To Beg or not To Beg...

A guy came in reeking of nicotine begging to use the computer. He did not have a library card or Id. I asked him to see the manager. He continued to beg. When I asked him to stop begging he ripped me a new one for calling him a beggar. Oops. I guess the truth hurts. Because the definition of to beg is: 1. to ask for money, or to ask someone to do something in an urgent way. That's what he was doing. I guess I should sugar coat it next time. I'm making friends and influencing people. Left and Right.

Invisible Signs and the Printer Blues

It never ceases to amaze me.

Due to budget cuts we aren't always able to get our laserjet printer cartridges in a timely manner. (We used to have one or two stored at the branch)

Yesterday, our printer ran out of ink.

Today we've posted several signs in bright lime green that state:

"No Printing Until Further Notice."

One sign on the post as you enter the library.
One at the reservation station.
One on the printer itself.

Still no one sees these signs and want to print and are extra pissed when they can't.

One girl would not take no for an answer, she in fact insisted that there should be a way we could print for her and why wouldn't we do it.

It took all I had not to pick up a pencil and scrap paper and say knock yourself out.

On a similar note our Reservation Receipt Printer ran out of paper. So I took it apart and went to get another roll of paper. The nice thing about the Reservation Station is that people can make reservations to use the computer and the Reservation Receipt Printer will print out a little receipt with the patrons library card number, computer number and time to use the computer. OK so sometimes I have to show them how to decipher the receipt but if they have multiple brain cells then it's pretty simple. So I return to find a guy trying to make a reservation and wondering why he didn't get his freakin' receipt. With the printer all taken apart in front of him. He had to move parts of it to make his reservation.

All I could do was stare.

I think I may live in a village of idiots.

Blood from a....

This lady walks up to me and asks for a Phlebotomy Handbook. After checking the catalog I inform her that we only have Phlebotomy Exam Review books and she asks me "What's that?"

Crap. Crap. Crap.

....and this chick wants to work with needles?

The Moose Has Landed

An older gentleman came in today with a slip of paper wanting to know if a specific phone number was still valid. After going through the gamut of reference questions where I must figure out what in heaven's name this guy actually wants. It becomes clear, kind of, sort of. This guy wants to contact a long lost friend in order to tell them of a family member's death. The actual interview takes 3x the usual amount of time but I finally figure it out.


My immediate unspoken response was..."Have you called the actual number?"


...I mean come on it's a phone number for God's sake. If you want to know if it's a valid number DIAL IT!

My actual spoken response..."Let's see what I can find out for you" ...Freakin' customer service brainwashing.


The Older Gentleman is uncertain of the spelling of the persons first name which was when I asked myself the question "Um...how close a friend where you if you don't know how to spell the person's first name?"


I am unable to locate the lost friend on the Internet and really don't want to continue this search because the guy has phone number and won't. call. it.


Finally he asks me to look up a relative of the person he's looking for. Okay, I'll humor him so ...whack! irony hits me on the side of the head with....oh yes, a hit. I found the relative on peoplefinder which lists the individuals last known cities of residence and known relatives.



I show the Older Gentleman my results and he starts asking me questions which have no context like...he must be the son, or a nephew and she must be his aunt. Right? Huh? Who? WTF.



I finally said "Sir I have no idea what you're talking about, I don't know these people or their relationship to each other. "

A lot of the websites for finding people just dangle a little bit of information in front of you so you'll pay the $14.95 a month for their services. Which might be worth it for some but not for me and well not for this guy either because even if he gets contact information like, say, a phone number he won't call it.


Finally I convinced the guy to try the actual number that he already had and if that didn't work out he could always call 411 (which he had to write down so he'd remember it, we are talking about the number for information...INFORMATION.) in each of the cities the long lost friends relative has lived in and see if there's anyone by the name of Moose listed. Yes the family he's looking for has MOOSE as a surname.

I almost asked if his last name was Ox as in dumb as an...

But that would be rude and against my customer service programming....

Nursing the Next Generation

A college aged girl came in yesterday looking for a book on Florence Nightingale. Unfortunately we only had juvenile books on Florence. The girl wanted something more age appropriate on good old Flo but couldn't wait three to seven business days for the book to get here because she waited until the last minute to do her paper. After a brief interview in which I had to ask the questions that would give me an idea of what she really needed, I discovered that she just needed information on someone who made a significant contribution to nursing. OMG. This girl wants to be a nurse...a nurse? And all she could come up with was Florence Nightingale? I asked her if Clara Barnes or Dorothea Dix would be acceptable. She never heard of them. She didn't even know who Marie Curie was. Arghh!!! This is an adult. I had to print out bios for her so she could decide. Oh dear. It's not the fact that she didn't know these people but how helpless she seemed to be in making any kind of decision. It takes a lot of intelligence and commitment to be a nurse and something tells me she's not prepared.

The Comb Overs

Sometimes I just don't understand fashion.



Be it Lady Gaga and her meat dress or those earrings that make the holes in people's ear lobes larger. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Lately I've seen a disturbing trend in hair for teens. I've seen boys and girls sporting a comb overs. Yes, you read that correctly... comb overs. Unlike a traditional comb over the teen comb over starts with taking a swath of hair from just over the ear and dragging it across the forehead kinda like a head band and securing it with a bobby pin or hair clip and from the odor, a lot of hairspray. My father used to sport a really bad comb over for many years. When I say bad, I mean really awful but, you could kind of reason out why he to tried badly disguise his balding head by artfully combing over the remaining fifty hairs on the upper portion of his head with aqua net to form a helmet o' lacquer. I wonder however why a teen would do it. It's just not attractive. I have only three reasons why I think someone would sport a comb over (other than the obvious);



1. A big zit or pimple on the forehead

2. to hide a tat

3. to hide a Charles Manson carving on his/her forehead

Wheels on the Car Show Go Round and Round...

Every year our fair city hosts a car show. Every year the epicenter of this car show is the library parking lot. Library Staff dreads the car show every year. I've got mixed feelings about it though. I have a Grandfather that used to collect antique and classic cars so it's somewhat nostalgic for me. Unfortunately our fair city forgets that there are people that have to show up for work at the library and people that want to visit the library. Hence why there is little not noo no parking for us. This year is no different. One of the great aggravations of the yearly car show is the lack of communication between...well...everybody. Between the event coordinators, the participants, the police and the library there is not a clue to be had. This year the coordinator planned for parking for us but the police told us there was no library parking alotted for us and to move along. I got smart this year just parked across the street at the community building to avoid the stress. Each year the event gets bigger and bigger. This year has been the biggest yet. The only patrons who walk in are the hardcore ones who've braved the car show and walked the distance here to use the Internet. A few try to manoeuvre the labyrinth of shiny, expensive, classic cars and traffic cones to park in the assigned library parking stalls. The rest plan on staying home or go to one of our sister branches for the day. Most of the people walking into the library are the car show enthusiasts. Why do they come into the library? To use the restrooms.
I believe that is the most asked question of the day. "Where are your restrooms?"


I also get one old geezer, every car show, every year that wants some obscure information on a manufacturer, inventor, or other "notable" figure in automobile history. Although this is not always true, sometimes it's a question about a make or model of car inwhich only 20 cars were produced. Maybe around the time dinosaurs roamed the earth. This year was no different. A grizzled man without one real tooth in his mouth and ill fitting dentures, drags his potbellied, smelly carcass in with a cane to ask for an obscure figure in automotive history. He's not sure about the individual's name but he's sure this guy invented an engine that was bought by Henry Ford. He thinks. Oh, and the guy was origionally from Germany. Maybe. There was also something about a motorcycle this inventor manufactured who's name started with an "S". The guy pronounces the word motorcycle "motor sickle". He remembers reading an article the last time he was in a library from their special collection of antique car magazines. I asked him how long ago was it. A Decade. He read the article a freakin' decade ago.