Friends to the Rescue

Well, on a regular basis, ya'll give me a hard time about my habit of buying books from the ongoing Friends of the Library booksale here. But ha! Listen to this!

A teen girl came up to the Info Desk today and needed a specific memoir...very obscure...only two libraries in our system owned it and both copies were checked out. She needed it for a school report due, like, yesterday.

The title rang a bell with me..."Hey, self" I thought to myself. "You just saw that book (which you've never ever heard of before) on the booksale shelf just yesterday. Oh yeah! I bet it's still there!" So I told her about it, and we went running downstairs to see if it was still for sale. Everything went in slow-mo, and I could hear the Chariots of Fire theme song in my head. Both arms extended, reaching towards the books on the sale shelf...reaching....reaching....Yes! The book was still there. I was so pleased, I even paid for it myself. A whole 50 cents.

And that is why I shop the used book sale shelf in our library. It's a selfless act, really. ;)

Finishing Up Bathroom Day

Pardon me while I use a little Purell. I'm getting a bit creeped out.

It must be bathroom day

A patron came to the desk with a section of the local paper. He had been reading the paper and brought a section of it with him to the Gents' and when he came back the rest of the paper was gone. I did not offer to take the section. I asked him to put the newspaper, which he presumably held with his unwashed poo-wiping hand, on a shelving cart. Mental note: buy own newspaper unless you grab it first thing in the morning.

Here's a new one...

A patron came up to tell me that there was somebody asleep in the Men's room. I admit, I was incredulous. The patron insisted, though. "He's in the stall, snoring away. See for yourself." Being the token Y chromosome on the staff, this lovely task fell to me. Thanking my lucky stars that I got that Masters degree after all, I took a deep breath and plunged in. The patron was right. Stall locked and some world class snorage going down. Reacting decisively, I pounded on the door.
"Hey, wake up!" I said in my calm, self-assured voice, doing my best not to breathe in since this was the men's room after all.
Nothing. Pound, pound, pound! "Hey! No sleeping in there!"
I heard something that sounded a lot like "Hhhmmmmwwwffff," but I could be wrong.
"Okay! Finish up in there! Other people need the bathroom, too!"
"Ssswwwrrrgh," he opined, which I think means "Righto!"
I left and started breathing the relatively normal air of the library proper. I figured five minutes would do it before I needed to check again. After his five, I took another deep breath and waded in. He was at the sink, looking pretty bad but at least conscious and upright. Just your typical homeless guy.

Best Internet Interaction-Evah!

I was checking the identification of our Google users to make sure they were all 18 or had parental permission to use the unfiltered Google. A young woman pulled out a torn sheet of notebook paper with a note in pencil and said, "I have a note from my mom". I looked at the note and had to stop myself from giggling. It was written in a very juvenile hand and it was in PENCIL! I don't know many adults who write in PENCIL. I told her (nicely) to get off the Google and tell her mother to come in and sign a permission form.

It made my night.

A Brief Analysis

I tried to help this guy navigate an online job Website today. I tried hard, really I did, but had almost no luck. He just didn't get the whole computer thing. Which led to this small insight.

Me, too, I guess

Found in a returned book

Dear Serial Drunk Guy

Some people maintain that you can't smell vodka on people's breath. I am here to say that this is not correct.

Jack the Ripper

No, not like that. We have a patron who comes in one or two evenings a week and sits at a public access computer and rips CDs to his MP3 player. I kinda doubt that this is legal and I put a request in with the higher-ups to look into it and see if we are liable for anything. I understand that most folks check out CDs and do this at home, I'm just worried that we are in troubel for doing this on library equipment. Anyway, he just left and in the interest of full disclosure, I grabbed the CDs and present to you tonight's playlist.

Lauryn Hill: Unplugged
Paul Simon: Negotiations and Love Songs*
Barry White: Staying Power
Ike & Tina Turner: Greatest Hits
Third Eye Blind: Blue
Spinners: The Essential Spinners

Eclectic mix, heavy on the melody. Nice work, Jack.





* Some men should not wear hats. I should know.

You Probly Think This Song is About You

Automatic 4 Point Deduction for Spelling/Grammar, though. Interweb station find, of course.

Deck the Halls with Frozen Deskslaves

Last week it was hotter than a greenhouse, so I brought no sweater today. Mistake. I don't think I c-c-can t-t-ype mmmmuch l-longggggerrrr....

Maybe I could bust up the Interweb computers and burn them and several of their users for heat.

Happy Holidays to you, too.

I got in trouble just now because we don't have any holiday CDs. Or so I was told. Summoned to the Xmas music shelf, I was scolded for the fact that we only had 3 CDs of dubious quality in the section. Even pointing out the fact that the blessed day was only 2 weeks away and people cleaned out the section a month ago in joyful preparation thereof did no good. I refrained from giving her a "next time start earlier" sort of comment since this wouldn't help her now. I also didn't recommend that she check out her fave holiday music in the summer and, you know, violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act since that would not only be a crime but would also be totally sick to commit the crime in order to get a copy of Bette Midler or Andrea Bocelli or John Tesch serving up Silent Night.

Oh, for a freight entrance

As I have whined about before, people are always trying to get in on Sundays before we officially open. I forgot to mention that it is worse when the courier shows up to drop off books from other libraries in the system. We only have a main entrance and an emergency exit, so the courier props open the front door to bring in the dolly loads of books and stuff. And then people appear out of nowhere. I can understand...the door is open, lights on, busy people scurrying about, but some people do not want to take no for an answer. One person plead a special case because she just needed a museum pass that patrons can check out (sorry) and the other just wanted to use the Interweb (naturally, but sorry anyway). Oh, for a freight entrance!!

Let's Play "Count the Mistakes"

Found by an Internet station, of course.

Bottle Cap Lady

Whenever I close, there is a woman who comes in close to quitting time with a bag of bottle caps from some soda company's game. You have to enter some code from the cap to win something. Anyway, when she's there there is no possibility of closing on time since she is almost done, having ignored the polite reminders and barroom-style light flashing. She's here with her sticky bag of caps and her bottle cap kids. It's Sunday and the boy child needs a book from a very short list for school tomorrow. Of course they are long gone and he is dismayed. He's not a friendly or polite boy, so I have have taken a pass on sympathizing. His sister is a different matter. She is polite, so I put many seasons of Little House on the Prairie on hold for her. Mom is dissatisfied with the speed of our computers. She cannot enter secret codes nearly fast enough on our decrepit machines, once again making me wonder why again we are the ISP of last resort. Fifteen minutes to doors shut. I'm not optimistic. Excuse me while I let people know the bad news.

Closed is such hard word to understand

I work opening on Sunday. People NEED to get to teh Interweb on Sundays, so for the hour or so before the doors open, people try the door, notice it's locked and start knocking. It's not that we try to hide the hours--there's a sign right on the door that either says OPEN or CLOSED. I often can't see the face of the knocking person (to see if they are a volunteer who works before opening) because it is obscured by the sign. I guess that people see lights on and people scampering around pulling holds and assume that we MUST be open.