Grand Opening (Moving Days L)

After nearly three blissful, patron-free weeks of preparation, it was at long last time to stop stalling and open the doors on The New "Liberry." Opening day was scheduled for a Sunday afternoon and the "liberry" went all out with a ribbon cutting ceremony followed by a cookie and leftover cheese from the wine & cheese reception reception. State officials came by, speeches were made, the Board of Directors and Mrs. A were thanked for all their work in making it happen, we the staff were thanked for helping them, and the man who'd spearheaded the whole project for so many years, Mr. Kreskin was mentioned and honored as well. To further cement this, the previously unnamed street which the new library building had been built above was named after him.

We opened the doors and the public began piling in.

A good many books circulated on opening day, but by and large people were there to see the place and get a whiff of that new "liberry" smell. For our part, we were doing double-duty running around making sure the cookie and cheese tables were full and also running the circ desk. The desk was only running at half capacity because despite the fact that we now had two circ desk computers we still only had one barcode scanner and none of us felt like typing 14 digit barcode numbers all afternoon.

The coming week brought lots of business as word spread that we were at last open and the usual suspects began to trickle in. It was a pretty major time of transition for the patrons but especially for the staff, as we not only had our regular duties to attend to but also some new roles as defacto tour guides. Because the placement of library materials on the shelves was still somewhat in flux, we didn't want to put up any sort of permanent signage denoting where things were located. Actually, our architect was dead set against signage of any sort because it just offended him for some reason. Mrs. A tried to explain that our patrons needed to know where things were and signage was the most efficient way to convey that information, but he was unmoved. (He had some other odd and dangerous ideas about how public spaces should be run, which I'll get to later.) Now, we all understood that it wasn't his decision to make and Mrs. A did declare that we would eventually put up some sort of signage, but we couldn't even stick temporary paper signs to the wooden shelf ends (even the shitty ones) because tape allegedly would ruin their finish. (Never mind that I'd affixed Post-Its and masking tape to most of them already to denote their shittiness.) Mrs. A's decision was to treat it like a study and see what sort of signage our patrons truly needed. After all, from years of experience, we already know that patrons NEVER read signs.

So we got to play tour guides, which wasn't bad because with the new building came more hours for the staff so we'd always have at least two people on the desk in addition to any directors who were present. (And who on the board that brought the new building to fruition was the person who insisted we always have two people on the desk? Why, Mrs. Day, oddly enough--the very woman who always complained bitterly that we had too many people working whenever she visited us before.)

One of the major misconceptions we had to combat, primarily over the course of the first few weeks, but occasionally beyond, was the misconception that the new library meant everyone had to get new library cards. Uh, no, cause we did that four years ago and it suuuuucked.

Another major misconception is that because we had a brand new library, we therefore must also have purchased brand new books. Some patrons were downright offended to browse our shelves and find the same books from the old library staring back at them.

And a third major misconception was over the layout of the building itself. Our new building, you see, was built into the side of a hill with the main floor and entrance on the upper level. However, for months, patrons would come to the desk and earnestly ask, "What's upstairs?"

"There is no upstairs," we would respond.

(Blank look. Blank look.)

"This IS upstairs," we would clarify. "We have a downstairs, but there are no other floors above us."

(Blank look. Blank look.)

Initially after the grand opening, we let people pretty much have a free run of both floors of the building. This was because we had plenty of patrons who (after we'd explained to them the whole upstairs/downstairs thing) really wanted to see the downstairs portion. Fine. Go. Knock yourselves out. But after a month or so of this, we decided everyone had seen the downstairs who needed to see it and everyone should stay the hell out of it unless they were otherwise renting the space. This may seem like a bad thing for a public library to do with what is ostensibly public space, but it was not set up to be a public area to begin with. It's a big empty room, a kitchen-like area, a story hour room and mechanical rooms and storage with nary a book to be found and no comfy chairs to sit in. More importantly, it's not under the observation of the staff. We were frankly of the opinion that anyone who wanted to be down there was probably up to no good. And often they were.

We tried to keep the lower floor policed as best we could, and though the elevator and stairwell to get downstairs was within sight of the circulation desk, it wasn't always possible to catch everyone. Oh, it was easy enough to catch the lazy ones who didn't want to take the stairs because our elevator has a loud and annoying chime that sounds whenever the door opens (which we thought was a real nice feature for a library elevator to have). But if we were away from the desk and didn't hear the stairwell door slam closed, they could get past us. Usually, the offenders were simply people who "wanted to see what was down there." Sometimes, though, they were repeat offenders, like the skatepunks I had to bust on two consecutive days who claimed they thought I only meant they couldn't go down there on that first day, but it was okay to head down there (and skate) on other days. Uh huh.

My major fear was that someone like Chester the (potential) Molester would realize there were places in the building he could not be easily seen and do something horrifying down there. No one had seen him in months and that was a very good thing, but we didn't know how long that would last. And, indeed, it didn't. One afternoon, I spied him coming up the walk through the glass of our front door.

"Aw hell," I said in a low voice that only Mrs. B could hear. She looked up and saw him too. I began preparing my face for some serious stink-eye beamage.

Chester walked in and gazed about at the expansive room. Oddly, he didn't cast a second glance at the family approaching the desk, featuring pre-teen girls. He just stood and looked around. Then he looked over and noticed me.

"It's a nice place," he said.

I didn't respond verbally, but continued to stare death at him. As usual, he seem unaware of it. Then, as quickly as he'd arrived, he left and didn't return for many more months. And even in the two other appearances he's made in the past year, we've had none of the previous problems we've had from him at all.

And then, of course, there was the innanet crowd to deal with...

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Mr. Crab, the Third Grumpiest Great White Hunter in All the World (Moving Days J)

JANUARY 7, 2006

I rarely know anything that goes on in our monthly meeting of the “liberry’s” board of directors and that’s fine with me. What does trickle down to me often pisses me off and I would just get myself in trouble by opening my yap were I there to hear it first hand. This is particularly true when it comes to matters of our proposed new “liberry” building. (And I’ve kept my yap mostly shut about it online for two years now for fear of drawing the wrong attention to myself.) Friday’s meeting of the board was different, though. I might still have been in trouble, had I been there, but it would have been for laughing my fool ass off. My boss, Mrs. A, told the staff about it afterwards and assured us that it was a tale that will be retold for months to come.

Some time before the meeting, Mrs. A received a phone call from our eldest and longest-standing board-member, Mrs. Day. To date, Mrs. Day has not been at all wild about our campaign to build a new library. In fact, she voted against it for quite some time before Mr. Kreskin, our former board president, was able to convince her that it looked bad for one lone board member to keep voting against everything, so she jumped on board to save face.

On Friday morning, Mrs. Day phoned to inform Mrs. A that she had a major and exciting announcement to reveal at the board meeting. She wouldn’t give any indication what it regarded, but said it was something huge. Naturally, Mrs. A’s mind wandered to the possibilities. And while waiting for Mrs. Day to turn up for the meeting, Mrs. A and the other four board members—Mr. Eggs, Mrs. Emm, Mrs. Aitch and Dr. Watson—plus our press officer, Mrs. PR, mused aloud as to what the big news might be. Consensus of hope was that Mrs. Day had found someone to donate the remaining funds we need for the new building (around a cool million), but they found it more likely that she was merely going to take credit for securing a rather large donation a neighbor of hers had recently made that everyone already knew about.

Mrs. Day eventually rolled in for the meeting and after much smiling and excitement on her part, she finally revealed her big news. It seems that Mrs. Day has been in contact with everyone’s favorite cranky patron, annual $200 check-donator, frequent $200-donation revocation threatener, and third grumpiest old man in all the world, Mr. Crab, regarding what he might like to donate to the library’s building campaign. (All together now, “$200!”) Mr. Crab claimed that due to obscure IRS laws, he could not donate any actual money to the project because he had “already donated over a million dollars.” (I assumed when I heard this third-hand quote that Mr. Crab meant he’d already donated a million dollars to the library over the years, in which case he would have to be 5000 years old since he only ever gives us $200 at a pop. Now that I’ve thought about it, though, he probably meant he’d given a million dollars to various charitable contributions over the years—no doubt in $200 increments.) Instead of giving us any money, Mr. Crab said he wished to donate something far more valuable: an extensive antique German train set he’d collected and two, count em two, stuffed animals. And when I say "stuffed animals" I’m not talkin’ about Teddy bears or MonChiChis, I mean actual dead animals from Mr. Crab’s collection of animals he has shot, killed and had stuffed, taxidermy-style. According to Mrs. Day, Mr. Crab specifically wishes to donate two stuffed dead animal heads to be hung above the two fireplaces in the proposed new building.

From the way Mrs. A described it to me later, Mrs. Day couldn’t have been more thrilled about this donation. She beamed at the members of the board as she told them, barely able to contain her joy. This, to me, is merely proof that Mrs. Day's mind automatically defaults to the 1930s and 40s, when men such as Ernest Hemingway went around cheerfully blowing the hides off whatever creatures struck their fancy, for fun, then hung their corpses up for all to see and there were no activist groups to raise a stink about it. (By the way, while I think hunting for sport is abhorrent, I’m all for blowing the hides off of creatures you intend to eat, provided they are in season and/or the ranger isn’t looking. "Yeah, take my pic-a-nic basket again, you f*ckers!”)

The board’s reaction to the news was far more modern. I’m told Mrs. Emm and Mrs. PR began laughing openly at the absurdity of it; Mr. Eggs and Dr. Watson sat dumbfounded—Dr. Watson, particularly so, as this was his very first meeting as a board member; Mrs. A just shook her head in full knowledge of the kind of shit storm that would rain down on us from the local hippie-activist community should these heads actually make their way anywhere near our new building; and Mrs. Aitch was furious, but mostly at Mr. Crab’s assertion that there was some kind of million-dollar lifetime donation cut-off.

Between bursts of laughter, Mrs. Emm managed to ask what kind of heads Mr. Crab wished to give us. Mrs. Day wasn’t certain, but said that Mr. Crab has an elephant head above his own desk so maybe that would be one of them.

(It should be noted that Mr. Crab reportedly also has an elephant-leg golf-bag. You heard me... Elephant. Leg. Golf. Bag. When Mrs. A told me about it, I said, “That’s just awful. I mean, I can see an elephant-foot umbrella stand, and all, but a golf-bag is just excessive.” Mrs. A then said she really wished I had been at the meeting, because that was exactly the kind of running commentary that the board members began making around that time. Go board.)

For her part, Mrs. Day seemed oblivious to the ridicule the rest of the board was heaping on her major announcement. She must have thought their tearful laughter was out of joy at such a golden opportunity to turn our new library into some sort of big-game hunting lodge. She even further suggested that one of the heads might, in fact, be that of a polar bear, which Mr. Crab reportedly also owns.

Eventually, Mrs. Emm was able to compose herself long enough to suggest that we agree to accept the gifts, but only with no restrictions as to their use, so we would be free to sell the items to raise money for the project. Mr. Crab will most likely hate this, grump about it at length, retract his offer of donation and then threaten to withhold his $200 again.

“Well if he doesn’t stop acting so crappy to our staff, it’s going to be his head up above the fireplace cause they’re going to kill him,” Mrs. A reportedly told the board.

Soon the room calmed down a bit and the board began discussing such possibilities as a road trip to Mr. Crab's home in order to view the items proposed for donation. Immediately, various board members began vocally noting that they were likely to be out of town on that day, whatever day that should be, but Mrs. A insisted that such a trip could be delayed until all of them were able to attend.

After Mrs. A finished her tale for me, I advised her that we really did not want to be AT ALL beholden to Mr. Crab or we'd never hear the end of it until the day he died, and even then he'd probably have it set into his will that his heirs must continue to lord it over us until the end of time or be cut off from his reputed massive fortune.

Then I realized that it might be worth accepting Mr. Crab's animal heads, if only to piss off Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, who are among our more vocal militant animal rights types in the area and who have, in the past several months, continued desperately trying to torpedo this new building project using any stray hope they think might float no matter how ludicrous. Seeing an elephant head above our new fireplace might be just the thing to finally remove the remaining Grinchy vestiges of sanity they still possess.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Smiley's People (Moving Days B)

The idea of building a new library building had been in the works for years before I started working there, but it gained momentum only a couple of years after I came aboard. Not that I had anything to do with it, as this was all in the hands of our board of directors, led then by the now late yet still infamous Mr. Kreskin.

Yes, Mr. Kreskin has passed on. Not long after I'd started at the "liberry," I learned that he had been diagnosed with a couple of different slow-growing yet ultimately terminal forms of cancer. And it was not long after this diagnosis that plans to build a new library building were put into a higher gear than they had been running at. I believe he saw that he had a limited amount of time on his hands and decided to make the new "liberry" a reality. From what Mrs. A has told me, Mr. Kreskin saw the project as his legacy to the Tri-Metro area.

There had been a couple of false starts to the project in the past, such as the proposal to buy up existing buildings in the area and convert them into a new library, but time and time again the issue of lack of parking reared up and we were forced to return to the idea of simply building a brand new facility, with triple the space for books, a gigantic multi-purpose room that could be booked for use by the public, much improved story-hour and craft facilities, handicapped access on all levels and, naturally, adequate parking. Grants were applied for and attained, outside donations were sought and came pouring in, century-long leases were acquired with the owners of the land on which the new building was proposed to be built, architects were hired, meetings were had and everything seemed on track.

Once a design had been accepted and approved by the local historical preservation society, a number of public viewings were arranged for the plans for the new building. And since it was still early in the process, these viewings were also forums for anyone with differing opinions as to the validity of the project to voice said opinions and become a part of the process. One such soul with a differing opinion was a long lost rogue of ours, Mr. Smiley, the Second Grumpiest Old Man in all the World. Mr. Smiley attended each of the public meetings regarding the new "liberry," looked at all the plans, heard all the explanations, ate the provided hors d'oeuvres and said nothing whatsoever yay or nay. Then, as soon as contracts were signed and ground officially broken on the building project itself, suddenly Mr. Smiley couldn't make enough public complaints ag'in' it.

Now, keep in mind that this is a man who, according to Mrs. A, spent the previous twenty years complaining bitterly about how inadequate to his needs our library was, how small it was, how there was never any place for him to find a moment's peace within it without being disturbed by the voices of children or--and I'm not making this next part up AT ALL--the ticking of clock hands, etc. You would think, therefore, that a new facility that offered a respite from all that would have been of great interest to him. Not so.

See, in addition to being the second grumpiest old man in all the world, Mr. Smiley is also an old hippie protest-marcher from the `60s who spent a great deal of his time back then fighting against The Man in all his forms via said protests as well as through a hippie protest-marcher newspaper publication of which he and the future Mrs. Smiley were editors. Now, from his age, clothing and demeanor alone, I could have guessed his identity as a former hippie, still bitter over his cause's side having essentially lost. The full details of his story, however, I later learned via a nonfiction work written and self-published by Mrs. Smiley which serves as a history of their time as cause-warriors around the country, specifically the work she and Mr. Smiley did with their publication. And I might have remained unaware of Mrs. Smiley's book and their history had a copy of it not been donated to the "liberry" at the height his campaign against the new building. It made for interesting reading and certainly gave us an idea of what Mr. Smiley was capable of when it came to causes he cared about. It did not, however, shine a lot of light on precisely why he cared so much about stopping the construction of our proposed new library building. This isn't to say that he and his small cadre of followers didn't offer many explanations for why they opposed it, but most of the offered reasons fell firmly into the category of Things We're Pulling Out of our Collective Ass in Order to Derail this Project By Any Means Possible, (which is a pretty standard delaying tactic among cause groups of all stripes).

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Board Report

Every couple of weeks, when it gets close to pay day, one of the members of the "liberry's" board of directors comes around to sign paychecks. We always hope and pray it's Mrs. Em or Mrs. Aitch. Unfortunately, it's often Mrs. Day.

Since Mr. Kreskin's departure, our board of directors has been composed of a pretty easy-going bunch of folks who stay out of our ass. However, if there's any ass-spelunking to be done, Mrs. Day is always the one to harness up due to the fact that she's been on the board since the Pliocene epoch and enjoys wielding that tenure whenever the opportunity presents. Mrs. Day is an old white woman in every sense of the phrase and she's not happy about anything, particularly when it comes to matters of money. See, Mrs. Day is among the inheritors of a major toiletries manufacturer and has more money than the Pope. For all her billions, though, she's prone to being very very cheap. Whenever she has to come in to sign checks, she questions every penny. She's particularly obsessive about it if the amount of pennies she's questioning is very small. Big checks don't cause her to even blink—she'll sign them right away—but the smaller the check, the more interested in its purpose she becomes. Petty cash checks are always of deep concern to her, but of even greater concern, due no doubt to their being exponentially smaller, are our paychecks.

Mrs. A warned me today that Mrs. Day was scheduled to come in after lunch to sign checks, so instead of eating lunch at the circ-desk, Mrs. A, Mrs. B and Mrs. J were going to retreat to Mrs. A's tiny office upstairs where they would sit, cramped around the desk to have their meal. This is because Mrs. Day has the mutant ability to sense when there are employees behind the circ desk and she can magically appear whenever there is an inconvenient number of them there—say, over one—thus catching us in the act of having too many employees being paid to stand around behind the desk with no justification. (She almost always comes to sign checks on a Thursday, when we have a greater concentration of employees on scene because of Story Hour, often at lunch time, when those employees are there, gathered behind the desk eating.)

Mrs. Day arrived about ten minutes into lunch. I wasn't surprised that she was early, since Mrs. Day has never been known to arrive at the time she has specified. Usually she arrives hours or, in one case, a day, late. And whenever she does appear, it's usually at the least convenient time possible. I smiled, greeted her and fetched the checkbook, then stood back to watch the show.

"Their salaries keep going up up up," Mrs. Day said in a disdainful tone as she signed. "I don't recall ever signing checks for such a high amount before." Then, as though sensing it was unbecoming to complain about the money earned by the staff in front of the staff, she added, "It's fantastic," in a less than thrilled tone. It didn't occur to me at the time, but Mrs. Day was probably correct about those being the largest payroll checks she'd ever signed. See, it's also Christmas bonus time, but unlike the last several years, in which we've received separate checks for our bonuses, this year the accountant advised Mrs. A to include the bonus amount in our normal paycheck so that FICA can be taken out. Mrs. A countered that this was bad, because that would lessen the bonus amount. Another board member, a wise man named Mr. Eggs, told her to just raise the bonus amount until the FICA deduction would leave the amount at the previous bonus level, so as not to cause any financial drain of our bonuses. Either no one thought to inform Mrs. Day about this, though, or they'd informed her and she just hadn't listened. (Gosh, I wonder which is the more likely of the two?)

"Is MRS. A in?" Mrs. Day asked.

"She's at lunch," I said, neglecting to mention exactly where she was at lunch.

"Hmm. Well, I did get here early," Mrs. Day said.

Ah, so she IS aware of her bad timing! Hell, she probably engineers it.

"How many employees are working today?" Mrs. Day asked.

"Um... four?" I said. Technically, we'd had five, but Mrs. C had gone home early. Mrs. Day nearly spit at this number, though. "There's just no excuse for that. There should NEVER be more than two people working. This place isn't that busy. The library doesn't have that kind of money. Four employees! It's wasteful."

Did I mention that despite her decades of service on the board, Mrs. Day remains the least informed as to how a library truly operates of any breathing creature to have ever walked the earth? Oh, she's the least informed, all right.

I thought about explaining the whole story hour thing and how we always have more employees on Thursday mornings than at any other time of the week. I thought about explaining that, sure, while it wasn't very busy at that moment, in five minutes we'd be deluged with patrons wanting to surf the internet on their lunch hour, etc. I thought about lecturing her on the subject of overdue notices and how we always run them on Thursdays when we have enough people to be able to check the shelves for them AND run the desk AND help patrons AND log computers on AND shelve books AND answer the damn phone. It wouldn't matter, though. She wouldn't listen. Instead, I decided to throw her a bone.

"Well, ma'am, I'll be gone in a few minutes and then we'll only have three employees."

"Hmmpf," she hmmpfed. "Don't you tell MRS. A I was complaining."

After Mrs. Day left, I took the checkbook up to Mrs. A so she could distribute the checks within. I told Mrs. A that Mrs. Day had been complaining. She wasn't surprised. What did surprise us, though, was that Mrs. Day had probably known I was going to rat her out and had planned her revenge accordingly, because my check was the only one Mrs. Day had neglected to sign.

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.

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...)

Running tally

Much "liberry" craziness did ensue today during my 10 hour shift.

The short version: Today we were seiged by two computer neophytes at the same time, both of whom were determined to write highly detailed last minute research papers and/or work-related reports with precise spacing requirements, and neither of them had brought a clue as to how to operate a word processor. In an act of service-oriented chivalry, I helped them both, showed them how to accomplish their goals and made them happy, all the while manning the circ-desk and answering the ever-ringing phone solo. I didn't even resent them once. I rule!

We were also paid typical though unexceptional visits by both Wal-Mart Jesus and Chester the (Potential) Molester. Wal-Mart Jesus wanted copies made. Chester ostensibly came in for more FAFSA forms, but then asked if we had any computers free. I told him they were all full, which was true. Chester failed to ask, however, if any of the computer users were out of time so he was SOL on that front and left.

And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C out of the building we were, of course, phoned by Mr. Kreskin.

Then, just when I thought I would go completely mad from hunger and sore legs, my sweet wife dropped by unexpectedly with take-out and we were able to dine together. I was so calm and at ease that I even let Brice use the computer. (Hey, he paid for his copies; that's all I really ask.)

All in all, though, it was an okay day and frankly could have been a lot worse. But I got it all done, pretty much by myself.

However, if I hear another phone ring it's getting lobbed in the road.

Conference Week: Day 1

(Reconstruction of Eaten Blog Entry, with a big thanks to Phil and Sam for sending me the original pre-chewed feed which I've now reincorporated)

Today is the first day of our state's "liberry" association conference, taking place in a resort hotel up in the northern part of the state somewhere.

Am I going? No.

Do I want to go? No.

Are me and Mrs. J the only staff members in house today? Yes.

Am I wearing shoes appropriate to a 10 hour shift? No. (These Skechers tend to start biting after about four hours. My feet are screwed, but it's my own fault.)

Am I anticipating "liberry" goodness/badness to shortly ensue? Hey, it's 10 hours in the crazy house here. Of course there's going to be standard issue "liberry" activity, both good and bad.

8:54 a.m.-- a full six minutes before we open, I get a phone call asking to speak to Mrs. C. I have a feeling that the phrase "I'm sorry, she's out of town at a conference for the rest of the week" will leave my mouth several thousand times today.

9:24-- Yet another call, this time for Mrs. A.

9:44-- And we have our first Rogue sighting of the day as Mr. Smiley comes in. He brings Mrs. Smiley with him. Mmm, that's some grumpy old people goodness for your ass.

9:58-- More people phoning for Mrs. A.

10:06-- We get our first computer patrons of the day. Two at once. Unrelated.

10:10-- Mrs. J informs me that some mischief-minded turd-blossom has removed the bolts that hold the back guard-rail portion of our rolling step-ladder in place. As a result, she nearly tumbled ass over teakettle off the top of it while trying to shelve a book. That's right, Mrs. J might have been killed because some asshat kid thought it would be funny to use his dad's leatherman to unscrew the bolts. The culprit seems to have stolen the bolts as well. Now I have to go put a sign on it telling patrons to stay the hell off of it before someone else tries to take a header.

10:11-- Someone comes in looking for Mrs. A.

10:15-- One of our board of directors, Mrs. Day, calls to say she's going to come in to sign checks and is on her way. This doesn't actually mean she's on her way. This means at some point during business hours today she'll roll in, probably at an inopportune moment, and will likely give me shit about having to come in and sign the paychecks two full days early, like I'm twisting her arm and forcing her to come in. SHE CALLED ME!

10:22-- A patron asks if we're closed tomorrow because of Toyota. I say, "No, it's Veteran's Day. What about Toyota?" He explains that Toyota will be filming a car commercial along mainstreet in Town-A, just down the hill from the library. They're apparently going to close off the entire area for traffic throughout the day. Good thing we won't be open.

11:34--Mrs. Day comes in to sign checks, several hours earlier than I expected. She doesn't even give me any crap, though she does have an ILL request for a book that does not exist in the entire state system.

12:40 p.m.-- I see a crabby looking lady trying unsuccessfully to put her books into our locked after hours book drop box out front. She must know that books that actually make it into the box are considered fine free, because when she finally brings them in I see that they are 89 days overdue.

12:51-- We're having surprisingly low traffic today. We did 169 checkouts yesterday, which is a busy day for us. I was expecting a patron flood since I'm the only guy manning the building. We've actually been able to search the shelves for overdues and mail the notices out, though. Ooh, that reminds me to remove Mrs. 89 Days overdue notice from the pile before we waste 37 cents on her.

12:55-- Parka makes his first appearance of the day. Oddly, he's not clad in his namesake parka despite how cold it actually is outside.

12:56-- I go to sign Parka on a computer. I have to wait for it to reboot from the ground up, cause the last user shut it down rather than just logging off. While I wait, two clients from the Unobstructed Doors Mental Health Assistance Organization come in and their aid heads them right for the restroom. One of them cuts a fart that is impossible to ignore. (*I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped... I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped* )

1:45-- After nearly half an hour of circulation silence, I attempt to eat my lunch. Staff lunches are an odd phenomenon here. No matter what time we decide to eat, as soon as food is unwrapped and begun to be consumed, the patron floodgates open up and we're suddenly swamped. Food presence also tends to act as a magnet for one or more of our board members to come in—usually the one who thinks it's just horrible that the staff eats at the circulation desk in front of God and everybody. Hey, once we get the new library built and actually have a break room we can move the party somewhere else. Right now it's either the picnic table outside in the cold or Mrs. A's tiny office or the restroom. Of course, the moment I unburped the lid of my salad container today, the front door started swingin'.

1:50-- Parka comes up to complain that the internet is slow. He's enlisted the testimony of a fellow internet crowd member to back up his claim. Naturally, he assumes I have the power to do something about it. I don't, but I go reboot his computer for him anyway. He's lucky I don't go into a diatribe about how slow things USED to be a year and a half ago, back when we had dialup speed instead of cushy DSL.

2:18-- The Toyota crew evidently thinks our nearly post-Autumn town isn't foliated enough for them. Patrons have come in and mentioned that the crew is downtown in a cherry picker attaching leaves to the bare trees in front of city hall. From our side window, I can see them doing this.

2:43-- A female patron returns eight John Grisham and Patty Cornhole books on tape all of which are in horrible condition, are 61 days late and some of which are missing tapes. The cardboard cases look as though she sat on them repeatedly. She fesses up to one of the tapes being missing, but I detect others. Her husband—who looks exactly like you'd imagine Hagrid's younger brother might—unleashes two very loud open-mouthed sneezes with barely an "excuse me."

2:55-- Parka returns for his second appearance. He's evidently waiting for a specific e-mail.

3:00-- Like a big ol' coward who is only scheduled to work til 3p, Mrs. J flees the building leaving me by myself for the rest of the day.

3:25-- Blogger EATS this entry and I have to reconstruct it from the ground up. Thanks guys.

3:27-- Shortly after discovering this, the circ desk becomes awash in patrons. A lady is irritated that she can't seem to log on from home into the practice test service we offer on our website. The community college library has told her she needs to come to us for the password. I explain that we don't have a password for it. The old testing system used to use the patron's library card number for it, but I don't think that's how it works anymore. She claims she's tried that, but can't actually demonstrate for me how poorly this works for her because she has—all together now—forgotten her library card. She's fed up with the site and with me. Her attitude and the fact that blog entry was just eaten, is pissing me off. I tell her that Mrs. A and Mrs. C, the two people with definitive answers for her, are out until Monday.

"So, what, I'm out of luck until next week?" she says.

"Not if I can figure it out for you now," I say.

She starts ranting at me again. While she's busy with that, I load the practice test site on the circ computer and see that it clearly does NOT require a library card to access, but simply and clearly asks the patron to choose a username and password of their own. Once I've told her this, she suddenly remembers what her username and password are, logs into the system and is now in love with me that I've solved her problem.

3:37-- Someone phones for Mrs. A. Turns out the caller was already fully aware that Mrs. A is out of town at the library conference, she just thought she'd call anyway. In fact, the phones will NOT. STOP. RINGING. I can't even hang it up from the two calls I've just taken back to back without another coming in.

4:15-- Dadgum, I wish I had a big stool to sit on. Stupid Skechers!

4:34-- Our first call of the day asking what time we close. Whoo hooo, take a drink!

5:05-- And the world comes to the library. For 20 minutes straight, we're slammed. And when does the circ computer decide that it's going to take a break and completely freeze up? Oh, only when there's suddenly a line four patrons deep, two of whom want new library cards. I beat the computer into submission.

5:30-- Man my legs are hurting. Okay. Fine. I'll sit down.

5:48-- I call a patron about a book she has on hold. Unfortunately, she had just been in half an hour earlier so I should have given it to her then. I hate it when I do that.

6:03-- By pure chance, I spy Chester the (Potential) Molester parking in our half-hour parking and then lurking into the darkness toward the community college. From what we're told by the college's librarian, Mr. Rob, Chester's been racking up quite the reputation around there too. The only good thing about that is that at least the girls there are of consenting age.

6:32-- Half an hour to go. We've had very little traffic at all for the past thirty minutes. I think I'll vacuum.

6:51-- Already finished my end of the day duties. One last patron (who I like) is left to go. My 10 hour shift is nearly over. I plan to go home, eat whatever delicious meal my wife has prepared, and completely skip church choir practice. (The choir director is just gonna make me stand up.)

Shite! I hear a car!

Ahhh... False alarm.

6:59-- That's a wrap. Wow... a whole day with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C gone and no call from Mr. Kreskin. I would have had money riding on that one if there was anyone around to bet with.

7:00 p.m.-- I don my coat and exit stage right. (After craftily deleting my saved reconstruction file and browser history, of course.)

Patty Cornhole and the Brimstone Clue

Mrs. A and Mrs. C were both out today, so Mrs. B and I split the day up between us with me opening. I must say, it was one of the easier shifts I've ever done. Even Mr. Kreskin failed to call despite the absence of Mrses. A & C. (I have no doubt he probably called to plague Mrs. B at some point today, though.)

I spent much of the time cross-checking our book database with the printed report concerning books of ours that are allegedly lost to the sands of time... (BEGIN BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT THAT YOU MAY FEEL FREE TO SKIP IN CASE YOU JUST WANT TO READ ABOUT MY MOST RECENT ENCOUNTER WITH MRS. CAROL SATAN) These are books that were checked out on our old VTLS system, before we moved to the new Millennium system, and may or may not have been returned to us in the intervening time. If they were returned, they've likely been checked out again in the last five months. If not, they will likely be missing from the shelves. Regardless, we have to look in the record for each book in question to find evidence of their status. If they've circulated in the last five months, we check them off the list as books we probably still have. If they haven't circulated we go look on the shelf for them and if they're not there we delete them. Fortunately, our paper record also contains the names of the patrons who last had each book, so maybe we can find them in the new system and put the hurt on them. I'd be happy to undertake such a lengthy and potentially fruitless task, just cause I have an overdeveloped sense of library justice. (END BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT)

So I'm searching away when a female patron approaches the circ counter. I'm so engrossed that I don't even look up at her right away. I just notice her peripherally and say, "Can I help you?"

"Could you put me down for the new Patricia Cornwell?" the patron said, sliding a book across the counter for return.

Ahh, Patty Cornhole, I thought. We meet again.

Having never actually read any of her fiction, I can't say that I really have anything against Patricia Cornwell. (I do kind of question her logic in blindly rejecting all previous research as to the identity of the real Jack the Ripper in favor of her somewhat forced view of it in her big non-fiction Jack the Ripper expose book from a couple years back. I didn't read much of that book either, but read enough to see that she didn't agree with the major points raised by Alan Moore in his graphic novel FROM HELL, nor with the research of other prominent Ripper-ologists. The New York Times book review of her tome was pretty scathing on this point.) However, despite having no real animosity toward her, I do think it's terribly funny to call her Patty Cornhole all the same. And it's especially fun to call her Patty Cornhole in a cheesy overly enunciated announcer voice, just like the guy who does I LOVE THE 90'S. Of course, I don't do this around the patrons.

Naturally, this particular as yet unseen female patron didn't know the title of Patty Cornhole's book, and since I haven't bothered to pay enough attention to Patty Cornhole's recent releases to know off hand, I had to look it up. It's called Trace. I mentally noted this, then scanned the barcode of the patron's returned book to bring up her account from which I could access the hold screen. At the same time that I scanned the book, my nose finally clued in that I'd been smelling something smoky and awful for the past half minute. It seemed familiar and in a bad way, but I didn't place it right away. I brought up the hold screen and added Trace to her list of books there.

"Do you need my card?" she asked.

Technically, I'm supposed to ask for it, but it's just as easy to bring up her record if she's already returning a book I can scan anyway. I explained this to the patron, still not looking at her. Then my eyes happened to fall on the Patron Name field of her record. It read: Mrs. Carol Satan. Only then did I finally look up at the woman herself and see that, yes, indeed it was her, standing there like the kiss of death. Actually, she wasn't quite as bad as the Kiss of Death. The Kiss of Something Foul to be certain, but not Death. In fact, Mrs. Carol Satan looked downright nice. Her hair was stylishly cut and she was dressed in a very pleasant ensemble and looked for all the world as though she were headed out to a nice restaurant or perhaps even to church. Sure, she wasn't actively smiling, but she was also not actively breathing fire and gnawing the heads off of infants, so it was a toss up as to her actual mood. I might not have even recognized her if she hadn't brought in a thick cloud of her usual stench of Brimstone and cigarettes. (They say smell is the sense tied closest to memory, but some memories are just too horrible and must be suppressed, so it's no wonder I didn't pick her up on radar earlier.)

What really burned me about this situation, though, is that by not paying attention to who she was in the first place, I had inadvertently been far nicer to her than I might otherwise have been. If I'd realized this was Mrs. Carol Satan in the first place, I would never have been so kind as to put her book on hold sans her "liberry" card. I'd have made her search through all the cigarette butts I imagine are clogging her purse and dig that sucker out. What's worse, now I've set a precedent in her head that she doesn't need her card for all transactions, which will surely come back to bite us in the ass in the future. My only real comfort is that she doesn't usually come in on days that I work, and it's only because I was filling in on this particular Tuesday that I saw her at all. When she bites in the future, she'll bite someone else. (Course, she'll likely bite Mrs. A or Mrs. C, who will then in turn bite me back later.)

Ministry of Bread & Fury

You ever have that feeling where you just can't seem to get your job done because of your job? Had one of those days today.

I thought my stress level would have ebbed after my Hitchhiker's speech was past me, cause that thing's been hanging over my head all month. However, now that it's gone, I can clearly see all the other giant weighty responsibilities that had been hanging there too.

A while back I mentioned here that I was putting together an online auction to benefit the local literacy group. Well, that got postponed twice because we didn't have any publicity arranged and is now due to start next week. Have we got the publicity arranged? Not before today, we didn't. (Competely my fault. I have to own that one.) So yesterday I wrote a piece about it for the library's newspaper column, which Mrs. A put in the column along with two other items she was already going to talk about and told me to edit the whole thing as I saw fit. She then fled the building never to be seen again.

Happy with the column, I took the disk on which the column was saved and used the information in it to write a press release. Only I managed to overwrite the newspaper column with the press release, closed it and reopened it so I couldn't undo any of my damage. Shortly after this, I noticed a huge glaring error in the supposedly camera-ready newspaper column I'd already printed, which had been my only backup saving grace. In order to fix my mess, I had to track down all of the additional material Mrs. A had gathered to reconstruct the column from the ground up.

That wasn't so hard.

What was so hard was not shitting out a monkey in my fury at all the interruptions to the task. Every time my butt hit the chair in front of the computer, someone came in or the phone rang. Who was calling? People who wanted to talk to Mrs. C, of course, who was also unavailable.

Why was Mrs. C unavailable? Well, see, tomorrow brings a big annual festival in Town-A. Area restaurants and civic groups line main street selling food items as a fund-raiser for themselves and a portion of the proceeds from each booth goes to benefit a local historic performance hall. We always have a booth and sell quick breads, which our loving patrons bake and donate to us to sell. We also bake quite a lot of the bread ourselves. Even me. However, quite a lot of the bread from the patrons does not come wrapped properly or labeled so Mrs. C had to go over to our activities room to see to that chore for a couple of hours, leaving me to run the desk alone.

So while I'm trying to get my shit together for the auction I was constantly interrupted by patrons coming in to bring us bread, or the phone ringing with people asking for Mrs. C, or asking what time we closed, or patrons with unholy thirsts for a computer, or books to check in or books to check out. (And on this front, I noticed today that, to a person, our patrons could pace the room for twenty minutes with an armload of books, but they would NOT make a move for the desk to check out until I gave up waiting on them and went to sit back down at the computer to work. Then it was suddenly a stampede to get out. And this happened EVERY time those circumstances occurred.)

I also had to work on the auction website during all this, trying to get it whipped into shape enough to deserve publicity. Working on the website when I'm alone at the desk is often infuriating and the cause of more monkey shitting. Our webserver is located at the circ desk, but is on the floor in the bottom of a small cabinet beneath the desk itself. To use it, you have to sit on the floor with the keyboard resting on your lap and the world's dirtiest mouse suckin' up the dust bunnies every time you move it. It's nearly useless to try and get anything done with it when you're alone, though, because as soon as you sit down the door opens and needy patrons start pouring through it, or the phone rings, etc., and you have to get up to take care of it. I hate it, and I long for the day when we can have a REAL computer in a REAL office dedicated to the task with a damn lock on the door and no phone!

Of course, you can't have Mrs. A and Mrs. C both effectively gone without an appearance from Mr. Kreskin, our board president. He rolled in around 3 with a goodly number of pages he wanted me to photocopy for him. Oddly, he didn't even ask about Mrs. A or Mrs. C or their whereabouts. And he insisted on paying for his copies.

Finally, around 4 p.m., Mrs. C returned, saw the demented gleam in my eye and the fact that I was air-stabbing patrons behind their backs and told me to go on break. I grabbed the finished press release and column and walked `em down to the paper.

When I came back a half hour later, Mrs. C left for good, failing to alert me that Wal-Mart Jesus was in the building. He didn't have a lot of time to hang around, though, so I didn't have to teach him how to use the internet again. He only had me photocopy four pages from the encyclopedia for him before he gathered up his cudgel and bag and left.

One Week, Two Kreskins

At the risk of having readers question my honesty, I must report yet another Mr. Kreskin incident. Two in one week. Who'da thunk?

Mrs. C was unavoidably out on Wednesday, so I came in at 11 a.m. to help Mrs. A steer the ship. She seemed nice and refreshed from her vacation that early in the day, but I suspect by the end she was on the verge of scheduling another one. Last week, most of the people who usually call desperate to speak to Mrs. A had been told she was out for the week, so they just saved up everything they desperately needed to phone in for Mrs. A's first day back on Wednesday. The phone was thus almost constantly ringing. After three hours of it, my silent curses began to be voiced and every ring was met with snarls at the least.

Around 2 p.m., Mrs. A left for lunch, which really irritated the 30 people who called during the next hour, but none moreso than Mr. Kreskin.

It's uncanny. An example of true psychic phenomena if ever there was one. That's the only way I can explain how the man is able to call ONLY when both people he wants to talk to are gone EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's astounding.

I was able to help him with what he needed this time, which probably saved Mrs. A a stern talking to later. He gets royally peeved when neither Mrs. A nor Mrs. C are in. He's tried to lay down the law with them before, insisting that one of them HAS to be there at all times. By "all times" however, I'm pretty sure he means "24/7." Even if he just meant "during normal business hours" it's still such an unrealistic expectation that it didn't stick for very long.

"MR. KRESKIN called," I said to Mrs. A when she got back. "I helped him, though."

She then pointed out to me that Mr. Kreskin knowing that I'm a capable human being with skills is not necessarily a good thing. That knowledge will surely mean more work for me when they're not around. Not more hours, mind you, but more work during the hours I'm already scheduled for. Mr. Kreskin tends to view Mrs. A and Mrs. C as his own personal secretaries, and has them type up correspondence for him regularly. Most of it is library related, so they don't mind so much, but it can still be inconvenient. Hopefully he won't learn of my 80 wpm typing speed or copy-writing/editing background.

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.

Mr. Kreskin Strikes Again

Mrs. A and Mrs C, our librarians, were both out all day at a meeting leaving me and Mrs. B in charge.

Around 4 p.m, Mrs. B asked me if Mr. Kreskin, the semi-psychic president of our library's board of directors had called.

"Nope," I said, "but I'm expecting a call from him any second now."

Mrs. B slid a piece of paper across the desk to me. "Well, if he calls, we're supposed to give him this phone number."

Not if. When.

As chronicled here a couple of times in the past, the only, and I stress ONLY, time I ever hear anything from Mr. Kreskin is when both Mrs. A and Mrs. C are out of town. I know it sounds fanciful and exaggerated for me to make this claim, but I assure you: He DOES NOT CALL unless the two people he is in a FOAM to talk to are NOT there. That's the formula and its more reliable than Old Faithful. And let me also stress that I don't mean to make fun of the man, even though I'm about to do it anyway. He's genuinely a nice person; he's just a pain in the ass to have to deal with when he gets his panties in a wad. And with all the activity and drama he's involved with in the effort to raise funds to build a big new library building for us, his panties are perpetually wadded.

At around 4:30 p.m. the phone rang, I answered it and was hardly surprised to find Mr. Kreskin on the line in an absolute panic.

"Is Mrs. A there?" Mr. Kreskin asked.

"Nope. Sorry, she's not."

"What about Mrs. C?"

"No, I'm afraid she's gone too," I said.

"Well, where did they go?"

"They're both at a meeting in TOWN-Y."

I could tell he was already royally pissed about this. See, before he retired, Mr. Kreskin used to be a big wig in the business world and he's somehow still accustomed to having people he wants to speak with instantly be at whatever number he calls, at all hours, ready to do his bidding. Snap snap, chop chop. And when he does eventually reach the people who are to do his bidding he is unsatisfied that his bidding has actually been done until he's checked behind them in triplicate.

"Did they send that FAX for me this morning?" Mr. Kreskin asked.

"I'm not sure, sir," I said. "I've only been here since one."

"Well, I need to know what was on that FAX, right now! They were supposed to send it to GROVER CLEVELAND and JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. What was on the FAX?"

"Um. Well, sir, I'm sure that they sent it, but I wasn't here so I don't know anything about it for sure," I said. Then I spied the piece of paper Mrs. B had passed me earlier and noted that the name on it was none other than GROVER CLEVELAND.

"Oh, sir. I do actually have a message for you here. Mrs. A said we're supposed to give you the phone number for Mr. CLEVELAND..."

"No, I don't want THAT right now! I have to know what I said in the FAX to JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

I should mention, Mr. Kreskin has no grasp of modern technology. I think his hold on all things "hi-tech" let go sometime around 1987. So while he knows that such things as FAX machines, the internet and e-mail exist, he can't distinguish between them with any degree of reliability and thus hates them all. For all I knew, he could have been talking about an e-mail he had them send for him.

"Um. Well, like I said, sir, there doesn't seem to be any FAXes here for JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

"It has to be there somewhere!" Mr. Kreskin said, anger rising in his voice. "They were supposed to send it this morning."

I quickly leafed through the considerable stack of papers on the circulation desk. Off to one side was a set of papers that looked like they might have been sent as a FAX. However, they were addressed to our librarian Mrs. A and not JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. One of the FAX cover-sheet pages did mention GROVER CLEVELAND, again, but not COOPER. I put Mr. Kreskin on hold while I searched through these for him, but still came up dry on any COOPER related material. Mrs. B also knew nothing about it, and she had been there all morning.

I was getting more frustrated by the whole matter. I knew Mr. Kreskin was going to be pissed, not at me but at Mrs. A and Mrs. C who he would somehow blame not only for not being there when he was calling for them in the first place but also for not keeping their staff appraised on his every potential whim so that we'd be prepared to answer all of his questions.

This is hardly the first time we've been through a situation like this with Mr. Kreskin. He once made Mrs. B call a conference center, where Mrs. A and Mrs. C were attending a "liberry" association meeting, so she could ask them what our tax ID number was. From what I understand, Mr. Kreskin has no real business having it in the first place and it was precisely the sort of information that could have and should have waited til the librarians returned home, but that's not how Mr. Kreskin's mind works. Once he gets it in his bonnet that he HAS to know something, whether he actually does HAVE to know it or not, he will not rest until he KNOWS it and he becomes progressively angrier the longer he doesn't. Once he finds out what he wants to know, he usually apologizes to everyone whose fingers he stepped on in the process of getting it, but that's of no consequence while your fingers are being stepped on.

"I'm sorry, sir," I said coming back to the phone. "But I STILL don't have any FAXes here for JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

"Listen," Mr. Kreskin said, as though talking to a child. "You go over to the FAX machine and pull out the drawer. There's got to be a copy in there."

"The drawer?"

"Sure. There's a drawer... It has to keep copies of what it sends, right?"

"Uh... No, sir. It doesn't."

"Yes..."

"No," I said. "That's not how our FAX machine works, sir. There's no drawer."

"Well. With the state of modern technology these days, I'm very disappointed. It should be able to do that."

Mr. Kreskin hemmed and hawed a bit more and told me to try and call Mrs. A and Mrs. C on the "liberry" cell phone, which I readily agreed to do. I assured him that I would continue to look for his FAX and he said he would call back in half an hour to see what I'd found.

I called the library cell phone and left a message for Mrs. A pleading for help. Then went to the filing cabinet and began rifling through it. I'd never had to do this before, but I'd heard a rumor that Mrs. A kept a file of all of Mr. Kreskin's letters for just this sort of situation. Sure enough, with only a little digging, I came up with an enormous file labeled KRESKIN CORRESPONDENCE. It was full of what looked like old letters, FAXes and e-mails. (Mr. Kreskin get's royally pissed if you don't keep a hard copy of any e-mails, even though he never sends any himself. He can't stand the idea of storing anything electronically.) There at the top of the file, bright and fresh with today's date on it was a stapled series of FAXes. Turns out, it was the VERY same FAX addressed to Mrs. A that I'd had on the desk, only these had additional cover sheets attached with a note in from Mr. Kreskin, in Mrs. C's handwriting, to the recipients, including GROVER CLEVELAND and JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. Eureka!

From the note itself, I couldn't see why Mr. Kreskin was so desperate to know what it said. It was the standard, "Hey, look these over, I'm available if you have any questions," kind of note. And now that I had a chance to look at the FAX itself, it too was pretty damned low-priority. It wasn't like this was a ransom note that had to be paid today. It was something that didn't matter a hill of beans if it got dealt with now or in a week.

I called Mr. Kreskin back, but got his answering machine.  So I left the contents of the cover-sheet on Mr. Kreskin's answering machine, knowing this would be futile because he never EVER checks messages. He didn't. At around 5:30, he gave me a call and we sorted out the FAX matter over the phone.  Get this, though... Mr. Kreskin didn't even really want what to know what his note on the cover sheet said in the first place. He only wanted to confirm that BOTH pages of the FAX itself had been sent. AND he already had a copy of the document there at his house just to confirm the wording on both pages to make sure they'd both been sent. Once again, checking behind us in triplicate.

To Mr. Kreskin's credit, he did apologize for stepping on my fingers in all this and said I was a good man for locating what he needed. He knew it probably wasn't easy. He also decided that I'd probably better give him GROVER CLEVELAND's phone number from the note after all.

Mrs. A and Mrs. C arrived from their meeting shortly after this. They were astonished and angry at what Mr. Kreskin had done, particularly since they had already twice gone over with him all of the specifics that he was calling to confirm, not to mention had told him that they would be out at a meeting all afternoon. Mrs. A also confirmed that the FAX was nothing earth-shattering that such a stink needed to be raised over. They were very happy with how I'd handled it, though.

My guess is, the board of directors will soon be approving funds to buy us a new FAX machine. One with a drawer that keeps hard copies.

Classic Lineup

Today pretty much set itself up as a classic "liberry" day, as far as these things go. And I got to live through a great deal more of it than on most Wednesdays because I had to work a full 8 hours of it. This was due to Mrs. A and Mrs. C being out all day at a meeting, with all the horror that entails, and needing a fill-in hitter at the desk.

At 8:55 I rolled in to work and found the photo-copier repairman camped out on the doorstep. The Devil Copier had been in fine form over the weekend, plaguing Miss E because a patron kept insisting on using it to photocopy the same page over and over and over despite the fact that each attempt resulted in a paper accordion jamming the copier. She finally told him to quit it and turned off the copier. Then, after two days of dealing with similar behavior from it, Mrs. C finally called the repair people and insisted that something was wrong. Over the phone, the Devil Copier repair guy told her to break off a little piece of plastic toward the rear of the paper output slot that seemed to be causing all the jamming. She did. It stopped jamming on the rear and began jamming at the front side instead. So the Devil Copier repairman promised he would come in for a personal repair visit. That was yesterday. Today, just as he'd promised, he was here to do mighty battle.

At 9:00 a.m., I opened up the shop and then noticed something addressed to me on the counter. They were two maps with a note attached. See, last week a couple of female tourists had come in on the local Tri-Metro walking tour and asked if we had any maps of the area. We usually do, but the map-restocking people haven't been in for a while so we were fresh out. However, I had one in my car, which I gave to the tourists since I can get a new free map as soon as more come in. Well the two maps waiting for me today included my original free-map as well as one of the `spensive, high-quality, glossy paper, county-maps that are sold locally. The Post-it note attached said the ladies thanked me for the use of my map and hoped I'd get some use out of the `spensive one. That was terribly nice.

At 9:01 a.m. my new good mood fell. I discovered that none of our computers were connecting to the network at all. This means our card catalog, our circulation software and the internet were all down for the count. I try to phone some other local libraries to see if they're in the same boat, but they're all lazy and don't open til later in the day. Finally, after having to beat back a few members of the internet crowd with the three-hole punch, Mrs. C called to tell me that everything was down and that she'd put in a call to the tech guys at home office. They called me shortly and walked me through some network troubleshooting. Turns out the UPS battery backup for our router had stopped working. I plugged the router into the other UPS we have and everything seemed to work hunky dory. Well, except for the fact that Patron Computer #3 refused to have anything to do with reconnecting to the network and I immediately became far too busy with patrons to do anything about it. After several patrons complained bitterly about not being able to check their e-mail on it, I finally just slapped a big sign on it that read "BAD COMPUTER" and just operated with the two good ones. The internet crowd was NOT happy about this and gave me dirty looks about having to wait to get on for the rest of the day. I even had to bust Mr. B-Natural off and he gave me a solid grumble for old times sake.

Back at the Devil Copier, the repair guy had made several accordions of his own. This is suprising, cause the copier usually behaves its best when the repair guy's around. Shortly, the repair guy pried open the Devil Copier and removed a large section of its guts which he took out to his truck and rebuilt from the ground up. Once reassembled, everything seemed to work fine. "That should satisfy the ladies," he said. Screw the ladies, what about me? Before he could get out of the parking lot, I grabbed the darkest book I could find, Stephen King's Skeleton Crew, slapped it on the glass and pressed the little green button for copying. I even left the lid ajar, which is a double no-no that usually causes the copier to self destruct. Instead, the copy came out just fine and very dark indeed. Perhaps the devils have been exorcised.

Lady, I know you didn't just park your big ass Ford Explorer in the middle of the damned road blocking the entire street. Oh, no, I see you did. And now you think you're gonna hop out real quick and pop that overdue book of ours in the drop box, don't you? Yup, you sure do. Oh, so sorry... it's locked! You're gonna have to come inside anyway. Ehhh heh! That's right, honey. Climb back in your truck and go find a parking space.

And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. B gone, the day just could not pass by without a call from our Board President, Mr. Kreskin, desperate to speak to them and pissed that they're both gone. And of course, I had no idea where they'd gone so I couldn't tell him when they'd be back, which is the only thing that pisses him off more than both of them being gone. I really need to take this act on the road and go find the Amazing Randi and collect my million bucks from him, cause if there was ever proof of psychic ability it's Mr. Kreskin. He truly ONLY calls when Mrs. A and Mrs. C are both gone. It's phenomenal.

I asked a patron named Siobahn how her name was pronounced. I knew it was Gaelic and was therefore just as likely to be pronounced "Earl" as what it turned out to be, which was Shavonne.

"Yeah, you gotta watch out for the Gaelics," I said, meaning the language but immediately realizing that I'd probably just insulted her. So I lamely backpeddled, "Um, I mean, the language."

"No, the people too," she corrected. "Especially if they're raging alcoholics with a mean temper."

"Well, y'know, I wasn't gonna say anything," I said.

And it also wouldn't be a proper day with no Mrs. A and C in house if I didn't get five hundred thousand questions I can't answer. The major theme in today's unanswerables was parents asking to sign their kids up for Summer Reading. Sounds easy, but we're not doing sign-ups this week. Furthermore, I have no clue WHEN we're doing it. None. Never do. This'll be my third year to be around for Summer Reading and I'm still out of the loop. Every year I ask, beg and plead for an information sheet that tells me all the stuff I need to be able to tell parents, but I never get one. Well, okay, eventually I get one, but usually at the last second and never weeks in advance when the questions actually start. And let me tell you, these parents get real agitated about it all for fear of getting burned on signing up. We only give them a whole week (nine days, really) to sign their kids up. We don't sign any up before that week and if the parents miss out on doing it during that week it's tough luck for them. But, of course, half the parents schedule a vacation for that week and then raise holy hell when they find out how strict we are about sign-ups. Or they raise holy hell because they screwed it all up the year before and still blame us for it. Every year we explain to them that it'll be okay, we're not trying to ruin their entire summer and they can have a friend come in and sign their kids up for them while they're gone. Even this they find unreasonable. It's like we're asking for a kidney.

At around 2:30, the Drifter noticed our BAD COMPUTER sign and offered to help fix it. Seems he used to do network installation and repair for a living. Unfortunately, the patron computers have security features designed to keep patrons from doing that, so he didn't get very far. I warned him that was the case, but he said he saw it as a challenge. We chatted for a bit after he got tired of fighting the computer. I asked him what kind of flute he had round his neck. "A bamboo flute," he replied. Ah. He said he bought it at the local New Age Crap shop. We also compared notes one how irritating it can sometimes be to work in a public service job. Still, as I explained to him, even on my worst day at the "liberry" it's far less stressful than just about any other job I've had. I may bitch and complain and write excessively lengthy blog entries about it, but I certainly don't hate it.

Ohhhhh!

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

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

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

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

Librarians Against the Apocolypse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, shit," Calvin said.

"Calvin!" his aid snapped.

"Oh, my," Calvin corrected.

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

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