Last Minute Rogue Addition PART II (a.k.a. "Fifth Grumpiest Old Man in All the World Located At Last!")

Mrs. A, still mystified that our patron William Shatner would think she would intentionally move his position on a hold list due to some perceived but as-yet-unrevealed conflict between them, decided to do something about it. 

The first thing she did was to call the patron who'd had Wililam Shatner's hold book out for two months and tell them to bring it back immediately. And, perhaps oddly, they actually obeyed and brought it back within a day. Soon it was waiting on the hold shelf for William Shatner and Ms. M had left a message on his machine to this effect. 

Next up, Mrs. A gave William Shatner himself a call. I have no idea of the actual dialog of the call, but damn I wish I did. Instead, I have to rely on the bits of it Mrs. A later told me about. Mrs. A said she started out, as usual, by being very friendly to William Shatner and explaining that she thought there had been some sort of misunderstanding. Unspoken in this was how he was clearly operating on some sort of odd idea of how libraries and their hold systems are run, not to mention that he seemed to have some ideas about Mrs. A's personal operating procedure that were at the very least uncharacteristic of her reality. Oh, no, William Shatner said, there was no misunderstanding. None at all. He knew exactly how Mrs. A ran things down at the "liberry" and he knew she had moved him on the hold list for two months to keep him from getting the book. Furthermore, he really shouldn't even be talking to her at all on advice of his lawyer. 

"His lawyer?" I exclaimed at this point in the retelling. 

"Yeah," Mrs. A said. She then reported that William Shatner continued to ignore his lawyer's advice by telling her that he had inside information on how she ran our library and he didn't like it one bit. In fact, he'd spoken with a former employee of our library who had given him the skinny and he knew that Mrs. A ran things like a complete dictator and frequently moved patrons on the hold list when she didn't like them. No, sirree, she had not heard the last of this by any means. He'd been consulting with his lawyer and was going to have her job for this. He was going to take this straight to the board of directors. Mrs. A attempted to explain the actual situation, but he would hear none of it. And with that, William Shatner hung up. 

Now, beyond the astounding nature of his claims and beyond the clearly unstable nature of his personality, the most surprising thing about his beef is the unnamed source he listed for his inside information. The way I immediately saw it, which turns out to be exactly the way Mrs. A saw it too, there's really only one person who fits the criteria to be both a disgruntled former employee and vengeful enough to spread such lies in order to create trouble like this. 

"MS. S! It has to be MS. S!" I said. 

Yes, Eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S, she who was let go without actually being fired nearly a year ago now. She's the only former employee bitter enough to pull off something like this. (Even former weekend warrior Miss E wouldn't bear this kind of hatred for us--after all SHE's the one who walked off the job without a word to us as to why.) Adding to the evidence was that Ms. S always worked weekends and was reportedly pretty chummy with William Shatner, who visits almost exclusively on weekends. My guess was that he'd run into her at her fast food job and struck up a conversation, at which point he might have mentioned that he was put out about not receiving his hold giving Ms. S the perfect opportunity to sew discord. 

Mrs. A was just dumbfounded and kept saying she'd never been yelled at like that by a patron in many years. There was just no talking to him. No matter what she tried to say, he had already made up his mind that she was the devil and would hear nothing from her. Mrs. A wasn't angry about it herself, just mystified that someone could go off the rails as completely as William Shatner seemed to have done. 

The whole situation made me angry. Again, here was someone who'd never given us problems who had completely lost his shit with us for mostly fictional reasons. For a bit, I considered phoning up William Shatner myself and trying to explain to him that he truly was off base in what he thought he knew. I wanted to tell him that he should consider that there might have been very good reasons his former-employee source was indeed a former employee and that he should further consider how this might cloud her objectivity in the matter and give her reason to tell him something other than the truth. 

I did not do this, however. If he was determined to make a fool of himself and throw his lot in with Ms. S, let him have at it. 

Mrs. A immediately phoned the president of the board, Mr. Hooter, and told him what was going on and to expect some contact from William Shatner. 

To give Mrs. A actual evidence that she'd done no wrong, I went into the record for the book William Shatner wanted and printed out the detailed history of its brief time in our collection. It clearly showed when the book was added to the collection, the names of the people who'd been on hold for it, when they had been added to the hold list, how long each of the first two had kept the book, including the two months for hold #2, etc. Nowhere did it show any list order manipulation because there'd not been any. 

The board of directors had a look at this, noted that William Shatner had failed to pick up his long anticipated book within the requisite number of days we'd informed him we'd hold it, asked Mrs. A to extend his hold time for five more days, and then Mr. Hooter wrote William Shatner a letter explaining that we'd not only extended the time but had also extensively looked into the matter, examined the records that had been concerning him and had found no wrongdoing whatsoever. As of this writing, we've neither heard nor seen anything more from William Shatner himself. He never picked up his book and, from what we're told, has been patronizing other area libraries, complaining to them about how mean we all are. 

As for Ms. S, she's still working in fast food and, from what the vine tells us, will likely not be rehired in the fall for her private school teaching position due to there not being enough students for the class to make. Maybe I should tell her that we'll have a position open here by the end of next week.

"Trimetrcntypblicliberry?"

Not that it's any surprise or enormous feat, but Ms. D is already leagues better than Ms. S when it comes to being a newbie greenhorn "liberry" ass.

When answering the telephone, she very calmly and clearly says, "Tri-Metro County Public Library" as her greeting, and in a very pleasant tone to boot. This is in fantastic contrast to Ms. S, who consistently used as few syllables and, indeed, vowells as possible and used them at 743 mph and which sounded like, "Trimtrcntypblcliberry?"

(And yes, the only part of that train-wreck of a greeting she actually annunciated was the word "liberry" and with no trace of irony whatsoever. I've long suspected that irony as a concept was completely lost on Ms. S.)

Of course, Ms. S's greeting was still better than that of Mrs. J, who has been known to answer the phone using the phrase, "What?" and has thus been restricted from answering the phone at all.

I predict Ms. D may graduate to full "liberry" ass. status in record time, though perhaps not without some fun speed bumps. I've already suggested that we tell her she has to go through a few hazing rituals, as the newest newbie. We should tell her that we're gonna go rearrange the 641.5s and she has to read and reshelve them properly, using only her butt.

Mrs. A countered that we should make her do the 800s instead, as they're far messier right now.

David Cronenberg films I'd prefer patrons didn't see

The tech boys were in recently to install some new patron computers. In the process of making updates, though, they managed to ditch the passwords from all but one of the remaining old computers, so now patrons can log themselves on willy nilly, and do. (For some reason, the techies don't seem to care if patrons have immediate unregistered access to the computers, but they won't give us the admin passwords to make any changes to the systems we see fit.)

Now the only computer that still has a password is a recycled computer we had lying around. Trouble is, we've used a couple of different logins during its lifetime and damn if any of us can remember it on the first try. This is why former Newbie Greenhorn Ms. M called me away from an important "liberry" quest to assist her when she couldn't get it to log on for a patron.

"I keep trying the usual username and password, but it just freezes like that." She pointed to the screen, where the login box was grayed out as the computer considered whether or not it would accept the password she'd just entered. We watched it, along with the young lady who was waiting for it. After thirty seconds, or so, it refused to accept the password and popped me back to the login box. I tried a new password and the box grayed out for another thirty seconds before refusing once again.

During this time, I noticed that the young lady who was waiting for the computer—a late high school or maybe early college-aged girl, seated nearby—was staring at me and not in a good way. It wasn't exactly the hairy eyeball, but there was something in her expression that clearly wasn't rating me very highly. Sure, I was an employee who evidently didn't know his own password and was therefore making her wait far longer than she might have liked to get to her MySpac3 on, but the look seemed to go beyond even that offense. Did I smell bad? Did I have a booger on my face? What?

The log in box finally ungrayed, I tried another combination, the box grayed out again, and I received yet another baleful look from the patron. Only after the box cleared, another 30 seconds later, did I recall that this particular computer actually took a different login than the one we'd been using. I typed the proper one in and managed to guess the right password for it and the system loaded just fine.

"There ya go," I said to the girl.

I left the computer bank, determined to return to my important "liberry" quest, which was to find a toilet plunger and have a look at the men's restroom toilet. An earlier patron had reported that it wasn't flushing properly and suggested a plunging was in order. I found the plunger, stepped into the restroom, plunged the toilet, but didn't find any real problem with it flushing before or after. While I was there, though, I figured I'd take the bowl for a test-drive and have a wee myself. Only when I went to unzip my fly, I found it preunzipped for my convenience.

Chills of horror ran up my spine as I did the math and realized that the young lady at the computer had likely noticed this and disapproved. Not only that, but her seated perspective had been at about my crotch height. My cows were fortunately still tucked in the barn behind the safety of their boxer-brief barn door, so it wasn't like I'd been flashing her, but still it couldn't have looked good.

What was protocol in this situation? Should I go and apologize? No, I'd technically done nothing wrong, intentional or otherwise and apologizing for it would just draw more attention to it and might bring up questions as to whether or not it had actualy been unintentional.

For a minute I considered just staying in the bathroom until she left. Then, looking in the mirror, I noticed that with my arms at my sides, my untucked t-shirt actually covered most of my crotchal area. Even from her crotch-high POV, the chances of seeing that my fly had been unzipped weren't really that great. She might not have seen it at all. Then again, she had been staring daggers at me.

I left my sanctuary and returned to work, hopeful that the chick had just been annoyed that she was having to deal with a moron who didn't know his own password rather than a moron who didn't know his own password and who was additionally trying to show off his junk.

Hope blossoms, but this bloom smells like ass.

We hired a new employee yesterday by the name of Ms. D. (Not to be confused with former weekend warrior Miss D, who is a completely different and unrelated soul. In fact, if I'd known we were going to hire Ms. D when I first wrote about Miss D, I would have given Miss D a different name entirely, like Miss Nightranger, or something. I might still. Miss Nightranger is too good a name not to use. But I digress...)

Ms. D has been a recent addition to our friends of the "liberry" (and I don't mean our actual Friends of the "Liberry," though she would have been welcome there too). Over the past couple of months, she has come in to help us with some reorganization, refinishing and assembly projects that otherwise might have required a man.

For instance, Ms. D was brought in to strip, sand and revarnish four of our wooden patron tables after our former board member, Mrs. Day, attempted to refinish three of them by herself. When Mrs. Day returned the tables to us they were a goopy, blotchy, uneven mess and I'd have expected better results from a septet of stumptail maquaques armed only with their own feces and a hammer. The funny thing is, while Ms. D's refinishing job left the tables looking smooth, even and fantastic, it caused Mrs. A to worry that Mrs. Day would catch sight of them and know we had had all her crappy refinishing refinished. I told Mrs. A not to worry about it. After all, Mrs. Day is so out-of-touch with reality that she would most likely take one look at the refinished tables and then congratulate herself on doing such a good job with them. In fact, she’d probably even audibly note how much better they looked than she remembered. And, of course, that is EXACTLY. WHAT. HAPPENED. Then, after her self-congratulatory speech, Mrs. Day hauled away the remaining "fourth" table to give it an even shittier refinish, on the grounds that it didn't look as good as the other three identically refinished tables. But I digress again...

I'd suspected that Mrs. A, was considering hiring Ms. D because during the short time we'd known her she just seemed to click with the rest of us so well. I'd wager she's a bit older than Mrs. B and a bit younger than Mrs. A, so she gets all the references they drop. She’s artistic, craft-oriented, handy and could probably read Walter the Farting Dog aloud to four-year-olds with the best of them. (Not that Mrs. A will actually let us read Walter during storyhour—but, if she ever does, I have dibs, dammit!) Ms. D also possesses something of an inner-geek, allowing her to be fascinated by all things Fortean and fantasy/science-fiction genrey, so she's not too far off of the path from me. In fact, she gave me a stack of old Bud Plant catalogs just full of great stuff I've never heard of before. She's one of the fold.

Still, while I was pretty sure Mrs. A wanted to hire Ms. D, I didn't think she could justify it with Ms. S still hanging on by a claw. This very thought occurred to me when Mrs. A announced to us that the hiring of Ms. D was a done deal.

"She'll start as soon as Ms. S leaves,” Mrs. A finished.

I nearly fell over.

"Whoa! Ms. S is leaving?"

"Yeah,” Mrs. A said. “You didn't know that?"

"No!"

"Oh," Mrs. B said. "I forgot to tell you."

They then gleefully explained the details of the meeting between Mrs. A and Ms. S after the latter had secured her new job. (I’d only heard rumors of the details from Ms. S herself, at that point, when I'd asked her how her new job was going after noticing she looked particularly surly one afternoon. She'd explained much of the following, but left out the bit about having to leave.) Ms. S had approached Mrs. A and asked if we could work around her schedule at her new job, which normally let her off at 2:30 or so, but sometimes would require her to stay as late as 4:30, thus making any evening shift with us a mere two hours. Mrs. A, sensing a golden opportunity to get rid of Ms. S without actually firing her, explained that while we could accommodate some degree of flexibility, any other job she had would really need to be able to work with our schedule. We could put up with her new schedule, but only until the end of the month.

“Wow,” I said. “I thought that just meant she would hang on doing weekends only.”

Mrs. A seemed to consider this for a moment then shook her head. “No. I might do that, but this is too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Indeed.

That was yesterday.

Today was Ms. S's last day. She came in around 4p for her 4:30 to 7 closing shift. As much as I've railed against her, I found myself kind of sad over it. Even worse, I found myself more than a bit aprehensive about spending part of that final shift with her. Everyone else got to flee the building at 5, but I didn't leave until 6, giving me a good solid hour alone with her. This being the case, I left myself a huge stack of easy-readers to shelve, knowing she wouldn't want to do them. She didn't, so that whiled away a whole 10 minutes. The rest of the hour was spent chatting amiably enough in between helping patrons, shelving or otherwise doing our jobs. We didn't really talk about it being her last day, though she did ask if I was going to have to start working more weekends now. (I guess I might at that.) She also mentioned that she probably wouldn't come by as often, since the only reason she would have to come into the Tri-Metro area was to head to her other job at the fast food place.

Aw, hell, I thought. Now that she couldn't stay on here and at the school, she was going to have to keep the fast food gig as her second job. She hated that job.

None of this was my decision and still I felt awful about it. I had to keep reminding myself that with her finally gone, we'd at last be rid of an employee who recently locked herself out of the building while trying to empty the book return on a Saturday and had to rely on a patron with a cell phone to call Mrs. C and ask if she could come unlock the door and let her back in.

No, better still... we'd finally be shed of a co-worker who had gone onto the internet, learned the ending of the final Harry Potter book from a spoilers page and then willfully spoiled it for the first little girl who was lucky enough to find said book on our shelf on the VERY. DAY. IT. WAS. RELEASED. I know you don't believe that, but I tell you it happened! And granted, it's kind of a complicated ending to spoil, so she probably just told her whether or not Harry dies, or something. However, when the girl's father told me about it, some weeks later, I had no doubt he was telling the truth because Ms. S had tried to spoil the ending for me and a couple of patrons the night before the book was to be released and we only escaped hearing it from her then after I threatened and then rethreatened to stab her with a letter opener if she did. I digress, yet again...

And yet, even with those examples of dumbassity and evil in mind, I still felt awful.

At 6, I clocked out. I'd been dreading that moment because I didn't know exactly what I should say to Ms. S before leaving. It wasn't really a "We'll miss you!" or "I wish you didn't have to go," sort of moment, certainly. However, it was also not a "Have a nice life," or even a "Leave your keys on the desk... Oh, wait, sorry, you did that a couple weekends ago already," moment either.

Instead, it went like this:

ME— Well, I guess I'm headed out.

MS. S— Okay.

(Pause)

ME— (Smiles) You have fun teaching.

MS. S— Oh, I will. I will.

(Pause)

ME— (Considers giving her a goodbye hug, then decides against it) Thanks for putting up with me.

MS. S— No. Thank you for putting up with me. It took me a long time to learn all this.

(Super long pause)

ME— Okay.

At that point, some patrons thankfully entered the building and her attention was drawn away from the enormous awkward silence that was about to erupt and I was able to slip away like the coward I am.

I wish her well and hope she finds her niche in life. Goodbye, Ms. S.

Hope Springs (a.k.a. "Those poor children. Those poor, poor children.")

Eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S made an enormous announcement last week: She's found a new job!

My heart leapt at the news! Could it be? Could it truly be? Were we about to have our dreams realized? I nearly danced with joy. Finally, finally, we were getting rid of the last remaining greenhorn!

Then Ms. S dashed my hopes by clarifying that her new employment would allow her to finally leave her much-hated fast-food job and concentrate entirely on her new gig and the "liberry" gig.

And what, I hear you askin', has some poor, unfortunate bastard, employer agreed to pay her money to do for them?

Teach.

No, you heard me right. They've hired her as a teacher of first-graders at an area private-school.

As she told me that news, I came to within a quarter inch of blurting out "Holy shit!" right in her face. Instead, I just grinned and congratulated her and inwardly prayed that the poor tykes survived.

Her plan now is to work her teaching job from 8 to 3, then roll on over here and finish out the day with us. I sure hope things don't work out like that, though. If Ms. S thinks fast food is hard, wait `til she gets 10 six-year-olds hopped up on sugar running around her for hours at a stretch. She'll be so tired afterward that her previous levels of "liberry" laziness will seem pale by comparison to what she pulls when she rolls on over to do an afternoon shift.

Though I've not spoken with her about it, I suspect our boss Mrs. A knows this as well. I also suspect she sees the golden opportunity to finally get rid of Ms. S without resorting to a firin'. Word on the street is that she's told Ms. S that any other job she takes will need to find a way to work around our schedule, or things just won't work out on this end.

That may sound like good news, but I somehow don't see this being enough to dislodge her. Instead, she'll probably hang on as a weekend warrior with an occasional weekday afternoon shift.

Sometimes I really feel for our patrons

Just when I thought she was really starting to get the hang of the job, eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S takes it down a notch. This time I witnessed the behavior myself from the perspective of a patron.

The wife was out of reading material so she and I zipped over to the "liberry" this afternoon to grab some new stuff. After the wife made her choices, we headed for the circ-desk where there were two other patrons already waiting while Ms. S stood in front of the FAX machine, her back to us. The FAX machine was busy chewing through a single page. As it neared the end of that page, Ms. S picked up another page from a small stack in front of her and fed it into the FAX machine's input chute. She waited for the previous page to be spit out of the exit chute before settling in to watch as the next page was slowly—ever-so-slowly—scanned to be sent out over the phone line.

Meanwhile, there was a man in front of me with a single book to be checked out, his library card resting atop it, and a lady who I assumed was the one waiting for the FAX to go through. The FAX was chewing so slowly that Ms. S had plenty of time to turn and help either of the people at the desk, or us, but instead she just kept waiting for the page to go through so she could insert the next one.

Mind you, while our FAX machine is indeed older than dirt and takes a phenomenal amount of time to do anything, it is usually capable of handling multiple pages per session, feeding them through page by page just fine. Ms. S was determined to be vigilant about it, though, and make absolutely certain that it did. She stood and waited until the second page went almost all the way through then stuck the next one in.

"Is she retarded or is she doing this on purpose?" the wife whispered to me.

"A little of both, I think."

A third patron arrived at the desk to stand beside the man in front of us. They both intently watched Ms. S.

As soon as the third page began its glacier crawl through the guts of our FAX machine, Ms. S walked away from it, toward the couple at the desk, then did a 90 degree turn at the last second and went into the staff workroom where she stooped over to drag the cardboard box filled with Summer Reading t-shirts back behind the circ-desk. I deduced that the second lady, standing to my right, was probably waiting for her kid's t-shirt and end of the year goody bag. She would have to wait a while longer, though, because Ms. S didn't even open the box. Instead, she stood up and resumed her station at the FAX machine, which had reached the half-way mark on the page it was chewing through.

"She's doing this on purpose," the wife said.

"No, she just has no customer-service skills whatsoever," I said.

In total, at least three minutes passed during the FAXing process. Then, when the fourth and final page of the document was almost finished, the FAX machine gave of one of its patented tinny wails, at which point Ms. S cried, "NO! NO! NO!" She turned to the man and woman in front of us.

"They all went through this time, until the last page," she said. Apparently this was at least her second attempt at sending this document, the previous attempts having been failures due to the FAX machine's refusal to send the pages without a line error.

"Well, that's okay. You can go on and help these people," the lady at the desk said.

Ms. S slowly turned her head and appeared to notice us for the first time. She turned to the younger woman who'd been standing there longer and asked the names of her children. She then fished their shirts and goodie bags from the cardboard box and gave them to the woman. Then she turned to us and began checking out our books. (And, yes, I did have my library card and used it.)

"Um, is there something wrong with the FAX machine that you can't just send all the pages at once?" I asked.

"Her paper is too thick," Ms. S said. "It keeps pulling through four at a time so I have to stand there and watch it."

I just shook my head, gathered up our books and left.

As irritating as this situation was, there may yet be some "good" news to report on this front...

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Mousse Trap

On Friday, Mrs. C announced that she had ordered the staff a chocolate mousse cake from a local bakery.

"Who's birthday?" I asked, for we'd ordered a similar cake for Ms. M's birthday not long ago.

"No one's," Mrs. C said. She explained that she just wanted some and thought the rest of us would too and it was cheaper to order a whole cake than individual slices.

The cake arrived and was a dark, rich-looking, frozen disc of beauty. That is, it would have been if I cared at all for chocolate. I've actually come a long way over the years to get beyond my former hatred of chocolate. As a kid, I used to shun most anything to do with chocolate, but have mellowed as time has gone on. Chocolate and I don't get along too well, but we have mutual friends, such as peanut butter and caramel. I can tolerate the presence of chocolate when either of the other two are around. Or, if chocolate is mixed into other things, such as cake, milk, ice cream or Oreo cookies. Generally speaking, though, I just don't seek it out in its purest form. A Hershey's Kiss is about the most I care to eat in a sitting. And while I had to admit that the chocolate mousse, still frozen in its box, was very nice-looking, I really didn't want to break my recently restarted shunning of sugar unless it was for something sweet I truly loved. I decided to take my piece home to the wife.

"WhaaAAAAt? You don't LOOOOOVE chocolate?!" Ms. M stammered between bites of her own mousse. Her tone suggested that psychological counseling might be in order.

"WhAAAAAt?!" Ms. S said, astounded at what she'd overheard from her fellow former newbie greenhorn.

These were typical, yet actually restrained, reactions of "chocolate" people to my non-chocolate-loving status. Usually once "chocolate" people calm down from the shock of having their world-view jostled, they begin to try and convince you that you are delusional and wrong to dislike chocolate. They say things like, "That's only because you've never tried good chocolate before," and, "Oh, I know some chocolate that would make you love it." The greenhorns refrained, but I could tell they were thinkin' it.

After a few minutes of dedicated chewing, Ms. S, her face alight with a chocolate-rush, took her still not quite empty plate over to the trash can and dropped it in. Ms. M started to scream, then caught herself, at the wasted three bites of mousse now in the bin.

"What are you doing?!" Ms. M said, accusations of traitorous behavior clearly dancing behind her eyes.

"I'm full," Ms. S said. "I couldn't eat any more chocolate."

"You know, we have a fridge," I said. "You could have saved it for later."

A look of regret crossed Ms. S's face. Clearly she'd not considered this and was probably now debating how much shit she would have to take from us if she fished her dessert out of the trash can. After a few seconds, she shrugged and said, "No, I'm done."

"Thank God she didn't get it out of the trash," Ms. M said, still working on her own mousse. "I would have died!"

"Hell, I would have eaten it," I said.

Ms. M laughed, as though I were kidding.

"I'm serious. I've eaten worse."

I then told them a story...

When I was a lad of five, my father and I temporarily lived on my Papaw's farm in south Mississippi for a few months, before moving away to Starkville. One day, while in town, a friend of my dad's, who ran a gas station in Waynesboro, gave me a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket full of Super Bubble Bubble gum. It was one of the greatest gifts a kid could be given and I was in gum chewing heaven for weeks, going through multiple pieces in a day. Around this time, I learned how to blow bubbles with my gum and tried to practice this skill on a near constant basis. I wasn't great at it, though, and would occasionally drop my gum on the floor, or launch it across the room, in my attempts to learn. Still, I had so many pieces I could always get a fresh one, so it didn't really matter.

After several weeks, I was finally down to my very last piece of Super Bubble. I was determined to make it last. I started chewing it after breakfast, took it out for lunch, and was prepared to continue chewing on into the afternoon and hopefully beyond supper. That afternoon, while following Papaw around on his late afternoon chores, I attempted to blow a bubble and the gum shot out of my mouth and landed on the ground inside the barn. I don't know how much you know about barns, but this particular one housed cows and its dirt floor was actually composed of dried, powdered cow manure. Not wanting to give up on my final piece of gum for the foreseeable future, I picked it up, examined the grains of dried cow poop attached to it, brushed them off as best I could and popped that gum back in my mouth.

When I finished my tale, Ms. M was staring back at me with a look of pure revulsion on her face.

"Enjoy that chocolate," I told her.

S is for Shifting

I was in the general fiction L's when I spied, resting on its side, neatly atop one row of the books there, a lone Dennis LeHane. Poking from beneath the front cover of it was a bright orange shelving slip, indicating that eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S had at some point intended to shelve this particular book. As she hadn't been on shift for over a full day, she had obviously failed in her task. (As had the rest of us in noticing during the subsequent day.)

I picked up the book, to finish her shelving job, but found that the row of LeHanes it belonged in was packed so tightly that it was impossible to wedge in this new one. Shelf rows above and below the LeHanes were similarly packed.

Now, if one were to be charitable, one might assume that Ms. S had attempted to shelve the book, found that the shelves were packed, intended to shift properly in order to fit it, but got sidetracked by a patron and set the book down--merely temporarily, mind you--then forgot to come back and shelve it later. Or, one might look at the history of the employee in question and recall her great animosity toward the very concept of shifting books and decide that she forgot to do it out of convenience.

Whatever the case, one of the reasons the shelves were so tight is because the greenhorns keep shelving new books in them. We recently had a motherload of new books arrive and the new books section became wildly overcrowded. The greenhorns, who've often been guilty of shelving the new books on a good day, asked and were given permission to shelve some of the older new books on the walls rather than stick to our usual 6 months in the New Section rule for new books on the walls to free up room in the new section. Many of the ones I've found, though, were from as recent as last month, so they weren't exactly being picky about which ones they shelved.

Oddly, as much animosity as I've had toward Ms. S, I've recently found that my dislike of her has been growing far less. With the above example, she's clearly not started doing her job to perfection or anything. However, now that she's had a year under her belt, she has gotten better and has stopped exhibitting quite the degree of laziness we're accustomed to seeing. Either that or we've just gotten accustomed to it and are no longer so offended.

Further oddly, when she arrived for her shift the other day, I found myself greeting her with genuine friendliness.

Maybe I'm coming down with something.

No, I really do think she's actually gotten better. She still asks lots of questions, but the questions are no longer so dumb and with such obvious answers as they once were. Furthermore, she seems far less surly than she has been. Maybe its just the sort of job that takes some people about a year to settle in to. It took Ms. M that long to acheive a status in which we did not curse her very name. Now she's a valued employee who has graduated greenhorndom and acheived the rank of "Liberry" Ass. I'm not yet ready to grant that to Ms. S, but I can forsee a day when I might.

Actual Semi-Paraphrased Second-Hand Information Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #80

SETTING— My "liberry" shortly after Eternal Newbie Greenhorn, Ms. S, arrives for her afternoon shift. UberBoss Mrs. A and Next-in-Command Uber Boss Mrs. C are present at the circ desk when Ms. S appears.

MRS. C— (To Ms. S) As soon as you get clocked in, you can go upstairs and read the shelves.

MS. S— No. I'm going to go read the YAs.

(She actually said that, "No. I'm going to go read the YA's." Said it not merely to a fellow employee but to her superior and in front of her Uber Superior. Not, "I'd PREFER to go and read the YA's," but "NO, I'm GOING to go read the YA's.")

(There followed a pause)

MRS. A— (To Ms. S) Mrs. C just told you to go upstairs and read the shelves in non-fiction. That's what you're going to do.

MRS. C— You can read the YA's (which are downstairs) when we're gone. You can only read upstairs while there are other people here to watch the desk.

MS. S— (Grunts loudly in irritation as she shuffles off to do as she was told.)

Shortly after this, Mrs. A followed, taking Ms. S into her office for a more private meeting, the contents of which I can only speculate about. Unfortunately, the end result was merely a verbal reprimand and not an actual firing.

A-MINUS: 12

Who's Got the 10 and a Half (minus the half) 2007?

My fellow "liberry" ass. and former newbie greenhorn, Ms. M, is almost always willing to fill in whenever any of the rest of the staff have pressing outside scheduling conflicts. I had one of those earlier this week and she was kind enough to fill in for me during it. She's actually racked up quite a bit of credit with me in that regard over the past few months, so when I heard she needed Thursday off I figured it was time to pay her back. Granted, I was already scheduled to be at work from 9 to 1 today, which would turn this into a 10 hour shift. I agreed all the same. It's been a while since I've had a 10 hour shift, but in the past they've been great blogging fodder. And at least with Mrs. A, B, C and J present, it wouldn't be a 10 hour solo shift, which is what my previous 10 hour shifts have usually been. The drawback to it being a near full staff shift, though, is that it's difficult to blog it in real time. So I spent the day jotting notes to myself on scrap paper and tucking them into spare pockets to be able to reconstruct at home the following day. 

9:02 a.m.— I arrive at work 2 minutes after 9 due to leaving the house a bit late. However, it was completely necessary for me to make a new thermos full of coffee.

9:05 a.m.— The Coot arrives for what will likely be a 10 hour stay himself. He heads for his favorite seat outside Mrs. A's office where, as in accordance with tradition, he will groan and wail and burp and fart whenever Mrs. A has to use the phone or, indeed, her voice. 

9:15 a.m.— I process the huge stack of periodicals that have piled up since I was last here. As I do so, Mrs. C and Mrs. B are inspecting the general fiction walls, pulling shelving slips out of books and noting whether or not they are shelved correctly. Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S, as per usual, has several that are misshelved, a surprise to no one.  

9:37 a.m.— The staff discusses the fact that we have to move story hour from our usual activity area to the upstairs nonfiction floor due to the fact that we're having a class of violinists and their instructor in today to play for the story hour kids. We put signs up to that effect on the activity room door and then another on the library's front door in the hope that our traditional late comers, (i.e. little Kayla's family), will note them and be quiet when entering. 

9:41 a.m.— Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine arrives for his first computer shift of the day. 

9:45 a.m.— A few months back, Ms. S ran out of her usual orange shelving slips. At that point, she cut out and carefully initialed a large supply of pink shelving slips and in the intervening months, she's continued to use both orange and pink. Recently, former newbie greenhorn Ms. M ran out of her yellow shelving slips, so she too cut a bunch out of pink ones and carefully initialed them, apparently so that they wouldn't be confused with Ms. S's pink shelving slips. While sorting the various slips that Mrs. C and Mrs. B pulled earlier, I make a command decision and announce to the rest of the staff at hand that I am throwing away both sets of pink slips on the grounds that it is moronic to have them in the first place.

9:54 a.m.— The Bakers arrive for story hour. They bring 12,000 books to return. Amazingly, all of their books are from our library branch. 

9:55 a.m.— Mr. B-Natural arrives for his first computer session. He puts 10:00 as his signup time, no doubt thinking it will give him five extra minutes. I start his timer so it won't. 

10:00 a.m.— Story Hour begins. Kayla's family fails to arrive, a surprise to no one. Tuning of stringed instruments can be heard through the very floor above my head. I'm sure the Coot is thrilled.  

10:05 a.m.— I start checking the shelves for this week's overdues.  

10:10 a.m. — Little Kayla's family still has yet to arrive. 

10:27 a.m.— Mr. B-Natural departs, inquiring about the violin noise as he does.  

10:46 a.m.— While still checking shelves for overdues, I see that someone's flagged one of the books I shelved as being misshelved. I double check it, but cannot determine how it is misshelved. It's a mystery book shelved in the mysteries section, it's way too old to be in new fiction, and it's author, Davis, is shelved neatly after Davies and before Debin, just as it should be. What gives?  

11:00 a.m.— Story hour concludes. I notice Gene disappeared at some point, for he is no longer on his computer, nor the can, nor elsewhere in the building. 

11:16 a.m.— No way. It's not even noon and the mail has already arrived. Glory be!  

11:28 a.m.— I sneak away to my hidy-hole in the supply cabinet and retrieve my emergency toothbrush, with which I head to the sink outside our little public restroom under the stairs to brush my teeth and rid myself of coffee breath. No sooner is the brush in my mouth than the Coot squeezes past me to use the can. No good can come of this. I hurriedly brush my teeth and flee the area before he can release any fumes at me.  

11:30 a.m.— I spy the Coot outside, headed for his car. He better have flushed.  

11:40 to 11:47 a.m.— Mrs. A, Mrs. B, Mrs. J and I all stand around and tell Ms. S stories, chronicling her latest misadventures in dumbassity. 

 11:50 a.m. — While pulling some shelving slips Mrs. C and Mrs. B missed, I find another pink shelving slip, this one with Ms. S’s initials on one side and Ms. M’s initials on the other. Damn, they’re conspiring together now!!  

12:03 p.m. — I walk down the street to the local market to pick up one of their impressively generous and patron-awe-inspiring salads for lunch.  

12:10 p.m. — I return to the "liberry" and begin eating my impressive and tasty salad.  

12:18 p.m. — Mr. Little Stupid arrives for a computer.  

12:28 p.m. — I finish my salad and go brush my teeth again. Eww, salad breath.  

12:34 p.m. — I receive a phone call from one of the New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids. I think it's Delbert. He inquires as to whether or not he will be allowed to use a computer should he turn up at the library. It's our policy, you see, that school-aged children of appropriate computer-usage age, even equipped with a permission slip on file, are not allowed to use a computer during school hours, unless they are home school students doing genuine research. According to Delbert, though, he is being schooled in an alternative school, which means he's gotten in trouble at regular school and has been sent there for reform. The alternative school doesn't meet until after 4, so he thinks this is a loophole. I bring it up to Mrs. A and C and they say he can only use a computer during normal school hours if he has a signed letter from his alternative school teacher saying he can, and then can only use it for genuine research. He can't come in and surf MySpace. I gleefully inform him of this.  

12:40 p.m. — Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch arrives for computer time. He brings his mommy with him, who I believe he still lives with and is likely his only means of transportation. What a colossal loser. 

12: 42 p.m. — The rest of the staff leave for lunch. It is Mrs. J's birthday and they're taking her to Crapplebees. Wow, and I thought we liked Mrs. J.  

12:57 p.m. — Jimmy and mommy leave.  

1:00 p.m. — I get a few minutes of peace and begin typing this up in hopes of putting some of it up on the blog early. 

1:04 p.m. — Sudden rush on computers, including a usually clueless wireless guy who will no doubt have trouble logging on and then have to get me to help him.  

1:10 p.m. — Our first "What are your hours?" call of the day. 

1:13 p.m.— Mr. Little stupid approaches the desk and asks me how to spell the word "talk." I tell him.  

1:15 p.m.— Lennie arrives for his Thursday shift. He complains that "it's so hot you can't stand it." He notices me typing and becomes very interested. I stop. 

1:30 p.m.— An old man with a long silver beard arrives saying he has 25 boxes of book donations for us, where do we want them? Since we aren't busy at all, I tell him to drive around to our storage area (i.e. the basement) and I'll come out and help him haul them in.  

1:31 p.m. — There's a sudden rush on the desk, with checkouts and reference questions. The phone also starts ringing with people calling for Mrs. C. I'm the only one on staff, except for Lennie and now can't leave the desk to go help this old man haul boxes. Instead, I send Lennie out and tell him to go unlock the basement and help haul boxes. He leaves.  

1:38 p.m.— The patron tide stemmed, I dash out to the basement door. The old man has two other slightly younger men helping him haul boxes out of a truck and into the basement. Lennie is standing there idly, saying that he'll lock the door back when they finish. I tell him that he's supposed to be helping them, but he doesn't move. One of the old men tells me that they have quite a few more boxes of books they wish to donate. I tell him he'd better give us a few days to get things sorted and cleared out to the BIGGER storage area, before bringing in any more. Mrs. B, our resident donation sorter and reboxer, is going to faint when she sees all these boxes. She only just yesterday got the basement and current crop of book donations sorted and sent off to our larger storage area, off property.  

1:40 p.m.— I dash back inside where a patron is waiting. 

 1:56 p.m. — Lennie won't quit snooping whenever I try to continue typing this up. I don't know how much he's capable of reading, but I learned long ago not to underestimate him. He seems to sense that I'm doing something of interest, though, and keeps asking me questions, like "Who are you writing a letter to?" "Myself," I tell him. I switch from the screen to a scrap of paper, but he's even now trying to get a gander of this very note.  

2:00 p.m. — The rest of the staff returns from lunch.  

2:07 p.m.— I ask Mrs. C and Mrs. B why my book in the mysteries was flagged as misshelved. They say they weren't the ones who flagged it, though. Must be a dumbass newbie greenhorn who did it as some sort of half-assed revenge for my flagging all their misshelved books over the past few months. They can't even get that right.  

2:12 p.m.— I leave for an extended break. Mrs. C tells me I can take more than an hour, as I'm the poor soul on til closing.  

3:30 p.m.— I return. Mrs. C says that drama has occurred in my absence. She says an older lady phoned and asked Mrs. B if there was a man here delivering books to be donated. When told that there had been some men delivering books earlier, who were now gone, the lady said she wanted to leave a message for the man that he needed to phone home. Then the lady burst into tears and hung up. No idea what that was all about. The other news, though, is that the old guys who donated the books took all the empty boxes we'd been saving to sort donated books into. Mrs. B had been begging for some for a week and now they were gone. Lennie told Mrs. C that the men asked him if they could take the boxes but he didn't answer them, so they took them anyway. We'll get them back, most likely in a few days when they bring more books. 

3:45 p.m.— I see that Delbert, the aforementioned Neighborhood Auxiliary League Member, is now using a computer. It's after school hours are over, so there's no rule against it. However, he's been on for over half an hour now and I have to bust him off for another patron. Mr. Little Stupid is still around too, but had, apparently been busted off before because he's now on a different computer than when I left. When I go to reboot Delbert's station, Mr. Little Stupid asks me how to spell "work."  

3:59 p.m.— Fatty Manchild arrives for a computer. He's not wearing jams, per se, but he is wearing shorts. They look to be of the no-print, off-white, board-short variety.  

4:06 p.m.— Mr. Little Stupid finally leaves.  

4:18 p.m.— A woman and three children, each of whom is whining for books, approaches the desk. I hear her tell them that they can't have any books from our library because they have their own library at school to borrow from. They persist. She tells them that kids aren't allowed to have library cards at our library. Never mind the fact that they just exited the CHILDREN'S room, this is what she says. I suspect she's lying to them to get them to quit whining. They continue. She spies me and says, "Kids can't get library cards here, can they?" Her "can they?" seems loaded with intent. "Um... I guess that all depends on what answer you're looking for," I tell her. "The truth," she says. "Okay. Sure, kids can get library cards here." This is not what the woman (their baby-sitter, I think) wants to hear, because she immediately tells the kids that she didn't trust them to check books out on her card since they'd lost so many from school. "But I only lost one, this year," one of the kids says. I gamely try to back her up a bit by telling them that we're really serious about getting our books back and will send our enforcer, Mrs. J, to come get them. They leave with only the sitter's books.  

4:30 p.m.— Yay! I get to make a trip to the post office. People hate us at the post office. Not the postal workers themselves, who seem incapable of caring how many packages we have to mail each week; it's the other customers who hate us for clogging up the lines for 10 minutes at a stretch. I feel their pain. Fortunately, we only have one box and an envelope to mail and I get them sent off without incident.  

4:47 p.m.— I return to find that someone has had a blowout in the public restroom while I was gone and the whole reference hall is super butt-fume stinky.  

5:05 p.m.— Everyone else on staff leaves for the day.  

6:00 p.m.— Been pretty slow going. I've called all my holds and had time to type a bit.  

6:01 p.m.— A patron brings in a book for return. He looks ever so slightly miffed that he actually had to come in the building to do this, as the book return stays locked during hours we're open. 

6:05 p.m.— Wow, an honest to God reference question! A lady wanted organizational information about the W0rld Hea1th Organizati0n and the Pan Amer!can Hea1th Organizati0n. We have no books specifically on them but EBSC0 had loads of articles, two of which seemed to suit her criteria. I print them for her. She writes us a check for a whole dollar. 

6:18 p.m.— A little kid—who's here with his mom and is maybe 7 years of age, if that—comes up to the desk to tell me about how much he likes Shrek and Shrek II and Shrek the Third, even though he's not seen it. He has matching fake tribal tatoos extending from beneath his short sleeved shirt down his arms nearly to his wrists. At least, I hope they're fake; his mom is sporting a few real tattoos. 

6:24 p.m.— Some child is screaming outside. It's that sort of high-pitched, make a dog's ears bleed and your spine seize up sort of squeal that should be reserved only for occasions when murder is about to be committed, but whatever kid it is seems to be flinging it around the neighborhood pretty liberally. It's not a cry of distress. Most likely it's more a scream meaning: "It's raining and I'm getting wet!" 

6:45 p.m.— Closing duties begin in earnest.  

6:47 p.m. — the Purple Nun's brother arrives, but leaves within a few minutes. 

6:55 p.m.— And I am alone and nearly finished for the day. 

6:56 p.m.— Some goofa pulls up outside, no doubt with 400 books to return. 

6:56 p.m.— False alarm. They were just parking here to walk downtown. 

7:00 p.m. — We are officially closed.

"...and I'll take a 1040 EZ, if you got it."

I rather expected today be a full on tax day nightmare, with patrons hounding me for obscure tax forms covering multiple states and even extradimensional realities the whole day long. Astoundingly it wasn't.

Oh, people came in for tax forms, all right, but I noticed that many of them did it almost as an afterthought. They'd browse the shelves, find a couple of books, pick a couple of nostrils, check out their selection, and then half-way out the door of the building, their foot hovering in mid-step, they'd pause, look thoughtful for a long moment, then turn around and pick up a tax form or two, as though they had weeks and weeks to get them filled out and mailed. This happened repeatedly.

No, the most trouble I've had out of the tax people recently was during the chaos of Friday the 13th, when a kid of barely employable age came in seeking a 1099. Now, I knew we didn't have any 1099s and that we couldn't print them from the IRS site due to the form being a carbon copy layered form, but I thought it would be both an object lesson and amusing to see how perpetual newbie greenhorn Ms. S handled the situation. We've given her instructions on all aspects of her job in the past, but she has yet to listen to any of us. Let her fire up the ol' innanet and see how far she gets, I thought.

"What sort of 1099 do you need?" she asked, after locating the IRS forms page in just under a minute.

"Um... a 1099," the kid repeated.

"They don't list a 1099. It has 1099-A, 1099-B, 1099-C and lots of others, but not a 1099. Which one do you need?"

"Uh... Um... I don't know."

There was a long silence. After it drew out into an uncomfortable one, I stepped in.

"Why don't you try loading one of them?"

"Huh?" Ms. S said.

"Load one of them."

"Which one?"

"It doesn't matter."

She looked at me blankly, so I stepped over to her terminal and pointed to the 1099-A.

"Load that one."

She loaded it and the little note explaining that the 1099 forms are not to be printed from the website and are shown only as an example of what such forms might look like if encountered in the real world, popped up on the first page. Ms. S still didn't seem to get it. So I explained to the kid the nature of the form and how we couldn't print one for him even if he knew which form it was he required.

"Well, how do I find out what form I need?"

"I don't know. You should probably ask your employer."

The kid didn't seem to like that option, but persevered with, "Well, where do I get the forms?"

"I don't know that either," I said. "LOCALLY OWNED OFFICE SUPPLY PLACE has carried them in the past, but they might make you buy a whole pack. You might also ask your employer."

"Oh, the Irony!!!" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 5)

In addition to working at the "liberry" part time, our perpetual Newbie Greenhorn, Ms. S, also works in the fast food industry. Often she comes directly from a shift at her fast food job for a shift at the "liberry." You might think this would cause us problems of having to smell that fast-foody smell that tends to sink into your pores and follow you around (believe me, I've worked in enough pizza joints to know), but, both fortunately and oddly, she doesn't smell that way at all.

The rest of our staff have often speculated on the many ways she probably handles her fast food job, imaginging much the same behavior as we witness in her "liberry" job. None of us, however, have been brave enough to venture to her particular restaurant since we learned of her employment there.

Last week, while Mrs. B and I were engaged in some book processing, Ms. S arrived for her shift. She soon announced that she had been very annoyed at her fast food job. Mrs. B inquired as to why.

"There's this new girl there and I had to train her," Ms. S said. "I was showing her how to take orders and I took a few orders and was showing her how and then I told her to try a few on her own. Well, she kept stopping to ask me questions and ask the manager questions. It was just one question after another until I wanted to scream!"

Mrs. B and I became very silent at this point. I kept my eyes locked onto the circ-desk computer screen. I knew that if Mrs. B and I were to make eye contact at that point, we would both completely lose our shit due to having just been subjected to the most ironic statements we're likely to hear all year.

Yes, Ms. S—an employee who after 9 months on the job still has to be told and retold some of the more basic functions of her job—was complaining about a brand new employee not having mastered the finer points of taking a fast food order.

Yes, Ms. S—a person who thinks up the most inane and obvious questions, holding them like a pool of mercury in the hermetically-sealed vault of her little pea-brain, saving them until 5p when we are all headed out the door to leave her on her own, then releasing them upon us in a blinding, drowning, takes ten minutes to answer `em all torrent—had just complained about someone else asking too many questions.

Yes, Ms. S—the author of some of the dumbest questions on record, with the most painfully apparent answers, not to mention the same newbie greenhorn who thinks nothing of phoning up Mrs. C at home, repeatedly, over the course of an entire weekend, to ask said moronic questions, ("Uhhhh, hey, whut do I cover books with when I run out of ten inch book wrap?"; "Uhhhh, hey, whut am I supposed to do with the interlibrary loans that won't fit in our already overstuffed mail pouch?"; "Uhh, hey, one of our patron computers isn't working; should I keep putting patrons on it, anyway?")—was complaining about dumb questions being asked by a newbie greenhorn.

During the midst of my fight to keep from belting out cackles of irony-spawned laughter, Mrs. C entered the room and gave my quivering dam of a face a quizzical look. I tried to convey, "I'll tell you later" using only my left eyebrow, but didn't think the message quite communicated through my barely-contained amusement.

"I'm... going to go... take some books... to the basement," I said.

"Oh, take MS. S with you and show her where we keep the bindery books," Mrs. C said.

O.T.I.

"Get out of Blog Free" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 4)

Found out today that I fudged up in my reporting of yesterday's story.

It's become something of a weekly tradition for the staff to share stories about Ms. S on Thursday mornings. This is because we have the highest concentration of staff members at that point and also because Ms. S is never among that concentration. Today's discussion was jumpstarted by the fact that despite both I and Mrs. C having told Ms. S to stop cutting up the spine label sheets because they gum up the typewriter, we found yet another pile of her brutal label leavings. It looked like some kind of gruesome, mishapen paperdoll chain. Mrs. A left it by the typewriter and slapped a note on it reading, "There will be no more spine labels cut this way. It is wasteful and they stick to the typewriter."

My conversation with Mrs. C and Mrs. B progressed a bit more and I asked, "Has MRS. A said anything about why we haven't just gotten rid of MS. S?"

Both shook their heads. We then talked about the prospect somewhat. I wondered if perhaps Mrs. A, knowing how unskilled and newbie greenhornish Ms. S is, was just giving her the necessary time for our on-the-job training to finally kick in. After all, it took former Newbie Greenhorn Ms. M almost a full year to finally stop screwing things up on a near habitual level and become a cherished fellow "Liberry" Ass. Eight months ago we were calling for her head too, but now we love her and think she's doing a respectable job. There is kind of a learning curve to the job and even those of us who've been at it for years still get called up short by some new patron-spawned twist, on occasion. Getting into the rhythm of things can take a long time for skilled people, let alone someone with no discernible customer service skills such as Ms. S. That said, though, all evidence seems to point to Ms. S being a sour mixed drink composed of two parts lazy to one part incompetence, with a generous chaser of stubborn refusal to follow directions no matter how many times they're given.

"Did MRS. A hear the story about MS. S ignoring the patron while she made a greeting card?" I asked. To me, this was the latest prime bit of evidence that Ms. S just doesn't "get" it.

"A greeting card?" Mrs. B asked. "You didn't tell me about her making a greeting card."

I was taken aback. For a moment, I thought I'd slipped into a parallel universe in which Mrs. B hadn't been the person to tell me the greeting card story.

"No. Wait. You told..." I began.

"Ohhh, no. She wasn't making a greeting card," Mrs B said. "She was making a library card."

Thinking about the retelling I'd heard, Mrs. B had not actually said greeting card, but had only said that Ms. S had been making a card. My brain was the one that made the leap to greeting card. A library card at least made more sense. I can kind of see how Ms. S might be so absorbed in making a library card that she would ignore a patron. Not to say that this is at all excusable, it's just that the way her brain seems to work she would feel completely justified in ignoring her customer service responsibilities because she was so engrossed at "doing her job."

So, it looks like I reported the event incorrectly here through my own faulty journalism. I'm tempted to give Ms. S a "Get Out of Blog Free" card to make up for it, though at this point in the entry that's a bit moot.

"Get Well Soon!" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 3)

My intrepid reporter, Mrs. B, often gives me the best Ms. S stories, mostly because they have to work together more often.

Mrs. B related to me that one day, while Ms. S was working the circ desk, she became engrossed in creating an online greeting card using the circulation computer. Ms. S spent quite a bit of time at it, getting the details just right, and was so thoroughly absorbed with her task that when a patron stepped up to the desk for help, Ms. S completely ignored him. Mrs. B, watching from afar, kept waiting for Ms. S to pause and ask the gentleman how she could help him, being as how he was standing a foot and a half away from her, clearly waiting to be assisted. She didn't. As for the patron, he didn't interrupt her, cough politely, or even say "Excuse me" or anything. He just stood there, waiting for Ms. S to wrap up what she was doing and ask if he needed help. Again, she didn't. She just kept right on plugging away at her greeting card.

Seeing that Ms. S was entranced, Mrs. B dashed behind the desk herself and asked the patron if she could help him. He explained that he was looking for a particular book and had been unable to find it on the shelf and wanted help to make sure we even owned it. Since this was all said aloud, in direct proximity to Ms. S, Mrs. B waited politely for Ms. S to catch wind of the conversation and realize she was hogging up the circulation computer that Mrs. B needed for this search. She didn't. Mrs. B finally had to tap her on the shoulder and tell her to get out of the way.

Now, I'm no stranger for using the circulation computer to do non-work related projects. However, I do not do them to the exclusion of my job. Neither Mrs. B nor I could think of any reason beyond sheer, pig-headed stupidity that Ms. S would so actively ignore a patron like this. I shudder to think of what goes on during her solo shifts on the weekends.

"Label me Pissed" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 2)

It's pretty much been confirmed that the origin of nearly every problem we have with Ms. S can be traced back to her extreme laziness. She will actually do phenomenal amounts of work to get out of doing only a little work.

For instance, a few weeks back Mrs. C and Mrs. B went through our entire biography section to check which books had been inconsistently spine-labled with "BIO" instead of Dewey "92" by previous catalogers. They then printed new spine labels to replace the faulty ones. As Ms. S is ostensibly responsible for order in the nonfiction shelves (BWAH HA ha aha ahaaaah!), the task of affixing those new labels was given to her. It took her DAYS to accomplish this, because she insisted on cutting out each individual spine label from the two and a half larger computer generated sheets of printed spine labels. She left the wax-paper backing on each label so they could remain loose and not stick to anything, then arranged them pleasantly across the surface of one of our tables before even attempting to look for books on which to affix them. These extra steps, you see, allowed her the maximum amount of time for her ass to remain planted in a chair rather than pacing the bio wall, simply cutting the labels off the larger pages and affixing them to the spines with a bit of book tape, as needed. I was sent up to help her, at one point, and blew through an uncut page of labels in under an hour.

Even after Ms. S finished those label pages, we discovered that not all the incorrectly labeled books had been present and accounted for when Mrs.es C and B did their original survey. It became Ms. S's task to type up more labels for the missing books, which she was told to do using our typewriter and some of the narrow sheets of labels we normally use to do spine labels. Of course, after she'd typed some of them, she found it gave her more chair time to cut all of those labels out too, wax-backing and all. This gave her neat little loose labels, but left holes in the overall label sheets, rendering the blank labels left there unusable because they were then incapable of being fed back into the typewriter without gumming up the whole works. She tried anyway, of course, and then left a note to explain that the reason she hadn't finished all of her labels, nor affixed any of them to actual books, was because the typewriter was utterly jammed up and she couldn't get the labels sheet out no matter what she tried.

The following morning, Mrs. C was fuming about this. It was just one more log of poop on the fragrant pile of excuses Ms. S has used to get out of doing her job. Mrs. C marched right over to the typewriter and, with barely a tug, retrieved the allegedly utterly jammed sheet of labels with almost no effort. She then gathered them up, along with all the biographies to be relabeled, and left the whole towering pile of them for Ms. S to do. (We'd like to think Ms. S is quickly learning that the jobs she is assigned do not go away just because she manages not to do them immediately, but we too have long since learned from history.)

When Ms. S returned, a day later, she eventually noticed her pile of books and the instructions taped to them. "How'd they get the labels out of the typewriter?" she asked me.

"I'm not sure," I said. Then I spied Mrs. C coming into the room. "How did you get the labels out of the typewriter, again?" I asked her.

"Just pulled them out," she said. "Yep, they came right out. Riiiight. On. Out. Just gave `em a tug, really, and they came out. No problem. Easy. Right out."

Ms. S mumbled something about them being utterly stuck when she'd tried it, but she decided to drop the subject. After all, she had a dozen freshly typed labels to cut out of the paper. We told her to stop doing that because it gums up the typewriter. We also had to explain to her YET AFRIGGINGAIN that the spine labels are actually supposed to be placed on the SPINES of the book, rather than on the front cover of the book where no one can see them without pulling the book off the shelf, further tempting patrons to reshelve it incorrectly.

"Oh, but I was just--"

"No, no. They go on the spine."

"Deposit One Brain" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 1)

One day, a couple weeks back, my boss Mrs. A was scheduled to be in meetings in her office for most of the day. Likewise, Mrs. C had pressing business to take care of via phone and Mrs. B needed to process the backlog of book donations for our booksale. When Ms. S arrived, she was told she would need to work the desk to free everyone else up for their tasks. Almost immediately upon clocking in, though, she fled the desk for the nonfiction shelves to "read" the sections she's responsible for keeping in order. (And I shudder at the thought tht I may one day be sent to check her work.)

Mrs. C sent Mrs. B to drag Ms. S back to the desk and repeated to her that she was to stay there. Everyone then went to their tasks, some close by, some far off, and left Ms. S to it.

Shortly after this, the wife of one of the warring parties in our ongoing battle for the c0ntract0r's manuals came in to inquire about their status. The wife mentioned to Ms. S that she'd phoned about them earlier in the day. Ms. S, who lives in fear of our deposit books, because they are a hassle and require attention to detail, immediately denied all knowledge of anything this lady might or might not have been told about the books and tried desperately to weasel out of having to deal with the situation by pleading ignorance to Mrs. C. Mrs. C, who was by then very much on the phone in the midst of her business, indicated, using her eyebrows alone, that she would, in fact, slaughter Ms. S if she didn't go deal with the situation and answer the wife's question, which was merely to see if we had any of the deposit books on hand that she wanted. As it turned out, we didn't have all of them, but it took a long time for Ms. S to determine this because she kept nervously and unsuccessfully trying to check the computer for them rather than simply walking to the shelf and having a gander. Mrs. C had to put her call on hold for a moment to alert Ms. S to this shortcut, at which point Ms. S finally went and retrieved the books we did have on hand.

That done, Ms. S still seemed at a complete loss as to how to tell which books among those required for the c0ntract0r's exam were currently checked out and not in the stack she'd brought to the desk. Mrs. C finally had to put her call on hold again, drag Ms. S over to the c0ntract0r's manuals MANUAL (hanging exactly where it always is, right where Ms. S has been told it can be found at least twice before), then show her how to turn to the big obvious bookmarked page to find the list of required books for the c0ntract0r's exam, and show her how to read the spines of the stack of books there on the desk, comparing them against those listed in the manual to see which one's weren't present. Ms. S still screwed it up, declaring to the patron that we didn't have the very book that was sitting RIGHT THERE on the top of the stack--a book, I might add, that Mrs. C had JUST used as an example to show Ms. S how to do the job.

Mrs. B walked back into the room then, prompting Ms. S to gratefully explain to her patron that Mrs. B had been the employee to whom she'd spoken on the phone ealier. Then Ms. S tried to make a break for the nonfiction room in order to ditch the whole matter in Mrs. B's lap.

Mrs. C again had to put her call on hold and explain to Ms. S that she would not be escaping her duty and that she would be the person who to finish the transaction.

Upon hearing this tale recounted, I suggested that we need to get Ms. S her own Unobstructed Doors aid on the grounds that she's clearly retarded.

L is for Lazy Week

We've had a lot more fun from our perpetual newbie greenhorn, Ms. S, over the past few weeks (and by "fun" I mean "shit"). In fact, I have something of a backlog of Ms. S stories. I've been hesitant to share them, though, because every time I post a Ms. S story, people leave comments asking why we haven't fired her yet. I'm afraid that's possibly a mystery for the ages to be speculated upon by future historians with better minds than mine. Granted, I'd really prefer it if she was fired, cause it would make my job easier and my desire to strangle people somewhat less strong. However, there's also something to be said for the entertainment value of keeping her around, which may yet prove to be the ultimate reason for not firing her in the mind of my boss.

So how `bout let's all just take it for granted that Ms. S is here to stay, she'll not be fired and will never leave of her own accord. This way, we can just sit back, relax and enjoy the show...

Ahhhh, so that explains a few things!

My boss, Mrs. A, announced that she's going to hold an intensive reference interview training session for everyone on staff. Not that most of us need it. Just some of us. Well, okay, one of us. And, no, not me. It's the usual Suspect.

The other day, Mrs. A found a lady wandering around our upstairs nonfiction room, going from shelf to shelf and looking very lost. Mrs. A asked the lady if she needed help and was told by the lady that she was looking for books about the history of two different local counties and had been told they would be found upstairs. As it turns out, the county histories are actually downstairs in our closed case collection, but that didn't matter so much since the lady hadn't even been given any call numbers to begin with. Just told that she could find the books upstairs in the history section. Nevermind that our history section is the largest section about a given topic in our entire library and sprawls across three different walls. Can you guess the name of the person who sent her upstairs? Why, yes, you are correct in guessing Ms. S.

Mrs. A was naturally unhappy about this turn of events and went down to get Ms. S's side of the story. Surely things could not be as bad as they seemed. No, they were actually worse. She came to find out that Ms. S had no idea that the lady was looking for county histories in the first place. According to Ms. S, she'd been shelving books when the lady came in and asked where she could find histories. Ms. S, rather than going to the OPAC and conducting a reference interview to narrow down the subject to see what precisely the lady was looking for and where precisely on the three walls of history it might be located, didn't even leave her shelving but just told her that history was upstairs and waived a hand in the general area of the ceiling, above which the books were located. (She actually admitted to this, oblivious to the inherent problems.)

Mrs. A explained to her that this was unacceptable and that she should have gone to the OPAC and helped the woman narrow it down, because when it comes to history seekers they're always going to be looking for something specific. And besides that, the books the lady wanted were not upstairs in the first place.

"But I was busy," Ms. S reportedly responded. Yes, that's right: Ms. S, dog turd smeared in thick carpet, carried in on the bottom of the shoes of the very name of good shelvers planetwide that she is, was too busy shelving to help a patron.

"And she has a degree in this," I reminded my coworkers who had gathered to hear Mrs. A's tale.

"Actually, no," Mrs. A said. See, we had been lead to believe that Ms. S had some sort of undergraduate degree in library sciences because she had told us that she'd gone to school for it and had previously worked in a library. However, according to Mrs. A, Ms. S actually has a general studies associate's degree with a library science emphasis. This doesn't actually mean she took any sort of classes about library science. What it means is that she was allowed to intern at a library during her 2 years at school. The particular library she interned with put her on the circ desk where her sole job was to check books in and out. And that was the extent of her training before darkening our door.

"Ahh, so that explains a few things," I said.

"I just can't imagine it," Mrs. A said. "Do you think that if she worked in a restaurant and refused to go over and help a customer because she was busy with something else, they'd let her get away with it?"

I allowed a slight pause.

"Well, she does work in a restaurant," I said. "And I imagine if we went there, we'd see her doing precisely that."

Mrs. A bit her lip. "You're probably right."

Ad Infinitum

Yesterday morning, a lady patron came in, signed up for a computer, then turned to me and said, "By the way. I was here last night and had to buy a computer disc to save what I was working on, but the girl at the desk wouldn't let me pay her because she said she had closed out the cash box already. So, I owed her 50 cents." The lady then passed over the 50 cents.

Now, I knew that newbie greenhorn Ms. S had been on shift the night before and I knew that she has a penchant for tallying up the cashbox as early in her shift as she possibly can. So I asked, "About what time was that?"

"Oh, right at 7," the lady said, though she could have said anything from 4:30 on and I would have believed it. While I wasn't surprised to hear of Ms. S refusing money for services rendered in order to get out of having to retally the cashbox, we've repeatedly—allow me to further stress, *REPEATEDLY* (and, if I were any kind of real web coder, that word would appear to be aflame, shooting fireworks from its ass and singing Deee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart")—explained to her that if someone pays her for something after the cash box has been tallied, she is welcome to take their money, deposit it into the cash box, take out a new date due slip and stick it to the counter beside the fines and copier tally slip of the current day, forward the date due stamp ahead one day, stamp the top of the new slip and then write down the amount paid on it so that it will be accounted for the following day. Doing that, however, would have required effort, so it didn't get done.

The patron wasn't finished with her tale, though. As I logged her onto her computer, she explained that the reason she had to purchase a disc in the first place was because she had been cutting and pasting vital information from websites into a Word document for quite some time, but when Ms. S came back to tell her the library was soon to close she also told the lady that she couldn't print any of what she'd been pasting because "I've already shut off the printer for the day." Okay, this was a flat out lie because we never—NEHehehHEHHHVER— shut off the printer. It simply doesn't happen. It stays on all the time and was, in fact, on this morning when we opened. The last time that printer's off switch saw any action was over two years ago when the damned thing refused to print for us one day and I was forced to reason with it using something other than a stick. What Ms. S was really saying was, "I've already tallied up the cash box for the day, which I probably did at 6:02, and I'm too lazy to do any more math tonight so I don't want to accept any of your money for prints made. Instead, I'm just going to say I shut down the printer already, a lie I hope you'll completely swallow before going away."

I smiled as I listened to the story. The lady wasn't even complaining, though. In fact, she thought that she herself was in the wrong for daring to want to print something so close to closing time. She even commented that Ms. S was very nice about it all and had been very patient with her. I decided not to tell her that Ms. S was full of shit. Instead, I ran and tattled to my boss Mrs. A, who, in turn, became delighted to have more evidence—from a patron, no less—to prove that Ms. S STILL isn't doing her damned job right.

Later, when the other alphabet squad arrived, we discussed it.

"I think we're going to HAVE to tell her she's not allowed to count the cashbox until 7 p.m.," Mrs. A said.

"Well, no," I said. "She could count it earlier if she'd just put it on a new tally slip like we've told her to do again and again."

"No, no. That's something YOU can do if you count the cashbox early," Mrs. C said. "MS. S has to do it at 7. It's a special rule for her."

"Ah."

Oops, spoke too soon

A lady patron arrived at the circ desk and alerted me we had an interlibrary loan for her. I fetched it from our holds cabinet while the lady patron dug in her purse for her card. This often happens with ILL-seeking patrons, particularly in the past couple of years that we've been enforcing the YES, YOU NEED YOUR DAMN CARD policy.

"Oh, no," I said, "we don't need your card for interlibrary loans."

"You don't?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, I didn't think so, but I came in without my card the other day and the young lady here said I had to have it. I tried to explain that I never have for interlibrary loans before, but she wouldn't back down. By the time I'd walked back home to get it, I decided to just wait."

"Do you remember which day this was?" I asked, knowing the answer already.

"Mmm... a couple days ago. Probably Saturday."

"Ah. I see." Yep, I was right. Not surprisingly, it had been Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S being overzealous about her job. "Well, I apologize for that."

"Oh, it's no problem. I needed the walk."

The lady patron signed her ILL slip and left, at which point I turned to Mrs. C and we both exchanged looks of befuddlement at Ms. S's stupidity.

"What did she even...? Was she trying to...? Is it even possible? I mean, how could...?" I said.

"I don't know," Mrs. C said.

Our confusion may seem odd, but that's probably just because you don't know how ILLs work around here. We don't require a card for ILLs because we don't check them out on the patron's library card at all. The interlibrary loaned books, you see, are already checked out on OUR library's library card before they're even mailed to us. Once we receive it, we check the appropriate accordion file folder to see who wanted it locally, process that information into our ILL binder so that we have a record of the book's title, the patron requesting it and its due date, then we give it to that patron and have them sign the accompanying ILL slip to show that they received it. Again, we DO NOT check the book out to them on their library card. That screws up the whole process for us and for the other libraries, as once a book is checked out to a patron and not a library it suddenly becomes subject to a much less generous loan time (say 2 weeks instead of a month) and causes other problems down the line. So the fact that Ms. S insisted on seeing a card might mean she's been checking the ILLs out on patron cards, screwing up not only our library but others as well.

The madness--it's spreading!