My fellow coworkers and I have a nickname for our new BM that fit's him like speedos on an obese man. We started out with "Mr. Wonderful" and we tried a few other nicknames that would make you blush and be too impolite for me to list. I do have standards you know.
However, "Mr. Useless" seems to be the all time winner. It just seems to encompass all that is our BM. Due to the fact that he has no real purpose. He is..useless. He does not manage the branch at all (that's Raiko's job after all) He just kind of hangs around, and gets in the way of library business, making our life more difficult and frustrating.
Which brings us to the other day when a couple of staff members were just getting into the branch and settling in to work the evening shift. Mr. Useless walks into the break room and arms outstretched in a sound of music moment and says..."I'm useless!" The two staff member freeze in horror.
Had they been loose lipped?
Had he overheard them speaking about him?
Did he actually have the brains to figure it out?
It was definitely one of those deer in the headlights moments.
One of the startled staff members has the wherewithal to ask "WHY?"
His reply..." Well doesn't everyone feel useless when they don't have a car? "
Ahhh...yessss..... ignorance is truely bliss...
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Vampire at the Library
I was instructing a patron on how to access the library catalog and place holds. Throughout our conversation there was something odd about this guy. I mean sure he was nice which is odd. He was clean cut and intelligent which is also not normal for our clientele. In the middle of his conversation it hit me. He's got vampire fangs. Not the insertable kind but the permanent caps. I'd expect this guy to be all goth but no. He looks like an older version of Wally Cleaver. It was a little surreal. I wanted to ask if he was a sanguinarian but thought it might be intrusive.
The Lost, The Wimpy, and the Fed Up.
There are times when I feel like I'm just a vending machine for popular books. I've considered tearing my hair out when the 15th patron of the day asks for one of the books du jour. I know of course that we have 5 copies or more of the book but that they're all checked out. But the patron expects me to actually look to see if the title's availabe. I mean come on people! I practically live here and you're like to 15th person to ask for that title just today. Be original ask for something obscure already!
Yet.
Still.
I have to go through the motions of checking to see if we have the title in stock. Day after day, week after week, month after month...well you get the picture. What really irritates me is that when I ask if the patron would like to put the title on hold 9 times out of 10 it's no! Even when I explain to them that they will get the book in a more timely manner they'd rather wait and ask me yet again, usually the next day. Arghh...
I don't know what I'll do if the next 5th grader asks:
"Do you have Diary of a Wimpy Kid?"
Usually the interview continues like this:
Me: " Which Diary of a Wimpy Kid are you interested in? We have the first in the series as well as Roderick Rules, Dog Days and The Last Straw "
5th Grader: " I want the red one"
As a result I am not having kids.
If it's not Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Kinney it's the popular non-fiction series by Dave Pelzer that has captured the adoration and attention of preteens and teens everywhere which features child abuse. Hopefully they are not using it as a primer for parenthood. The two most popular in the series, The Lost Boy and A Child Called It, our library has stopped buying copies entirely. Not only does the book have poor binding, people keep checking out the book and never returning it. We've purchased 38 copies of A Child Called It, of which 15 have been checked out and never returned. As of this second we have four copies checked out and the rest... well they've been withdrawn due to a combination of crappy binding and wear and tear. Let's not get started on The Lost Boy.
There's always the newest, coolest, hottest title out there and people want to read it
now,
now,
now!
Couple of years ago it was Rowling's Harry Potter series, Pilkey's Captian Underpants series, and Brown's The DaVinci Code. Let us not forget anything written by V.C. Andrews. V.C. Andrews books for some reason seemed to have the forbidden underlying theme of....incest. Ewww....Which for some reason made her popular amoung young adult girls which really disturbs me.
Now it's all about Torri Spellings sTori telling or Mommywood and Chelsea Handlers My Horizontal Life.
Let us not forget the Twilight Fanatics and Vampire Wannabees. I've actually created a paperback special collection and nicknamed it Vampire Alley to house the myraid of vampire series from the Vampire Academy to the Cast's House of Night series just to save my sanity.
Now all I have to do is point.
Score one for me.
Yet.
Still.
I have to go through the motions of checking to see if we have the title in stock. Day after day, week after week, month after month...well you get the picture. What really irritates me is that when I ask if the patron would like to put the title on hold 9 times out of 10 it's no! Even when I explain to them that they will get the book in a more timely manner they'd rather wait and ask me yet again, usually the next day. Arghh...
I don't know what I'll do if the next 5th grader asks:
"Do you have Diary of a Wimpy Kid?"
Usually the interview continues like this:
Me: " Which Diary of a Wimpy Kid are you interested in? We have the first in the series as well as Roderick Rules, Dog Days and The Last Straw "
5th Grader: " I want the red one"
As a result I am not having kids.
If it's not Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Kinney it's the popular non-fiction series by Dave Pelzer that has captured the adoration and attention of preteens and teens everywhere which features child abuse. Hopefully they are not using it as a primer for parenthood. The two most popular in the series, The Lost Boy and A Child Called It, our library has stopped buying copies entirely. Not only does the book have poor binding, people keep checking out the book and never returning it. We've purchased 38 copies of A Child Called It, of which 15 have been checked out and never returned. As of this second we have four copies checked out and the rest... well they've been withdrawn due to a combination of crappy binding and wear and tear. Let's not get started on The Lost Boy.
There's always the newest, coolest, hottest title out there and people want to read it
now,
now,
now!
Couple of years ago it was Rowling's Harry Potter series, Pilkey's Captian Underpants series, and Brown's The DaVinci Code. Let us not forget anything written by V.C. Andrews. V.C. Andrews books for some reason seemed to have the forbidden underlying theme of....incest. Ewww....Which for some reason made her popular amoung young adult girls which really disturbs me.
Now it's all about Torri Spellings sTori telling or Mommywood and Chelsea Handlers My Horizontal Life.
Let us not forget the Twilight Fanatics and Vampire Wannabees. I've actually created a paperback special collection and nicknamed it Vampire Alley to house the myraid of vampire series from the Vampire Academy to the Cast's House of Night series just to save my sanity.
Now all I have to do is point.
Score one for me.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Liberry
Vanna, one of our Reference Staff tried to help a patron access our on-line services from our website. After a lot of frustrating attemps Vanna asked "how are you spelling library?" The patron spelled library...l.i.b.e.r.r.y.
Arghh!!!
Arghh!!!
Charity and the Spiritual Warrior
Dude.
It's not even 9:15 on a Saturday morning and already the day has started with a cup o' crazy.
This morning a very sane looking, clean-cut, middle aged man came up and asked for a directory of global charities.
And if he'd just kept his questions based in reality I could have handled it.
But nooooo....
He begins describing himself as a spiritual warrior fighting dark forces or some such crap. I couldn't quite follow his whole manifesto. Something about how there is this "guy" that's putting pieces of himself into different Global Charity organizations in order to corrupt them and how nobody know's he's doing it. And I'm thinking ewww....and asking myself which parts of himself is this guy leaving and that it just can't be sanitary.
Mr. Spiritual Warrior goes on about how there are angels around him fighting this war and that means there are a lot of casualties and would I know anything about that? To which my reply is:
NO SIR, I'M SORRY. THAT IS NOT AN AREA I AM FAMILIAR WITH.
At which point I politely explain that we don't have the sources that he needs and that perhaps the city library next door would be better equipt to help him (in his battle with the dark forces).
I'm not proud. I'll stoop pretty low to pawn a crazy person off onto a city library. My reasoning is that they are paid better and better equipt to deal with him if he get's violent. And yes, I like my spleen right where it is.
There is a part of me that is sensitive to the needs of people with mental illness and the other, larger, part of me that wishes for a panic switch at the reference desk because the tightrope known as sanity this guy is walking on is gonna snap... and soon.
It's not even 9:15 on a Saturday morning and already the day has started with a cup o' crazy.
This morning a very sane looking, clean-cut, middle aged man came up and asked for a directory of global charities.
And if he'd just kept his questions based in reality I could have handled it.
But nooooo....
He begins describing himself as a spiritual warrior fighting dark forces or some such crap. I couldn't quite follow his whole manifesto. Something about how there is this "guy" that's putting pieces of himself into different Global Charity organizations in order to corrupt them and how nobody know's he's doing it. And I'm thinking ewww....and asking myself which parts of himself is this guy leaving and that it just can't be sanitary.
Mr. Spiritual Warrior goes on about how there are angels around him fighting this war and that means there are a lot of casualties and would I know anything about that? To which my reply is:
NO SIR, I'M SORRY. THAT IS NOT AN AREA I AM FAMILIAR WITH.
At which point I politely explain that we don't have the sources that he needs and that perhaps the city library next door would be better equipt to help him (in his battle with the dark forces).
I'm not proud. I'll stoop pretty low to pawn a crazy person off onto a city library. My reasoning is that they are paid better and better equipt to deal with him if he get's violent. And yes, I like my spleen right where it is.
There is a part of me that is sensitive to the needs of people with mental illness and the other, larger, part of me that wishes for a panic switch at the reference desk because the tightrope known as sanity this guy is walking on is gonna snap... and soon.
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