Anonymous' Corollary to deskslave's Law of Computer Assistance

Brilliant. Thanks, Anonymous! Is that really your name?

deskslave's Law of Computer Assistance

Rachel Caine

Urban romance/fantasy author Rachel Caine is a pseudonym. I was at the always-helpful Fantastic Fiction trying to figure out the order of a series by her and discovered that her name is actually Roxanne Longstreet. If you ask me, Roxanne Longstreet sounds like the made up name.

Closing Ritual

There are a lot of rituals at closing time. One is walking around and telling people that we're closed. Sure they've heard the announcements at the half-hour before close mark and the fifteen minutes before close mark. Sure they saw the lights dim and heard the closing announcement. But it's impolite to not to pretend that they somehow managed to miss all the clues we provide. So we go around and tell the person on the laptop typing away that--wouldn't you know it--we're actually closed. They pretend to be surprised and then they pack up. Then we can tell the people browsing the videos that--as fate would have it--we are closed and that the machines to check them out are about to be turned off. And they get to act surprised and then bring their armload to the desk.

After I've rousted all them, I walk past a certain very nice woman and don't say anything to her as I walk toward the restrooms. There I guard the restroom doors. It really steams me when people who hang around after we're closed and don't leave until someone tells them to THEN want to spend some quality time in the bathroom. I draw the line there.

When the last people are gone, I can go back to the far corner where there is the very nice woman I mentioned earlier. She has terrible OCD. Or something. I leaver her alone until the last minute because she has to put everything in her bag, sling it over her shoulder, take it off her shoulder, rummage around in it, check her pockets, zip up the bag and then start the process again. Eventually that part is OK and she can push in her chair, then pull it out and look under the table a half dozen or eight times. Glowering or saying something won't do anything. I believe that she honestly wants to leave, but she just has to check off the boxes (again and again) before she goes.

If I were Raymond Carver, aside from being dead I would write a poignant story where the two rituals are woven together to give you a sense of something. Probably something bleak with just a touch of hope. Me, I just try to be patient with her.

Well, That's a New One, Weekday Edition

I got a call from a semi-nice woman looking for a book. After searching the catalog for a minute, I saw that we owned it and that it was in the building. Offering to go get it, I asked her to have her barcode number ready when I got back so I could place it on hold it for her and put it over on the holds shelf.

When I got back, I asked for the number. "That's OK," she told me, "I'll be right there."

I started to give her my "No Desk Holds" speech* but she interrupted me by walking up to the desk with her phone in one hand, holding out the other.

* When you tell people that you'll hold their book at the desk, they never seem to come in for it. If you tell them that you'll only hold it until close, they come in the next day. It's a law of nature.

I'm Afraid They Do Know It's Christmas, And That's the Problem

I worked today, even though it was that most ill-named day--"Christmas Eve Day."* It's an utter waste of time to be at the Ref Desk on such a day. It's all the usual suspects at the Internet computers who would be there no matter what day it was. And there were people looking, amazingly, for Christmas movies and CDs. (And nobody else.) The movie seekers were probably the same people who were looking for the movie Halloween on Halloween.

When someone came up and asked if the movie Elf was in, I actually looked it up out of a strange sense of professional duty. Whatever holiday film or CD they wanted was invariably out, naturally. There were heaps of holds on all of them to boot. If they added themselves to the list they'd be lucky to see the movie over Memorial Day weekend. I might as well have just typed random keystrokes into my computer and just said, "oh, sorry, all checked out."

deskslave patron tip #14: Place your holds for next year now
Most systems will let you make your hold inactive. You move up the list all year until you sit at number two, right behind me. Then you activate your holds on December 15th and you have the movies of your choice over the holiday. So you can see that, even adjusted for the time of year, Scrooged hasn't aged very well, Love Actually is pretty vacuous and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is creepy as hell.

In a new twist, our long-suffering Interlibrary Loan specialist told me that someone put an ILL request in today for a Christmas CD. One that we own, naturally.


* This means that the night before that is Christmas Eve Day Eve, and the night before that Christmas Eve Day Eve Day Eve. And so on. So the night of December 20th is something like Christmas Eve Day Eve Day Eve Day Eve Day Eve. August 30th? Don't get me started.

Let's Play "What on Earth are You Talking About, Madam?"

A woman in her sixties came up to the desk and asked, "Where are your storylines?"

I've been working in libraries a while, but this was a new one. I used my usual question to elicit more information about whatever it was she wanted. "Could you tell me a little more about storylines?"

She gave me the "you moron" look that I am, to my distress, all to familiar with.

"You know...they're....STORYLINES!"

It took a little time, but I got it. Any guesses about what storylines might be?

Just Another Saturday

I was at the desk fulfilling my Saturday destiny--looking up movies for people. A young guy in his early twenties and another guy in his forties (maybe his father?) had quite a few requests. They wanted the usual action/horror sorts of things. They were very nice to eachother and I would have thought it was all very nice except the young guy had face tattoos. It's so distracting.

The younger guy thought of a film and asked the older guy if he had seen it.

"Oh, yeah. I think I went to that one right before I went to prison," he said.

Where would we be without traditions?

There are some important--nay sacred--traditions at deskslave central. Last month, we observed an important Halloween tradition whereby people show up on Halloween expecting there to be scary movies on the shelf. Some get upset, some seem to harbor suspicions that we are hiding them for ourselves, but all are disappointed. 

Today we had the traditional Thanksgiving Eve pageant. Well, it's actually less of a pageant and more of a collision of two things:

1. People come to the library on Thanksgiving Eve looking for an armload of movies for the upcoming long weekend or to spend some quality time on the Intarweb before their one day computer fast;
2. The library closes two hours earlier than usual.

It really doesn't matter that the early closure is on the library's calendar. It doesn't matter that signs at eye level have been on the doors since Halloween. The early close always comes as a shock. When the announcement that we are indeed closed came over the intercom, it lead to agitated turbo typing by die hard Internet habitués and some particularly frantic power selecting among the motion picture enthusiasts. 

Tonight, I managed to herd the last of the movie-seekers toward the self check machines and turned to try to shoo the remaining netizen. 

"OK! Just a second!" she carped after I told her that we had closed five minutes before. 

I told her I was heading to the management station to terminate her session. 

"I'll be done in a second!"  

Her time estimation skills were not good. After about a minute, I clicked the button and her computer shut down. 

She wished me a Happy Thanksgiving on her way out, but her tone suggested that she didn't really mean it. 

I Almost Made it Through 2012

without somebody asking me if I was a volunteer. My luck ran out and I had the usual conversation about being at an actual job with actual responsibilities.

One of these days, when somebody expresses incredulity that someone could possibly get paid to do something as easy as being a librarian, I may just say, "OK, you have $250 this month to buy items for the 900s collection. That's biographies and history to you, champ. What are you going to buy and where are you planning to get it? Defend your decision. While you try to figure this out, some dipshit walks up to you and asks if you're a volunteer. What do you say?"