Some People Get All the Fun

While I was in the back doing something very important (probably whining about something stupid while making yet another pot of my famous coffee*), a coworker on the floor got to put out a fire some nice person set in a trash can.

He was, however, disappointed that it was so small and his foot did the trick. He told me that he considered waiting a minute in order to justify busting out the fire extinguisher.

* Famous, but not in a nice way.

Have a Heart, Willya?

A patron in his late teens and his mom came to the desk. They needed, I was informed in grave tones, directions to the Heart Institute. There's all kinds of hospitals around here. I asked if they knew which hospital it was associated with. They gave each other a "What's-up-with-the-moron" kind of look.

"It's not associated with a hospital," the mom said flatly.

I did my best to find it, but came up blank. Cancer Institute? No problem. Thoracic Surgery Institute? mais bien sûr. But no Heart Institute. I told them. They looked somewhere between surprised and peeved. Luckily, an astute coworker was also at the desk and told me that maybe what they wanted was the Art Institute.

Your Library, A Dog Parking Lot

I'm know it's very hot. I'm certain he's a very good boy. But unless you go through the charade of pretending he's a service dog, he's not coming in.

Lean on Me When You're Not Strong...I Mean Turn on Me

A patron wanted help doing a post office change of address thing, which I guess you need to do online now. I was really in the weeds at the desk, so I gave her a guest pass to our computers and told her to go to usps.gov and come back if she had trouble. Then I got back to the others I needed to serve. I forgot all about her as I looked up movies for people, showed a young student how to use the catalog and fulfilled my professional duty by telling people where the bathroom was and how to use the photocopier.

The address change woman crashed the line to tell me that she couldn't find the right page. I was not firm with her, since she'd already waited in line. Instead, I looked up the page for an address change. I was going to write it down, but it was one of those 87,000 character URLs with lots of numbers and question marks. I figured it might be beyond her.

"Why don't I email you a link that you can click on," I suggested.

"I don't have an email," she replied.

Looking at the undiminished line, I decided to use a URL shortener to make a reasonable URL for her. I pasted the bloated URL into bit.ly and then wrote down the shortened URL. Handing it to her, I told her what I had done and that all she needed to do was type in these ten characters exactly, and she'd get to the right URL. I told her to give it a shot and let me know if it didn't work and as soon as I was free I'd help her.

Going back to my line, I forgot about her completely. That is until a few minutes later when she walked by the desk. Pausing briefly, she said/kinda shouted: "That didn't work either. Thanks for nothing, asshole!"

Let's Make a Deal, Shall We?

How about this: I'll pretend that you are not dressed in flowy, white, semi-first-century-Galilee-chic garb and sandals with socks and head wear that looks like something a Berber warrior might wear if he was also into golf if you stop calling me "brother" while I look up your books for you, OK? Only one person gets to call me brother, and I only talk to her when a parent has a health crisis.

I Can't Decide

Was tonight's shift purgatorial, or was the pace just glacial?

Something of an Achievement, Really

The guy was very nearly bald, just a fringy tonsure of wispy hair around the back and sides. Yet he had prodigious amounts of dandruff on his shoulders. A real loaves and fishes moment in the scalp flake department.

deskslave's Head Explodes, Cognitive Dissonance Edition

Nice dad, two nice kids of about 6 and 8. Very nice transaction, help the boy find books about dinosaurs. Sign the kids up for summer reading, get them all jazzed up about their prize book. Everything would have been fine, I think, except for one thing. The dad (nice guy, as I think I mentioned) has on a black T-shirt with "I Support Single Mothers" in metalic silver writing on it. So far so good. Below that is a drawing in the same ink of a stripper humping the pole. Thanks, Dad!

Saturday Night Fights

It was a regular donnybrook here at the library as mint gum took on the reigning champion alcohol to see who would win the Battle of the Breath. With such heavy hitters as scotch and vodka, it was nearly a foregone conclusion that plucky peppermint would fall. Final score: Alcohol-2, Gum-0.

For You Noobs, The Correct Way to Answer a Reference Question

The Slightly Goofy Guy Who Will Talk To You All Day If You Let Him: Wouldn't it be great if they remade the 60's TV show Adam-12 as a movie and if Kent McCord and Martin Milner* made cameo appearances?

deskslave: Yes.



*For you Young People, the actors who played the main characters.