Yellow Book last week and they weren't nearly as bad."

Monday comes to Friday

We're closed for President's Day, today. It's just as well, because I really need a break after the madness of Friday.

I don't know if it was because the patrons knew we'd not be open today or just that we were woefully understaffed, but the usual Monday Madness descended on our heads on Friday. Worse yet, it descended on MY head, as I was basically the only guy working for most of the afternoon.

My boss, Mrs. A, was out of town. Mrs. B, Ms. D and Ms. M were all out with other obligations or days off, Mrs. J left after 2 and that put me and Mrs. C as the only staff members in house. Everything seemed okay, at first. Traffic was very slow, the computers weren't busy and I even had time to shelve most of the book cart while being the only guy running the desk. Then Mrs. C announced she had to leave for some "liberry" errands. No sooner was she out the door than someone blew the crazy whistle and the needy patrons poured in.

Suddenly, it seemed that all returning books came in quantities of ten, with multiple family members bringing back their limit all at once. These quickly piled up beyond my capacity to check them in at point of return, mostly due to my having to help all the other needy patrons circling the area. In the space of fifteen minutes, I had one guy who wanted 21 photocopies made from a text book. Another usually needed to print two five page documents on legal paper, requring me to feed each sheet into the printer by hand. While I was doing that, a lady signed up for a computer. I explained I'd be with her in just a moment. She waited 20 seconds and then announced she would have to come back later because all she wanted was to use a computer very quickly RIGHT THEN.

"Ma'am, I can get a computer for you, but it's going to be a moment," I said, gesturing to the printer and pages directly in front of me to indicate that I was in the middle of something that was difficult to break away from to fetch her a computer RIGHT THEN. She began to protest that she simply didn't have the time, but as I was nearly the final page of that particular document, I cut her off saying, "I'll be finished with this in ten seconds and then I can get a computer for you." It was difficult for her to argue with that. Ten seconds later, I finished up and fetched her a computer. True to her word, she was on it for less than two minutes before leaving for good.

She wasn't the only computer person. What started out as an innanet crowd lull soon took on storm-like proportions and most of our computer patrons arrived spaced at intervals coinciding with my busiest moments at the desk. The upside of this was that I was able to boot Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, who'd been on for five hours already, and he actually left the building rather than signing back up.

And then there was the phone—OH THE %#&!ing PHONE! It's long been a cardinal rule at the "libery" that the phone takes precedent over nearly everything else. Normally we have enough employees around that if the phone rings there’s someone else to answer it while you deal with your patron, but that was not the case Friday. It rang throughout the desk rushes, forcing me to break away from helping needy patrons to help other needy patrons on the phone. Or to continuously explain to the callers that the employee they wished to talk to was not in today and would not be in today and, no, I did not know where they were so that the callers could call them at that other location. The most infuriating, however, was a woman who explained, very slowly, that she had not been to the library in several weeks because she had been very sick and had even had to go to the hospital at one point, but was feeling a little better now and it was a good thing too because her daughter was coming into town over the weekend and her daughter thought that it might be nice for them all to come down to the library and have a look around and maybe check out some books and maybe pay a fine or two and could I tell her what our hours would be over the weekend? This I told her as swiftly as I could, but she had to take her time to write the hours down first, confirming each one with me after writing it. And, naturally, her followup question was to ask our hours on every other day of the week as well. It took her so long to write each of these down, despite my condensing it into a "Tuesday through Thursday, we're open..." style, that I’m pretty sure she was embroidering each set of hours on a pillow as I spoke. Whatever the case, it took an unnecessary amount of time for her to write it all down and confirm it. Then she wanted to tell me more about her daughter at the end, but I was at last able to excuse myself. (Now that I think about it, I don’t believe I told her we’d be closed today, which probably means today's when she'll hobble on up.)

By 3:45, I was driven nigh on to madness. Then, the moment Mrs. C returned, the patron storm-clouds vanished, the seas of crazy calmed and other than the brimming shelving-cart, the place looked for all the world like a non-busy library. Mrs. C believed me when I assured her that I had been ready to set people on fire just ten minutes before. She'd gone through a couple of waves of it herself during the morning.

Pulling Teeth

We've had a string of royally bad Mondays over the past couple of months—Mondays in which a world's population of needy and innanet-seeking patrons have descended upon our heads, all signing up for computers at once and then demanding to know things such as "What do you mean they're all full and you don't know when I can have a computer?" and "No, really, when can I have a computer?" They've been the sort of Mondays that cause your teeth to grind and your match-striking fingers to itch.

Not so today. Sure, we've been open every single MLK day probably since the holiday began, but most of our patrons are blissfully unaware of this. In fact, in the past, I've had patrons who've walked into the building on MLK day, through a clearly unlocked and open door, approach the circ desk and ask me to my face if we're open. So our Monday was largely hassle free. Oh, we did plenty of computer and circulation business, but it felt more like an average afternoon, rather than the usual Monday Madness.

The only real annoyance during the day came from Ms. Green, who had some kind of brain fart that impaired her communication skills and caused her to make a run back toward her former status as a very annoying patron.

Ms. Green has been in a lot recently helping her son with his homework. And by "helping" I mean she's basically writing his book reports for him, taking dictation from her kid as to the actual events of the book. So, he's allegedly done the reading part, but is getting no chance to develop his writing skills to convey this. At one point in the afternoon, Ms. Green approached the circ desk and asked me if it would be okay for her to come behind the desk. Now, she'd just been behind the desk to venture into the staff workroom to talk to Mrs. B, so I wasn't sure why she was bothering to ask permission now. In fact, I'd barely heard her request at all because she was mousewhispering it to me, as though what she was conveying was the greatest secret in the world.

"Are those... those..." she whispered. Then she whispered several other things I genuinely couldn't understand at less than two feet from her face. Her gaze seemed to be staring back over my shoulder at something on the far end of the counter behind me.

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked.

She then whispered something to me EVEN MORE quietly.

"You're going to have to speak up. I cannot understand you," I whispered back.

"Letterhead," she whispered.

"I'm sorry?"

"Letterhead. Is that what it's...? Letterhead," she said, finally at full voice. Again, she was staring over my shoulder where I had by then guessed she'd spied some of our thank you letters to fund drive donating patrons, which were indeed printed on "liberry" letterhead and were stacked on the counter, waiting to be signed by a board member. I didn't know what she wanted with our letterhead but I wasn't going to give her any. In my experience, patrons wanting library letterhead are up to no good; and yes, we've had examples.

"Are those bills?" she then asked. Then several different thoughts seemed to come to her at once and she stuttered several unintelligible things at the same time followed by the phrase, "A letter."

"A letter?"

"A letter," she repeated, in a tone that suggested what she was saying somehow made perfect sense.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"A letter."

"A letter? I'm not sure I follow you."

"A LETTER," she said, emphasizing each word.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking me. What about a letter?"

"A letter," she said, not frustrated, just seemingly without a clue as to how to put her request into an actual interrogative phrase.

I looked at Ms. Green's daughter, who was standing there looking at me as if she somehow understood what was going on. "A letter?" I asked her. She offered no explanation. I returned my gaze to Ms. Green. "You're going to have to help me, here," I said. "I don't understand what you are asking me."

She paused here, her brain clearly firing behind her eyes, but nothing seemed to be connecting anywhere.

"Nevermind," she said.

"What?"

"Never mind." And, again, she wasn't angry, offended or frustrated. She'd just given up. Either I was too dim to figure out the very obvious thing she was implying or she had realized she was not capable of communicating on a higher level at that moment in time.

"No, really," I said. "I'm perfectly willing to help you out with whatever it is you need. I just do not understand what it is that you are asking me."

"Never mind," she said with a smile.

"Never mind?"

"Never mind."

Ms. Green walked away, leaving her daughter standing at the counter. The girl looked as though she were somehow waiting for me to say something to her.

"Can I help you, then?" I asked.

"Nope. I'm just standing here," she said. I imagine she sees a lot of this sort of thing and it probably amuses her. The daughter broke off from the desk and returned to the computer where her brother was busy not writing anything on his own.

I helped a couple of other patrons, but still felt a little odd about the exchange. I was no longer sure if it was my failure to be intuitive or her failure to #$&*ing spell out what she wanted, but I was beginning to suspect a bit of both. Not wishing to further damage our recently established truce of conflicting personality types, I went over to pretend to reboot a computer near Ms. Green's, hoping a thought might have by then congealed in her brain. And, glory be, it had!

Upon seeing me, Ms. Green explained in actual sentences that her son was in need of an example of what a letter looked like because he'd been assigned to write a letter to his favorite author. Instantly I became all service-oriented, and stuff, and fired up the letter wizard template in W0rd, which spat out an example of the format. This seemed to do the trick and Ms. Green thanked me for my help.

I walked away very quickly, lest my urge to pat her on her head like she was a four-year-old and say, "There, there, was that so hard?" assert itself further.

5th Week Event

As there are 5 Mondays in this month, I was careful to note, well in advance, that I was scheduled to work the last one today. Didn't need another repeat of the last Monday I nearly failed to work.

Other than an extended session of irritation from Ms. Green—in which she hogged up all the circ desk counter space, taking her time as she wrapped a package to mail out to somebody, like we were the post office, or something, and attempted to give me a bit of trouble over a hold she was supposed to have picked up by last Thursday (a date she set) but which she rolled in to pick up today only to find we'd given it to the community college as an inter"liberry" loan last Friday, not to mention interrupting transactions I was trying to complete with other patrons, y'know, the ones who had to squeeze in on either side of her just to get their books on the desk to check out—not much went awry. It was the usual Monday Madness, minus most of the madness.

Oh, and Birthday Lady phoned. She wanted to know the birthday of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock, who died last week. The answer, according to Wikipedia, is April 11, 1978. She mentioned that she was a big Cardinals fan. I believe this marks the first non-Hollywood birthday she's asked about.

You open a mere hour and a half late and they never let you hear the end of it! Shiiiii

None of the staff was upset that I neglected to open the library on time, Monday. The patrons, however, haven't stopped talking about it.

When I arrived, yesterday, Mrs. C said that people had been coming in all morning long and mentioning how we were not open immediately at 1 on Monday. Mr. B-Natural came in a couple of times to bring it up again. And people who hadn't even attempted to come to the library during its unfortunate extended closed hours dropped by to mention it, having heard about it from the mouth of Lennie, who has apparently told every single person he's encountered since that we didn't open on time and that he "did good" in tracking down Mr. A to let him know. (No one has yet been able to figure out how Lennie knew where Mr. A works, nor where exactly in the building his office is located, but find it he did.)

With my luck, Mr. Crab was probably one of the folks who turned up at 1 and this little hour and a half incident will become transformed by Mr. Crab's legend-spinning abilities into The Week and a Half the library failed to open.

Monday Attack!

So there I was, enjoying my Monday off, when round about 2:20 my phone rang. It was Mr. Piano, a recently added member of our "liberry" board of directors.

"Hey, JUICE, is the library open today?"

"Yeah, it should be--" I began. Then a horrible thought passed through my skull. I dashed to my fridge, where my brand new April work schedule was attached with a magnet. Sure enough, my horrible thought was made real. "Aw crap," I said. "I'm supposed to be there."

Mr. Piano wasn't calling to bless me out, or anything. He'd simply dropped by to pick up something board-related and found the place locked up. I told him I'd be there in 20 minutes and made a break for the car.

As I've detailed here many times, Mondays are evil evil things at the "liberry." We're only open from 1 to 5, but this time limitation does not limit the amount of chaos we experience. Instead, it compresses the amount of chaos we experience on a normal 10 hour day into a four hour block. And while we went through a rather enjoyable year or two of having two employees scheduled to work on Mondays, thus having enough staff on hand to help stave off the Monday Madness, traditionally and currently it's been a solo effort.

For years, Mrs. C used to do them by herself. Then, after I had to fill in for her one too many times nearly being driven insane by the process, I successfully lobbied for double employees and was given the job of being Mrs. C's Monday wingman. After Mrs. C took maternity leave the day fell to me and a revolving cast of corhorts and greenhorns. Upon her return, Mrs. C realized how much more enjoyable life is without Monday shifts in her life, and stopped doing them altogether. Then Mrs. A decided she couldn't justify having two employees on a day with such low circulation numbers and for the past several months it's been a revolving solo shift, with each "liberry" ass. taking one Monday per month. Well, I say "solo shift," but Lennie, our mentally slow volunteer "employee," works them too.

As I was nearing the library, fully expecting to find 20 innanet crowders lined up at the door, feet a-tappin', I spotted Lennie standing on the corner and looking very concerned. I imagined that he had probably been confused to show up for his Monday shift only to find the place locked up. There were no patrons banging on the door to get in, but there were quite a number of boxes of book donations. (We always tell people not to bring book donations on Mondays because we don't have the staff on hand to deal with them. What day of the week do you think we get the most? You guessed it!)

At 2:34, I unlocked the back door and then broke a speed record for opening duties, before actually unlocking the front door. Lennie was the first in. He didn't mention anything about the "liberry" being closed earlier, preferring to default to his usual conversational topic of the latest basketball scores for WVU. He helped me carry in all the dontations.

I tried to phone Mrs A at home, to let her know what had happened, but got no answer. After a few minutes, though, Mr. A phoned and he seemed relieved to hear someone answer. He said Lennie had walked down to his office to let him know that the library wasn't open, but he figured he'd call first before phoning Mrs. A at home.

"Well, we weren't open on time," I admitted. "In fact, I was trying to phone MRS. A to let her know, but didn't get an answer."

I thought telling Mr. A about the situation was remarkably good thinking on Lennie's part. I told him so, giving him a new conversational topic of the day: "I did good, didn't I, JUICE?"

The only patron who said anything about our odd hours was Mr. B-Natural, who'd probably been lined up at the door at 12:45, hoping to get the first computer of the day.

"Somebody sleep late today?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Somebody forgot to look at his schedule."

Around 3:30, Mrs. A finally phoned. She too seemed thankful to hear my voice and wondered how I found out the library was closed. I told her the story of Mr. Piano's call and of Lennie's attempt to save the day.

"It was MS. S's day, right?" she said.

"No, it was my day."

"No, it's MS. S's day," Mrs. A said.

"No, it's mine. I'm looking at the schedule right now and it says me, 1-5." I then paused as a warm thought passed through my skull. "You know, I should have just kept quiet about that and we could finally have been rid of her."

"Dammit, JUICE, why'd you have to say anything?!" Mrs. A said.

Monday the 13th

My once a month Monday solo shift, today, wasn't nearly as traumatic as Mondays typically can be. There was really only one moment during the whole day when the chaos threatened to overwhelm. However, from the state of our shelves when I arrived, the "liberry" appeared to have been locked in the throes of chaos all weekend long. Considering that Ms. S had been the weekend warrior riding the desk, this was probably true. Several partial shelves of books had fallen over, sans bookends. Other shelves had their books shoved back from the front edge of the shelf, the victims of one of our industrious book-shoving child patrons. Such children irritate the bejezus out of me.

Don't get me wrong: I do understand that "liberry" logic and little kid logic don't have much common ground. In "liberry" world, whenever possible, books must all line up neatly with the front edge of the shelf so that they are pleasing and uniform to the eye. In little kid world, books must be shoved all the way to the wall, because there's all that empty space back there and it's somehow satisfying to shove `em back into it. And keep shoving them back into it, until they've gone around an entire room. (Oddly, most book-shovey kids only shove books back on one shelf level, usually the arm-height middle level, leaving the lower and upper levels alone, regardless of whether or not they can reach them. I don't know if this is by design, or if it just doesn't occur to them that all the other shelves have books with space behind them too.)

What's even more irritating about the book-shovers is that it's difficult to catch them at it. Usually their work is only discovered long after they've left the building. So you can imagine my great joy today—after having spent a lot of time pulling all the weekend's shoved books back out to the front edge and righting and bookending their fallen comrades, not to mention swearing under my breath at the kind of terrible things that would make Dick Cheney blush that I was going to do to whatever brat was unfortunate enough to let me catch him shoving books—when I looked over the edge of the circ-desk to spy a newly arrived kid shoving a whole row of mysteries back with wild abandon.

"PLEASE, don't shove those books back, please," I said. I added the second please because kid's mom was standing right there and the first please was uttered in a rather harsh and possibly bloodthirsty tone.

The shover whipped around, mid-shove, with a gratifyingly frightened and guilty expression on his face. This was no tiny kid who could claim innocence, either. This was an 11-year-old who clearly knew better. His mom, like a doe sensing a whiff of trouble in the air, looked up, too. I then added, "We like to keep the books pulled out to the front of the shelf."

The two of them set about pulling the books back out, but, having not been trained in the proper method for doing this, they did it pretty half-assedly.

The subject of patrons doing basically harmless things in libraries that they are clearly not meant to do and also know better than to do is not a new one. In addition to our book-shoving brat, we were also visited today by another purveyor of "liberry" irritation: The Coot.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Lennie `n' Me

I wasn't completely solo yesterday. Lennie, our mentally handicapped Monday/Thursday volunteer came in for his shift at 1. Mostly when Lennie is in, he's there to talk to Mrs. C, who he's known forever. He talks to me too, but mostly to repeat his theme of the day or to latch on to something I've said that connects to something he's heard of. When I'm there solo, like yesterday, there's not as much communication. This is probably my fault, as I don't have all that much to say to Lennie beyond the usual small talk. He's not one for in-depth conversation and tends to return to such topics as N ascar, West Virginia college sports, how cold it is, or to whatever his theme for the day is.

Mostly, Lennie tries to be helpful, or at least look helpful. He straightens books and carries non-fiction upstairs to put on the cart. Sometimes he disappears upstairs for a whole half hour, where I'm sure he's doing more shelf-straightening. And since Mrs. C wasn't there to tell him not to, he used her computer to surf the web, look at pictures on _Yah oo_ and watch clips from the new _Sylves ter Stal lone_ reality show. That was fine by me, if it gave him something to do. Otherwise, he wanted to come over and keep resetting my computer timers.

We keep three kitchen timers set up at the circ-desk to time how long each computer patron has been on their computer. We give them a half hour and after that we don't run them off unless someone is waiting. The timers count down from 30 minutes and then I set them to 01, 02, or 03 seconds to indicate the order in which potentially bumpable patrons should be bumped. Lennie doesn't get that. He just sees stalled timers that need to be reset to 30 minutes and makes it his job to reset them. He won't mess with timers that are counting down, but if the little : isn't blinking, they're his to reset. So throughout Lennie's time there, I had to keep resetting his resets in order to make sure I was busting off the right patron when it came time to do so.

I tried explaining my system to him and he would nod as though he understood. This would only last for about a minute and he would go and reset the timers again.

At one point, a college-aged girl came in to use a computer. Lennie, who had been keeping vigil over the timers, wanted me to know which one was available. I thanked him and told the girl which one to use. She wasn't even out of the room yet before Lennie piped up with, "She's a good lookin' one, ain't she, JUICE?"

I don't know if she heard, cause I didn't make eye contact with her. I can't see how she didn't, though. All I could think to do was agree with him in the hope he wouldn't keep repeating his question until he got an answer, and saying, "Yes" was the safest response I could think of.

Solo Monday Hell?

Well, my much dreaded Monday solo-shift was no problem at all. In fact, if I didn't know it was Monday, I would have sworn it was a Sunday shift.

There was none of the usual Monday rush whatsoever. The computers did steady business, but I only had to bust off patrons twice and then it leveled out.

We didn't even have a call from Mr. Kreskin--an almost unprecedented occurrence considering that both Mrs. A and Mrs. C were gone. In fact, we didn't even have any calls specifically for Mrs. A or Mrs. C. I was dumbfounded.

Of course, Parka rolled in around 2. I told him I'd have a computer for him as soon as I could ask a patron to get off. He went back to wait in the next room. At that point, I noticed a woman standing in the front room who was giving me the stink eye. It occurred to me that she'd been standing there for quite a while.

"Um, can I help you?" I asked.

"Computer," she whispered. She seemed to have lost her voice.

"Ohhh... And you signed in already?" She nodded. "I'm sorry. I didn't know." I realized then that she'd signed in when I was out of the room about ten minutes before and I never realized what she was there for. And even though I'd already told Parka he could have one first, I didn't mind bumping him for the lady. Oddly, Parka didn't seem to care either, when I told him.

Once he got a computer, Parka stayed all the way to close. Correction: He actually departed at 10 til close, which was a good 5 minutes later than he should have. I had gone back at 4:35 to tell all the computer users that I was shutting the computers down at 4:45. I was hoping Parka would complain, but he didn't. Instead, he verbally acknowledged that he understood and thanked me for telling him.

The other computer users departed before the deadline, but I had to go back and remind Parka at 4:45 that it was time to get off. He didn't, but unfortunately I had a minor closing time rush to deal with up front, so I wasn't able to go back and tell him off. I so wanted to go back and say, "Look, I told you it was time to get off five minutes ago and I'm not playing around. Do you really want me to tell MRS. A that I'm having problems with you? Because she's already told me that she told you that if she gets one more complaint about you from her staff you'll be banned from the computers. Seems to me with as many computer access points as you've been banned from recently, you'd be a little more concerned about not pissing off the only one that will let you in."

Before I could get free from the desk to go do this, he finally relinquished his system and left at 10 til. He even shut it down for me. Bastard.

Flat Monday

Here I was, fresh out of the bed this morning, had time to make coffee for me and the wife, rub her shoulders and help her get her stuff together for her long 50 minute trek to Town-R where she's doing her family practice rotation this month. I smooched her goodbye and she went out the back door. I figured I'd have some coffee, do some blogging about how my Sunday shift went yesterday, and then head to work at 12:30 myself.

"I've got a flat!" I heard the wife call from the driveway.

Sure enough, the back left tire of her Ford Escort station wagon was completely flat. I threw on some warm clothes and shoes and went down to help with what I knew would be an incredibly frustrating task.

Unlike, say, my car, the Escort is just a beeyotch when it comes to changing its tires. The lug-nuts fuse with their posts and it takes much cursing and sweat and pain and more cursing in order to get them off. We worked at it for fifteen minutes and not one of them would budge despite my liberal cursing and caveman growls of frustration.

"Do we have WD-40?" she asked. Yes, we did. I fetched it and sprayed hell out of the lug-nuts. Still no dice.

"Why don't we just have it towed?" I said. After all, our deliciously good auto-insurance covers towing. She didn't want to do this, though. Not for a tire.

We worked at it some more, taking turns grunting against the four spoke tire-tool, our hands burning with effort. Nothing.

"Maybe I can jack the car up just a little," the wife said. "Maybe there's too much pressure from the weight of the car itself." She got her jack out and slid it under the car, turning the crank until the car lifted off of the asphalt driveway a couple of inches. I then took the tire-tool and stuck one of its spokes onto the top lug-nut. I turned it and it gave with a jerk.

"Bless your brain!" I told her. I moved the tool to the next nut. It too gave with a jerk. I then went around each of the nuts like this until I got to the final one, which I continued to try and turn after the initial jerking give. The gives continued to jerk. It was only then that I realized that I had been using the wrong size socket on the tire tool the whole time, using one that was big enough to let the nuts slip around within its grasp, giving us the illusion that things were turning when they most certainly were not.

I turned my cursing up a notch at this, invoking an unpleasant image that involved a dog and, perhaps, a condom.

"We have to have this towed!" I said.

Nope. She still didn't want to tow it over a flat tire. Instead, she said we should let it soak in WD-40 for the day, applying new coats as needed, and if we still couldn't get the thing changed by tomorrow morning, then we'd call a tow. Meanwhile, I would need to drive her to work.

No worries there. I don't mind doing that at all.

I suspected, though, that this would only be the FIRST frustrating thing to happen to me today. It was, after all, a MONDAY.

Turned out, though, it wasn't so bad after all.  It was certainly hectic, but nothing two people can't handle. In fact, Mrs. A said that she'd never before seen more people pounding on the door to get in before our Monday opening time of 1p. I saw two more of them myself at 12:55. Can people not see the GIANT white sign pinned to the door that reads "THE LIBRARY OPENS AT 1 P.M."? No, they can't, or just obstinately try the door anyway, just in case.

The only real chaos came when some girls from one of the local homes for wayward youth came in with their guardian. Actually, they weren't even all that chaotic, except that they each wanted a library card, which made the desk kind of busy for a while. They all seemed nice enough, if a bit too made up in some cases. (I mean, come on; what 15 year old really needs half-inch eyelash extensions mascaraed out to darn nigh a full inch? Even Paris Hilton would have been startled by these.)

Three of the girls were looking for How-To books on witchcraft. ("Not the bad kind of witchcraft. The good kind," one of them said.) I knew they were SOL on this front, but did a search for them anyway just for show. We only own one book that comes anywhere close and that's the Dictionary of Witchcraft. It's hardly a How-To guide. We also have to keep it behind the circulation desk because whenever we actually shelve it upstairs it turns up stolen within a very short time and we have to buy another. I used to think it was being horked by would-be witches, but now I'm pretty sure it's more likely that non-Pagan patrons are doing the stealing, which seems somehow even more wrong. After all, the Ten Commandments don't say, Thou Shalt Not Steal, Unless Something Really Sticks in Thy Craw.

One of the girls already had a library card, but she had neglected to bring it with her. I know this because she opened her checkout attempt with, "You'll have to look my name up, because I left my library card in my locker." I looked her up and she did have a patron record, but I told her I couldn't check anything out to her without a card. She then suddenly remembered that she lost her card and how could she get a new one? Sorry, chick, not gonna fly. You already told me you left it in your locker and since I now know you have a card I'm not giving you a new one cause you inconveniently left yours elsewhere.

Other than nearly locking a slow-moving patron in the building trying to get the place closed at 5, work went pretty good.

I got home at 5:15 and sprayed down the lug-nuts with WD-40 again. Probably the fifth coat of the day. Then, with a little English behind it, I was able to genuinely loosen all but one of the lug-nuts. I soaked it good and waited. After picking the wife up at 8:20 and returning home by 9:20, we tried again and it finally gave too. Tomorrow I get to go find a tire place to repair the nail gouge in the
tire while she takes my car in to work.

As in accordance with tradition

The past few Mondays have been fairly tame as far as Mondays go. The traffic has seemed lighter than usual, but then even the heavy traffic and phones have not been as bad since both Mrs. C and I have been working the desk. I can still tell when things would be unbearable were I there solo, but it's been far easier with another person there.

Yesterday, however, Mrs. C and Mrs. A were both out of town at meetings, so I really was running solo. Well, I say solo, but Lennie had come in for his Monday shift, so he was there to help load the book cart. Otherwise, it was just me staring in the face of one of the most irritating Mondays in recent memory.

Starting at about 1:10, the patrons began pouring in. And not just regular patrons, but needy patrons.

Our first two patrons through the door needed a beginner's guide to Buddhism. No big deal, except they didn't want the closest thing we had to one and stood there trying to make suggestions to me for other searches. One of them also seemed to think that we had a book on hold for her, though she admitted that we had not actually called her about it. She just assumed it would be there. It wasn't, but I still had to look around for a minute to make sure. The other lady needed a library card, even though she wasn't going to check out the Buddhism book we have after all. Again, no problem, but she couldn't decide whether she wanted a key card or a wallet card and kept saying things like, "Well, I'll take the key card for now" as though we're real keen on people switching down the road. Her friend kept trying to explain that she needed to choose the kind she really wanted NOW. Meanwhile, four other equally needy patrons had piled up behind them as their time at the desk stretched on into the five minute range.

After they left, and I was at last able to start dealing with the other patrons in line, the phone began ringing.

The first call was from Town-M's librarian, Mr. T, who phoned to tell us that he wanted to send us a few ILL books that some pitiful foolish patrons of ours had requested, but somehow our library's patron record had vanished from the database. I looked. It was indeed missing. He noted that several of his patrons' records had vanished over the weekend too, so perhaps we'd done so as well. I tried to explain to Mr. T that I couldn't do a whole lot about this as both librarians are out of town and I have no way to contact them nor any idea who to call about this sort of thing. The most I could do is make a new card for the library so he could check things out to it.

I located books for the next two patrons in line, but both of them needed library cards and more patrons were filing in behind them and the phone rang.

ARGH!!

This call was, of course, from Mr. Kreskin, who'd called to talk to Mrs. A who is rarely at the library on most Mondays, let alone on this Monday when she’d announced to one and all she and Mrs. C would be out of town.  Hence his call.  Fortunately, he didn't get upset that both she and Mrs. C were gone. He just said he'd call back tomorrow.

A lady patron in line came up and said, "I was just down at H&R Block and they said you'd do my taxes."

"No, ma'am," I said, rather emphatically. "We do NOT do that here."

She looked shocked and offended at this. But I told her that I'd heard, though could not swear to be true, that Town-C's library has someone that helps with taxes by appointment. She seemed distraught over this, but mostly because she didn't know where Town-C's library was. I told her and sent her on her way.

*PHONE RINGS*

It was from Mrs. H over at Town-D's library. She had a patron who was looking for books on New Jersey and she wanted to send them over to check out the two we owned but she had no way of knowing for sure that those books were actually on the shelf despite the fact that the catalog claimed they were both available. Could I go check?

"I might be able to check in a while," I said, "but right now it's Monday." Mrs. H said she understood and they were pretty swamped too.

Then Mrs. C phoned. She needed me to fire up her new computer and activate the remote access program so one of the tech guys could load programs on it. I groaned at this, staring at a sea of impatient looking patrons. "I'll try to get over there and do it in the next few minutes. I'm eat up here at the moment." Once I was able to get to it, I had to keep going back and doing it over again because her screensaver kept kicking them out.

After about an hour things began to calm down and then turned into intermittent bursts of chaos throughout the afternoon and on past closing. It took me more than an hour to get the book return cleaned out and all the books from it shelved. Every time I would try to check any in or put any on the shelf, the phone would ring and I'd have to stop.

Finally, it was nearly closing time.  And that's when the real rush began.

After damn near a decade and a half of closing at 5p on Mondays, many of our patrons have finally realized that this is when we close.  However, this doesn't keep them from coming to the library at the crack of 5p by any means. No. Patrons now view the 5 p.m. deadline as the time by which they need to be through the library's door. And once they've rushed across town and passed through it, they become quite leisurely in their book searching activity.  Such as the mom and her three kids, who came in and began slowly browsing the children's room at 4:55.  At 2 minutes til close, I let them know that, while I wasn't trying to rush them (liar!), we were closing in a couple of minutes. Didn't phase `em one bit. They leafed and looked until well past 5 p.m. and finally came to check out at nearly 5 minutes after 5.

"The name's Holland," the mom said. This told me that mom didn't have a new library card and had not been in since before the summer and was assuming we could still look up her record by her name. I asked her name and confirmed that we didn't have a card for her. I offered to make her a new card and she even began filling out an application before deciding she really didn't want the hassle.

"Well, the kids are probably in there," she said with a dismissive wave toward the computer. "The name's Holland."

"Did you bring your cards?" I asked the kids. Nope, they hadn't.

"So you're trying to say we can't have any books today?" mom said, adopting just a little more attitude than I appreciated.

"No, ma'am. You can still have books, but it will need to be on your new card."

Mom sighed and finished filling it out. By the time I'd finished checking them out it was nearly 13 minutes after closing.

So, yes, it was another traditional infuriating Monday. I did not allow it to infuriate me, however, for I was still living off the glow of the great news my wife and I received regarding where we're going to be spending the next three years of our lives.

(To be continued...)

You want a diagram of WHAT?

After hearing repeated suggestions from me that Mondays at the library should always be a tag-team affair, the powers that be have listened and instituted a new double-employee Monday schedule, with me and Mrs. C riding herd over the Monday Madness.  Yesterday was the first of these.

The shift went pretty well. It wasn't at all as chaotic as Mondays usually are, but then again most of our patrons told us that they'd driven down fully expecting to find us closed for MLK Day. (Our board of directors doesn't give us MLK off, but does give us West Virginia Day and President's Day. Racist bastards. (I joke! I joke! I kid, because I love! ))

Things were a little slower than usual. And despite nearly every patron reminding us what holiday it was, when Mrs. C handed me two twenties and told me to go down to the bank to get change, I still went. Like a moron, I bundled up and walked down the street in the 20 degree weather, the very snot freezing in my nose, only to turn the corner and find the bank closed. Oops.

Other than that, we were attacked by a small hoard of ten-year-olds doing research papers on animals, all of which were due the following day. One mom & son team huddled up at one of our patron computers to work on his, with mom doing all the typing. At first I thought she was writing the paper for him, but upon closer inspection found that she was merely taking dictation as read to her from his hand-written report. (Good going, Mom!) Unfortunately, after they'd printed, they made the mistake of leaving the report within eyeshot of me and my inner copy-editor couldn't resist having a gander. I found some its/it's possessive/contraction issues, which I pointed out to them before realizing that doing so revealed me for the snoop I am. They didn't seem to mind, at least not to my face. I don't think they reprinted either, though.

The other major report-writing-kid incident came when a different little boy asked to use a computer to find pictures of orangutans for his report. He was in solo, though, so I had to card him.

"Do you have a parental permission slip on file?" I asked.

Turns out he did not, but those are really only for internet usage, and I figured there would be plenty of printable pictures within our encyclopedia program in the computer's Kiddie Mode. I fired up the Children’s Room computer, loaded the encyclopedia and found him a snazzy picture of a couple of orangutans that he liked a lot.

“Now before I print this, I need to let you know that we do charge 10 cents per page.”

“That’s okay. I brought money,” kid said. (Good going, kid!) Then he said something that I completely didn’t know how to deal with. “I also need to have a detailed diagram of how orangutans reproduce.”

This is where I did one of those patented Scooby Doo "HrruuuuhhHH?!" exclamations of disbelief and confusion.

"You need... A DIAGRAM... of how orangutans... reproduce?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Hmm. Well. Uh. Er," I said. "Let me go check on how your picture printed and I'll see if MRS. C can help you." I then ran away like a colossal chicken.

"This kid says he needs a diagram of how orangutans reproduce," I told Mrs. C, once I'd tracked her down.

"He wants what?!"

I repeated it, adding, "I can't imagine being assigned such a task at his age."

We're still not precisely sure what his teacher wanted, but to us "A Diagram of how Orangutans Reproduce" was equivalent to "A Sketch of Two Apes Doing the Nasty / Insert Tab A into Slot B" sort of thing. Anything similar to that showing up in a 5th grade classroom would produce such a tumult of laughter that the kid would either be scarred for life or instantly promoted to class clown. Surely, oh surely, his teacher had not intended that!

Mrs. C went back and talked to the kid indepth about what his assignment actually was. She then led him to some of our printed encyclopedias where she found descriptive material on orangutan reproduction cycles and behavior plus several more pictures that the kid seemed to be happy with. She photocopied the pages he needed and only charged him 10 cents per photocopy instead of our usual 25 cents per.

Better her than me.

Anudda Munday

Christmas vacation went well, even if it was pretty short.

I left my in-law's place in North Carolina this morning around 8:45 and hit the road for home. My wife is staying behind to visit with her peeps for a few more days while I have to return to West Virginia. Mrs. B is still out following her surgery and also managed to develop pneumonia, so she wasn't able to return last week as she'd planned so I get another week of near constant fill-in. Like I told my boss when she broke that bad news to me, though, "It's not like I don't want the money." Mrs. A also wanted me to come back today to help Mrs. C on her Monday shift since our records from last year indicated a horrific amount of patron traffic (which is to say, a usual Monday) on the corresponding day.

So I hauled my tail over several mountains in order to get home by the time the library opened at 1 p. I almost made it on time too, but I stopped along the way to shop for shoes.

For the record: there is no place in the Tri-Metro area where a person can buy a decent pair of athletic shoes that don't look like they fell out of a clown's ass.

"Hey, Spanky, how bout slappin' a pair of Reebok Highposts or just about anything by Dada, on your tired old dogs. It's like the `70's, but for your feet!"

Who buys such hideous footwear? All I want is plain white athletic shoes with a minimum of logos and other such gaudy shit on them! Is that too much to ask?!! Well in Tri-Metro, yes, it is.  In other towns, however, not so much. I was able to find a nice pair of plain white Skechers which were, as an added bonus, on sale. The delay for shopping, plus about a dozen slow-ass people on the two lane highway I chose to take back, put me around 4 minutes past 1 p.m. getting to work.

I cruised through downtown Town-A, passing Mr. B-Natual and Bubba on the way, parked in front of the "liberry" and walked through the door into the usual Monday madness. Mrs. C was there, womanning the desk solo. Well, not entirely solo. She did have Lennie there, who was on his regular Monday shift and was shelving videos as I walked in.

As she told me later, once things had calmed down a bit, she had already emptied the book return THREE times that morning before even opening for business. Then, at 1, there were people pounding on the door to get in, three of which hauled ass for the computer sign in sheet and then descended on the computers to get their raging "3 whole days without the innanet DT's" fix going. They were so quick that they completely left Mr. B-Natural in their signup sheet dust and he was unwilling to wait around for a computer to free up, hence why I saw him driving away.

The rest of the day was very busy, but it's a tolerable thing when you have two people on the job. I've told Mrs. A repeatedly that we need a second person on shift on Mondays instead of just leaving Mrs. C at the mercy of it's chaos. She's even suggested it to Mrs. C, but her point is that Mondays are hot and cold--it's full on busy one minute then nothing for upwards of an hour at a time, then another inexplicable burst and then more nothing. It's hard to justify having someone else in if they're just going to have to sit around and pick their nose.

I wouldn't mind getting paid to pick my nose. Back when I worked for Onstar, I once got paid time and a half to guard ice-cream and read a Neil Gaiman book. That's right. I was already working overtime one weekend, things were slow, the company needed someone from my department to go sit in the break room and guard the free ice-cream they were giving to employees, I told them, "I'm your man. I'd love to be paid time and a half to watch cream." I'd be up for such lunacy again.

The Kreskin Prophecy

Last week, Mrs. C asked if I would substitute for her usual 1-5 Monday shift today. Foolishly I said yes.

I know better than to volunteer for Monday desk duty, but in addition to liking cash I also like to be Mr. Nice Guy Subber whenever I can. It allows me to build up a backstock of favors owed, which I can cash in for prizes later.

Before leaving the house, I remembered that Mrs. A wasn't scheduled to return from vacation until Tuesday. This would mean only one thing: At some point during my day, I was going to get a call from our board president, Mr. Kreskin.

As I've mentioned several times before, the president of our library's board of directors has the mutant ability to sense when both of our librarians are not at work, at which point he develops a sudden desperate, earth-shattering need to speak to one and/or both of them and will subsequently not rest until he has done so. The only time in my experience that this has failed to happen was on a day when he had a really bad cold. Otherwise, an enterprising guy could win a lot of money by wagering on it.

Well, he didn't phone today. However, five minutes after our doors opened at 1 p.m., he walked through them, on the usual desperate mission to speak to Mrs. A/C.

"I'm sorry, neither of them are here today," I said, trying not to grin at my prophecy having been fulfilled so vividly and soon.

"Well, that's okay," Mr. Kreskin said. His tone of voice, however, said it wasn't okay, but that he recognized that there was hardly anything I could do about it. Mr. Kreskin decided to leave them a note, so I passed over the legal pad and continued dealing with the throng of patrons at the desk.

A few minutes later, Mr. Kreskin passed back the note on the pad and started for the door. A quick glance at it showed that he was, as in accordance with tradition, looking for a copy of some sort of correspondence he'd sent out before.

"Uh, sir. I can probably find this for you, if you like," I said. Backstock Board President Favors Owed are better than most other kinds of favors owed. (In fact, it's trumped only by Bedroom-Oriented Wifely Favors Owed, and by quite a large margin.) I figured that the correspondence Mr. Kreskin wanted would be in the previously secret Kreskin Correspondence folder in the filing cabinet. I hauled it out and began flipping through it for him. It wasn't filed in any noticeable order, however, so the search was not an easy one. Finally, Mr. K offered to just look through it himself, freeing me to return to the busy circ desk.

Mr. Kreskin eventually found what he wanted, photocopied it and left happy and grateful.

Chalk another point up for the Juiceman.

Secrets and Lies

Found out our Print Stealing New Devil Twins, Brent & Brice, weren't on file in our permission slip folder after all. So I have no way of tattling on them to their mom. Of course, since they don't have permission slips, they also won't be using the computers any more until they get their mom to fill out a couple. And when they do, I'll tattle on them to their mom.

The twins came in and tried to sign up for computers on Monday, when Mrs. C was running the joint solo. She'd read my note about the darn nigh quarter ream of paper they'd printed and stolen, Sunday, and had already checked the permission slip folder for them. When she told them they couldn't have computers without a permission slip they were plenty pissed. So mad, in fact, that she didn't even bother to bless them out for their theft of our paper and ink. Instead, Mrs. C gave them permission slips to take home for signing. If they return with them, we'll ban them until they pay up and also tattle to their mom.

Beyond them, though, I'm getting royally sick of deceptive patrons.

A mom and her two daughters came in yesterday to check out some videos and a few books. As they were browsing, I overheard both of the daughters tell their mom they'd forgotten their library cards. I figured I was going to be in for a fight when they were ready to leave until Mom decided to get a card for herself. No problem. We signed her up for one and she filled it full of eight videos and two of the three books her youngest daughter wanted. I explained that they'd already reached their 10 item limit and would probably need to put something back if they wanted that third book.

"Well can we just sign them up for a card?" Mom asked.

"That depends," I said, sensing the impending ruse. "Do either of them have cards with another area library already?"

Mom was noncommittal on this point. The youngest daughter seemed to waiver on it for a bit too, but finally admitted that, yes, she did have a card with Town-R's library. The older daughter, however, claimed she had no card anywhere.

"You don't have a card at any other area library?" I asked again, just to make sure her statement was on record.

"No," she said.

I raised an eyebrow at this, but decided that if she was lying the computer would soon sort it out. I should have just tried looking for her by name, which would have been quicker, but instead I gave her some rope by letting her fill out an application form. Let's waste everyone's time.

Oldest daughter seemed reluctant to put down an address. When I pressed her for one, she put down her Mom's address in Town-C. Mom asked her why she'd done that, as the girl actually lives with her dad in Town-R. Hearing that, I pointed out that we also had to have the actual physical address where she lived. Daughter didn't seem to like this but took her form and filled out the line, putting down a post office box in Town-R. I pointed out that this wasn't a physical address, so she reluctantly filled out that line too. And, to no one's surprise, as soon as that bit of information was plugged into the computer, it spat up an existing record for her.

"Well, it looks as though you already have a card through TOWN-R's library," I said. I kept my tone diplomatic, implying with it that she had simply made a mistake and not lied through her teeth, her pants aflame, as I knew she had.

"But I don't have a card there," daughter claimed.

"I'm sorry, but this says that you do."

"But they didn't give me a card. They said I didn't need a card," daughter quickly revised. Though I knew she was lying, it still wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. After all, when we first got our new circulation system, some of the area libraries who had not yet received their shipment of new library cards began foolishly issuing patrons new patron accounts anyway. Their logic seemed to be that other libraries were issuing new accounts with new cards, so they didn't want to be left behind just because of a little thing like having no cards. I'd not heard of Town-R doing this, though. And daughter's account actually had one of the new 14 digit card numbers attached to it, which came only pre-printed on our plastic library cards and not a loose sticker, like the old 10 digits, so a card had been issued. Still, I continued to appear to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Well, they have one of our new card numbers listed here for you, so if they didn't issue you an actual card when you signed up, chances are they'll have one on file for you now. You'll need to see them about it."

"Can't you just give her a card here?" Mom asked.

"No, ma'am. She already has a card. It's one big system and we can only issue one card per patron."

"So she can't check out any books here?"

"Not unless she has her library card," I said.

Mom rolled her eyes and huffed, as though this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard of and made a big production of dragging out one of her videos to trade in for younger daughter's book.

Technically I had the capability of going ahead and checking the extra book out on the daughter's card. I could even have rationalized it because I'd already called up her REAL account and verified it had the same physical address she'd given me. I decided not to be nice, though. After all, she wasn't being nice by actively lying to me because it served her purposes. And mom had done nearly everything to aid and abet the girl as well. So I'm not about to reward such collective familial dishonesty like that.

And that's really what makes me sick--that a mother would actively assist her daughter in an obvious lie just so she wouldn't have to put one of her own videos back. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the selfishness and dishonesty of humanity. I'd be willing to bet I've even been guilty of such in the past myself. I still don't have to like it.

Summer Reading Day 5 (or "AHHHH!!! MY EYES!! MY BEAUTIFUL, PRECIOUS EYES!!! WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!! WHY, WHY, WHY?!!!")

Summer Reading Day 5 was suspiciously unchaotic. We didn't even have any of the usual Monday Madness. It was downright peaceful.

"Well, I guess that means we won!" Mrs. A said.

"Looks like it," I said. "Word has finally gotten out not to come to the library on Monday."

Course the fact that we had most of the parking spaces out front blocked off with bright orange road cones so the kids would have space to draw with their chalk might have had something to do with it too. We decided that, if we'd known that before now, we would have been using cones on Mondays LONG ago.

Toward the end of my shift, the door opened and Parka came through it. Instead of his namesake puffy white Michelin Man parka (which he hasn't actually worn since late April) or his usual too thin white t-shirt, Parka was wearing a bright red tank top. While I'm all for diversity in clothing, I SO did not want to see the shag carpet of body hair covering the entirety of his torso that was accented, nay HIGHLIGHTED, by his low cut red tank-top. We're talking front AND back covered in an inches-thick layer of dark fur. You could not see the man's skin from the shoulders on down.

I equate the sight to that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Jon Lovitz impersonating Today Show movie critic Gene Schalit where they showed a closeup of his chest hair with bugs crawling through it. It was exactly that nasty.