Miss Communication and her WiFi Blues

If I get another communication challenged patron today that and I'll puke. This lady comes up to me and says, "My son needs the code" My reply: " I'm sorry what code?" Ms Communication replies "You know the code for his laptop" I'm thinking "Huh?" and then with a mental groan I realize she means a code to connect her son's laptop to our non-existent WiFi connection. Ohhhh...yeah....right.....When I tell her we don't have WiFi she looked at me as if I was an escapee from a mental institution. A few minutes later a boy comes up to me and wants to know how he can use the Internet. I tell him he's got to have a library card to use our computers and that if his parent or guardian was here they could get him a library card at the cards and accounts desk for free with their I.D. (I find out later that he's Ms Communications ten year old son) He runs to the cards and accounts desk and tells Ms. Bernie our circulation clerk that he wants a "free pass" to use the computer. Huh? Where did he get free pass from free library card? After much confusion we figure out that they are visiting from out of state and that they are eligible for an extended guest pass. In order to get an extended guest pass I have to see an out of state ID. Ms Communication looks at me and says you mean I have to go all the way over there pointing in the direction of the cards and accounts desk, to get my I.D? At this point I'm freaking' lost...this lady's speaking English like native but not making any sense. With the help of Miss Penelope we finally figure out that she's asking if she has to go back to where she's staying in order to get her ID in order to get the extended guest pass. For which I'm thinking...lady you are in a strange city and you left your ID in what your hotel room are you nuts?

The Digital Age without It's Digits...

Lately I've been wondering why I'm getting all the communicably challenged people. I swear I don't know if it's me or if it's something in the tap water that's making it near impossible for people to communicate. Sometimes it's people's listening and comprehension skills or sometimes it's critical thinking and speaking. For instance a patron wanted help making a reservation for one of our computers and I verbally walk this guy through the process. I do this all the time with a minimum of fuss. All goes well until we get to the part where he needs to enter in his pin. I can only find so many ways to tell him that his pin is the LAST FOUR DIGITS of his freakin' phone number before I begin hyperventilating. I finally ask him if the last part of his library card is the same as his phone number. He looks at me like I'm nuts and says why no of course not. Then I had to ask him why he was using the last four digits of his library card number instead of the last four digits of his phone number. His reply was because I didn't tell him his pin was the last for digits of his phone number. Arghhh. This ended up happening more times than I care to admit during the course of this last month. I've come to the conclusion that many of our patrons don't know the complete definition of the word "digits". It was a bit unsettling.

The Moppets

We get a lot of families that visit us en masse. Mom, Dad, little Joni and Chachi. Sometimes they come in every once in a while. Other times it's like clockwork or a menstrual cycle. The Moppets being the most like a menstrual cycle. There's mama moppet and her three or four adolescent moppet daughters. They range from early teens to early twenties. They are always super nice but they take up so much time. They, on average, pick up 20-25 holds that range from graphic novels, obscure fiction and audio visual items. Not place holds... pick up holds. It takes for freaking ever. The irritating part about it is they don't care how inconvenient it is to other patrons they just settle in for the duration and the line starts forming. You can't be rude. You can't complain you just have to smile and try and get them out of the way as quickly as you can. We've had them at the desk on a Saturday morning for an hour. One entire hour. It's insane.

Bookstore Oddities....

Today we had a neurotic mother/daughter team purchase close to a hundred book sale books which was great except for the intense way they asked us to not mix up the books. We get peculiar book buyers like that. For instance Freaky Deaky Dutch Guy who complains about how expensive our bookstore prices are and then starts up a conversation about how it should be okay for 14 year old girls to be having sex in public. Or the really rude used bookstore owner that resells our books at ten times the price. He makes a profit on our little bookstore would it kill him to be polite?

Bringing in the New Year in Uncertain Times

As the New Year progresses so does our frustration. We've lost yet more employees, this time one to marital bliss. She's moving to the Eastern Seaboard with her new husband. Another is being transfered to a new branch. What with the state budget cuts I doubt we will be able to replace them.



The Demented Miss D is displaying more dementia related behavior. She's been rude to other staff members claiming that they are out to "take her job". No amount of reassurance is effective. Miss D feels even more threatened by the appearance of Miss C another senior worker who's presence is another bone of contention among the staff. Miss C was hired by Mr. Useless and is paid by the department of aging. Miss C had an unsuccessful stint as a library volunteer. We warned Mr. Useless that she was not going to be a good fit with our organization and why. As a volunteer she was unable to do even the most simple tasks no matter how much time I spent teaching her how to shelve. It didn't make matters any easier when she miss represented herself in the interview claiming that the proposed schedule was acceptable and that she would have no physical limitations. Since she's started it's been more work for the rest of the staff as they have to fix mistakes she's made when we find them. I'm sure there's more to be fixed that we are not aware of. I shudder to think about it even now. So as our employee pool dwindles and our resources are stretched thin, our tempers and frustration rises.



We've also been informed that our library system will have a new head honcho. The former head honcho leaving under uncomfortable circumstances. The unsubstantiated rumours being that he was fired, which is unfortunate because in my estimation he was an effective leader. During his tenure no one was laid off, the system opened new branches and our hours remained constant...oh and we had a small book budget. So life is uncertain. Will the new head honcho start hiring or firing? Cutting the book budget, diminish operating hours and/or staff?



While all this speculation is going on it would help to have our Branch Manager actually at the helm. I don't think it would be so much of an issue if Mr. Useless actually showed up for work more than 2 - 4 hours a week. Our "Site Manager" a.k.a. Assistant Manager is on a well deserved vacation which leaves no margin of error where staffing is concerned. With only a limited number of staff you'd think he'd pitch in and help make up the difference with his presence at the Circulation or Reference Desks, but alas he is displaying his usual lack of well...everything. All this is pissing off the staff. We wonder what does he do all day? The Branch's reports? No that's done by the assistant branch manager. Manage the staff, scheduling, book processing? Nope, all done by others. His nicknames are getting to be more and more offensive and tempers are rising. I think it's the fact that there are strong indications that Mr. Useless is getting paid for a job he doesn't actually do is what makes it so hard for the staff to stay calm. There are times when we need our Branch Manager to make decisions only he can make and of course he's not here to make them. So we call the other branch he's supposed to be managing and find that he's not there either. So what does that mean? Mr. Useless has no oversight from what the staff can see. Administration doesn't check to see if he's at work. It's amazing and it's happened before. When staff members have called or reported his ineffectiveness as a manager we've been blown off. Part of the staff occupies the "at least he's the devil we know" camp, the other part of the staff just wants him gone and the assistant manager hired to be the manager. We don't often get what we want or need.

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.