Irony Meter Broken Again! And I just got it recalibrated!

I helped a patron get a bunch of audio books. Thrillers, mysteries, etc. Some of them were even those $#&! Recorded Books which cost a fortune. He seemed pretty happy with our selection and found four or five titles he wanted to check out. I went back to the desk, metaphorically patting myself on the back for a job well done. 

As a coda, he later came up and, completely out of the blue, told me that he hated taxes and government and that if people got to keep their money instead of having Obama take it all (that’s how he put it) people would build things and the country would be a greater place. I think I showed admirable restraint in not pulling the big stack of audio books from his hands and suggesting that he find a free market solution to his lack of audio books. 

I Really am Sorry

I’m sorry you’re frustrated. Really. I believe you when you tell me that you don’t know how to use a computer and that you need help. And I will try to help you to the best of my ability. I’m a geezer myself and didn’t even touch a computer until I was in my 20s (a PDP 10 terminal: look it up) so I know how intimidating technology can be to those of us who grew up in a pre-digital age. Really.

(Believe it or not, this was super cool back in the day and you
had to sign up days in advance to use it for an hour or two. You think the patrons at the public access Internet computers are
jealous of their computer time? You have no idea.)

It is certainly cruel of your health insurance company to require you to fill out forms on line and I'm sorry that you are in a hurry. Forgive me for asking you if the document was a pdf file. I should have known that you would not know what a pdf was or even understand the concept of a file type. I wish our printing system were more intuitive and I will indeed refund the ten cents that our equipment maliciously "ate." I will not be offended with your response of "you better" when I inform you of this. Really. So now that we have gotten this out of the way and you have all your forms printed off--mostly for free--and I have used up 25 precious minutes of this, my only life (which I will never see again), could you please go the fuck away as soon as humanly possible? Thanks. Really.

From the "I Thought I'd Seen Everything" File

For whatever reason, people like to flush strange things down the toilets in libraries. Even the urinals. So many urinals have these little plastic grates in them to prevent people from flushing weird things that might cause big problems.

Today I was informed by an alert patron that the little red plastic grate thing had been taken. That's right: somebody stole the thing that all the guys literally piss on.

I think I came out even

To my credit, I did not order:

But to my eternal discredit, I did order: