Ever wondered what someone on meth sounds like?

I have mentioned Meth Lady a few times throughout the course of this blog, but the written word cannot do her justice.  Thanks to a guy from my job (E-Rusch), I have discovered a Saturday Night Live video that depicts her very well.  Fred Armisen, a current cast member of SNL, has a skit in which he portrays a political comedian who just can’t quite finish a thought.  He bounces back and forth between ideas and never quite makes a point.  But he certainly talks a lot.  And his character is more or less the male, politically minded version of everyone’s favorite Meth Lady.

Unfortunately, there is a thirty-second ad before the clip, but don’t let that stop you. Enjoy!

- Xerox

Kim Possible, Jackie Chan and a super creepy pacer

Someone has compromised my secret identity, so I think it’s time that I own up to who I really am.  I am not just an employee of a library.  I am under the direct orders of two high-ranking people and am part of a secret organization of librarians who humor mentally challenged people.

In simpler terms, Jackie Chan and Kim Possible are my bosses and I am part of their secret organization.  My supervisor, also known as “Sarge”, is on the second tier of power in this group.  Then, three library workers, including myself, are at their bidding to do whatever is that people do when they take orders from a Disney cartoon character and the dude from Crime Story.
Yeah.  Life rocks.

There is this family that comes into the library often.  We will call them the Addams Family just because I really want to use that nickname for a group of people.  The father is rarely seen, but the mother, daughter and son are always in the library.  Both children (if you can call them that, they are out of high school now) are mentally challenged to a certain degree.  Now, please don’t think that I am telling you this story to make fun of retarded people.  I do that anyway.  I figure this bunch will keep showing up on this blog, so I better introduce you to them.  Anyway, the daughter, Wednesday, came up to the main desk the other night with some important documents about my supervisor that she had obtained from the internet.  She entrusted me with delivering these top-secret files to “Sarge” and telling no one else.  This is when she informed me of my secret organization.

“I’ll put them in his mailbox now,” I promised.  They were pictures of Jackie Chan.

“Make sure he gets them,” she said.  “Don’t let no one else see!”

“Oh, I won’t.  Trust me”  At this point, she motioned for me to lean in as if she were going to tell me a secret.  I reluctantly did so.

“You are part of the in-crowd,” she told me.  “You and Jack Frost and Nate.”  (Jack Frost is what she calls one of my coworkers.)  “I gave Sarge the Jackie Chan pictures because you all take orders from him now.  Him and Kim Possible.  I’ll tell you next time they talk to me and tell you what they say.  Just don’t tell nobody else what they want, okay?”

“No problem,” I said.  “I won’t tell anybody.  Thanks for the info.”

She walked away.  So, I found myself an international man of espionage doubling as a county library worker. I feel like I have it made.

Since we are on the subject of mentally challenged people, there has been this man who comes into the library the past couple of days and just paces back and forth from the reference desk to the front doors.  He is a plump older fellow who just walks… and walks… He also stares at us as he walks by and reminds me of a serial killer.  One time he walked by the counter and I asked him if he needed help.  He shook his head, but he had this killer-esque smile on his face that said, “I don’t need help, but you will soon!”  We’ve reported his odd behavior to the superiors who determined that he has some mental problem.  Still, he’s super creepy.  No one should walk that much in a library.

If you don’t hear from me in a week it’s because I made the mistake of walking to my car alone after work.  Wish me luck.

- Xerox

The redneck weather report

Look out!

The other day some… uh… rather grungy people came to the counter to check out.  I’d say they spend their days repairing tractors with things they find in the yard and watching Larry the Cable Guy.  They checked out some (surprise!) no-thinking-needed films and left without much fuss, but they did drop one piece of information that was very interesting.

“Ya hear ’bout the big storm that’s a-comin’?” one asked.  I hadn’t.

“About 3-4 feet of snow is gonna hit, my momma said,” said another one.  “Heard it on the news this afternoon, says I should spread the word.”

I acted surprised and pretended to be interested.  It was complete nonsense because I don’t think my region has ever gotten more than a foot of snow at any given time.  Much less three or four.  I went online after they left and checked the weather report.  What did I see, you ask?  No snow, not a single flake.  The ten-day forecast showed a 30% chance of FLURRIES almost every day.  Did they watch the forecast for Buffalo, NY?  That would be more of a possibility.  I know it sounds like they might have pulled my leg, but they were dead serious.  Hillbilly serious.

My day ended rather well, however.  Just before we closed, a patron actually made my day.  As one was about to leave, I caught a few bars of whistling.  What song could they have whistled?  None other than Vanilla Ice’s “Go Ninja Go Ninja Go!” song from Turtles 2!  As soon as I heard it a bunch of us started singing it.  It’s a classic, what can I say.  And best of all, I’ve provided the joy for you below.  It’s turtle time.

The adventures of New Patron – Holds

I wanted to do a sort of mini-series of posts on this blog since I started it, but didn’t really know where to start until now.  The idea sort of just hit me today while I was shelving patron holds today.  I thought, “New patrons really give me a laugh.”  I say this because they haven’t quite figured out how the library works and because sometimes the prospect of free stuff excites them a little too much.  I’m still going to write it in my sarcastic writing style that has characterized my blog though, so don’t get worried.

My library is so busy that we probably process upwards of 800 holds a day.  This encompasses returns that have requests on them, deliveries from other branches and ones that the staff pull.  Each of them must be written up and shelved alphabetically by patron last name to make it easy to find when we need them.  Most people are just requesting new releases or things they need for school or something, but sometimes, I catch a newbie in the mix.  I’ll be writing up or shelving holds and I’ll find one person who has put around thirty or forty books on hold.

So, this person, we’ll call them New Patron, discovers one day that they can place items on hold on the internet.  We don’t hide this option, we tell you about it up front.  Most people just don’t listen though, so when they figure it out on their own, they get excited.  They’ll log on and put a couple books on hold, and after a few clicks they catch hold fever and just started putting anything that catches their fancy on hold.  The thing they fail to do is check and see if the item is currently checked in.  So, since they’re on hold, we pull them and process them.  Then the person will come in a few days later to “pick up a couple things” and do some reading.

We scan their card and this huge list of crap pops up that we have waiting for them.  We have to go to the shelf and grab all their stuff, so they just think we’re getting a few James Patterson books they thought they might like, but we end up returning with a whole armful.  They gape at the stack towering before them, and then gape some more when we make a second trip.  They’ll say things like, “I didn’t know all that was going to come in at once!”  or, “I’m not going to be able to read all that!”  Ugh… the stupidity of some….

I always say something like, “Did you check and see if they were checked in when you requested them?”  They are usually baffled by this.

“Well… no I guess I didn’t.  I just thought you’d only get a few at a time for me.”

“We just pull whatever is on the list of books.  If they are checked in, we get them immediately.”  Seriously, do you think out of the 230,000 or so borrowers that we have we are going to keep track of every person’s preferences?  No.

So, New Patron will just pick a few of them, wasting our time, effort, resources and patience.  Now we have to sort them and put them away again. (Trust me, as a former shelver I can tell you that we don’t just have a couple things to put away – it’s like a never-ending assembly line of returns… a constant wave of shelving fun.)  New Patron leaves confused and baffled that we wouldn’t know to only pull a couple of the 45 books they requested so that they aren’t overwhelmed.  New Patron is sad….

But it’s not over by any means.  New patron will soon discover the night return.  Then they will figure out that we have copiers and printers.  One day they might even try to use an emergency exit…  My favorite though is when they discover the drive-up hold window.  I’ll leave that one for another time.

- Xerox

Busy Sunday

Yesterday was the start of one of our periodic book sales.  I looked out the front doors and there were people lining up outside about one hour before we opened.  Interesting that people don’t line up that early in the rain to wait around for free books.  They’d rather spend money on heavily used books that no one wanted, so they were given to us to sell.  Of course, because of this, there was nowhere to park in the lot, so people complained about the lack of parking for the whole afternoon.

When I had some time to kill, I took a look around in the front room where the sale was, just to see what was going on.  Unless you love VHS tapes and outdated computer books, there wasn’t much to see.  The “friends of the library” were manning the sale, watching everyone like hawks.  If you don’t know who these people are, I’ll fill you in.  They are a group of people who help us out and support us with financial contributions.  But, “friends” applies loosely here.  Most of the ones I’ve met have been rude and inconsiderate.  They act as if I should be grateful that they are coming to my aid and that I should show them all sorts of respect that does not need reciprocity.  In the big picture though, I’ll still get paid on the hour no matter what they do, so I guess it doesn’t matter much.  A simple thanks would work once in a while though.

Speaking of rude people, this one woman I helped acted like it was my fault that she had to pay fines.  Now, there are lots of stories I can tell you about people arguing over fines, but this one is just annoying because of how she acted.  I scanned her card and an alert popped up letting me know that she owed about $4.00.  This is not too high of a fine, considering what other people have managed, but she immediately acted baffled that I even brought it up.

“It looks like there is a fine of $4.00 on your account.  Would you like to take care of it today?” I asked.

“What?!  I shouldn’t have any fees.  I paid them off last time I was in,” she said.

“Well,” I explained, “it looks like these are from items returned today.”  I proceeded to name of the books that were late.

“Those shouldn’t have been late.  I renewed them online last night,” she said.

“Yes, the books were renewed.  But they were late already before you renewed them.”  I was starting to feel like this was going nowhere.

“That’s not right, but I guess I have no proof,” she said rather sarcastically.  “I didn’t bring in my receipt.”

“The computer system keeps track of all that information,”  I told her.  How does she think she gets the receipt?  I started to turn the monitor so she could see the record but she stopped me.

“No, don’t worry, I’ll pay it.”  She then turned to her son standing with her who looked extremely bored and said, “I guess we will just go to Burger King some other day.  We can’t now because he says I owe money.”

Yeah, right.  It’s my fault you were almost three weeks late with you books.  I wish people would just own up to their mistakes, pay up and leave.  Our computer system doesn’t make stuff up about you.  When you owe, you owe, so just deal with it.  And it’s rather appalling that you would try to use your child to get out of your mistakes.  What kind of parenting is that?

I guess you can tell I’m kind of bitter about the whole thing.  It’s disappointing that grown people are this rude and stingy.  Hooray for the future!

- Xerox

Shhh….

Don’t say anything!  I’m hiding behind the desk area from Meth Lady!  If she finds out I’m back here she will surely talk my ear off.  I can see her standing out there, fidgeting with her pills and searching for some poor soul to gravitate towards.  I think I’ll hide back here until she leaves…

Wrinkled noses abound

I decided to not only mark this post in the “rebels” category but also in the “attacks on libraries” category.  I do this because when people don’t shower or wear deodorant, they are both rebelling against cleanliness and assailing the employees with their foul odors.

I don’t have any patron specifically in mind for this post.  This is mostly because I help too many smelly people.  I don’t see how difficult it can really be to shower and apply deodorant, but obviously some people find it difficult or just can’t find the time to squeeze in a good bath.  Some of the public that I help each shift doesn’t even wash their hair, so you get a good mix of body odor, greasy hair and sometimes even cigarettes wafting up your nose.  Maybe they don’t clean themselves because they just aren’t competent enough to understand that their actions (or lack thereof) affect the people around them.  They subject the mindful, clean public and employees alike with their foul, disgusting stench and I just want to grab one of these rebels (with some kind of extension, of course.  I don’t want to actually touch them…) and yell, “You smell like a dumpster!  Get some soap!”   Since I don’t want to get fired, I just breathe through my mouth. 

One man who likes to check out lots of VHS tapes has the ability to transport his odor through his thick parka and cause me to vomit some in my mouth.  I don’t know how this is achieved yet because I would think the coat would conceal the smell.  I wouldn’t want to be around him when he takes that thing off though.  It might kill a small child.  Another woman reeks of cigarettes so bad that I’m pretty sure I’ve developed cancer after just three times helping her.  I wish we kept Febreeze on hand when people like her come in so I can spray them down before I can’t hold my breath anymore.

When I see one of these people coming to the counter, I do one of three things: 

A:  I pretend I need to do something in the back and have a fellow worker take one for the team.

B:  I pray the phone rings or someone who smells decent asks me for help first.

C:  The above scenarios fail and I succumb to the impending doom.

*This post brought to you by Old Spice!  Lasts all day!*

For all your smelly patron needs!

- Xerox

The library knows everything about everything

Yep, the title pretty much sums it up.  We’re awesome.  We sit at the counters each day relishing the fact that no matter what question you ask, we are experts on just that topic.  We simply know everything.

At least that’s what the patrons think.

To be more precise, we are good at finding the best place to learn information.  Books, websites, databases, etc.  If you want to know about the biggest mammal on the planet, we could find you a book on that.  What’s the value of that junker in your driveway?  We know of a website that can help you.  But trust me, some questions are just…. ugh… Sometimes I want to slap myself in the face at how dumb some people can really be.

Whether I’m answering the phone, talking to someone in person or replying to emails, someone always finds a way to be a bigger moron than the last person I talked to.  Each time I think I’ve heard it all, my IQ drops when the next patron talks.  Sometimes my IQ drops vicariously through other employees who regale me with tales of their conversations.  Either way, it sucks.

Someone asked me once over the phone the best way to get from Detroit, Michigan to Quebec.  They were not from either place.  Either was my library.  So, I’m wondering why they would call a library in a completely different region of the country to ask for directions to places they aren’t even located around.  Then I wonder why someone would call a library for directions that aren’t to my library.  It doesn’t help to think about it too much.

Another time, someone called and asked me what the current exchange rate was between the dollar and the euro.  I mean, I know I could look that up online, but so could they.  Or they could call a bank or an airport.  You know, some place that actually deals with money and exchange rates.  But, again, people assume I know everything.

A reference clerk I work with once got a question over the internet that was just so dumb that I couldn’t sleep that night.  Apparently, this person found a chicken on their property and needed to know the best way to get the chicken to go away, but they didn’t want to hurt it.  Uh, really?  Last time I checked, chickens were mobile.  If you wait long enough, maybe it will just walk off of your land.  Or, you could throw some rocks toward it and make it get off your land faster.  It’s a chicken, not a coyote, relax.  But the worst part (or best part) is that, as opposed to calling us (or someone else), they took the time to log onto to the help site and post the question for everyone to see.  By the time they got off the internet, the chicken had probably moved on to some other redneck’s yard.

Some woman once asked me why young people these days are reluctant to join the armed forces.  I thought she was making some kind of light-hearted political joke, but no, she was dead serious.  She wanted me to tell her the answer right then.  I was thinking inside, “Death?  An unpopular war?  How should I know?”  But, as I like to do with these people sometimes, I sent her to our reference desk.  I pretended like reference would definitely know and then when she walked away I went on my lunch break and got out of the building before she figured out that no one knew.  I didn’t want to be around for that.

I guess the moral of this post is to think before you ask.  The library is not the place to go for every single question.  If it’s something you can look up online just as easily yourself, then why not just do it?  If you have chickens in your yard, just throw something at them until they go away.  And if you want answers to those tough life questions that we all ask ourselves… well, just suck it up and deal with not knowing like the rest of us.  I hope by now you know everything just like I do and no longer need to call/email/come into the library and humiliate yourself.

- Xerox

The K-9 underground railroad

First off, happy holidays and a happy new year to everyone.  This last week and a half has been busy.  I’ve just been filled with so much joy and glee (if you can believe that – I can’t)  that I haven’t had time to blog.  So now, allow me the pleasure of kicking back, cracking open my Christmas bottle of Smirnoff and filling you in on what you’ve been missing.

If you look on the right side of the page, you’ll see a link that says “About”.  This little section just gives a brief overview on the content of the blog, but I want to call your attention to the part where I state that there has been an occasional wild animal in the building.  So far, I have not talked about this at all, but I think it’s time since the animals were out in full force recently.

I’ve seen people come in with seeing-eye dogs, we’ve had guests bring in zoo animals for a program and I’ve had my fair share of petting zoo experiences.  But those instances are okayed by the library gods.  Other times, people bring in some of the strangest things and everyone is too caught off guard to say anything about it.  One woman once came in the library with a blind domesticated squirrel on her shoulder.  Bet you never thought you’d hear that someone has a blind, domesticated squirrel.  Blind.  And domesticated.  On her shoulder.  In the library.  Another time when I was a shelver in the kid section, a man was walking around with a rat in his shirt pocket.  This caused quite a bit of alarm in worried mothers, who descended on the children’s desk like locusts to let us know of the oncoming rabid apocalypse.  This type of thing happens once in a blue moon, or so I thought.

This week alone we’ve had three different stray dogs follow people to the building.  Two of them actually came in and walked around, the third just lurked around the premises.  In all the time that I have worked there, not a single stray has walked onto the property, let alone into the building while I was working and now three in one week?  What are the chances?  Since animal control isn’t always around to pick the dogs up, one of them ended up in the pound and the other found a new home with a fellow employee.  Ah, the perks of library life… Free books and free… dogs?  Yep, no one claimed it, so it is now part of the family I guess.  While we were waiting around for something to be done about the dogs, they just waited patiently in my boss’s windowed office, watching the people gawk at them as they returned their books.  I guess people aren’t really used to seeing dogs in libraries just chillin’, but I’m pretty sure I’ve become desensitized to these sorts of things.  Since so many dogs have been showing up, I have this sneaking suspicion that these dogs know that someone will take them home if they look cute and play nice in my boss’s office.  It’s like the word is getting out in stray dog world that the library is the place to go if you want a new home.  Or maybe some jerk is just dropping them off in our lot while we’re not looking.  Either way, we’ll take them in and see that someone comes to get them.

So now what should I expect next time I go to work?  A pack of stray cats slinking in out of the rain?  A mice problem?  Maybe a murder of crows perching on the light fixtures, watching the mindless stumble through their meaningless lives?  Oops, I shouldn’t insult the computer users like that.  Anyway, if another dog shows up, I call dibs.  I know someone who might want a new pooch.

- Xerox

I turn down access to free things all the time, too

I have to wonder sometimes how people function in the dimension in which we exist each day.  I see other people walk, eat, sit, stand, drive and a whole host of other physical activities, but what’s going on up top?  Do their brains work the same way as mine?  Do they comprehend just how ignorant they are?  In a country where the majority rules, I wonder if I’m the one that is not right in the head.  There seems to be many of them and few of people like me.

You might be wondering why I would make such a generalized statement about a whole bunch of people I don’t personally know.  Well, it’s simple.  I’ve completely lost faith in humanity.  I simply can’t emphasize enough how unbelievably unreasonable and sometimes ignorant the general public can be in a place as welcoming as the library.  Let me explain…

A few days ago, a man came in and asked us if he could use his library card from another county in my library’s county.  From what I have heard, there was reciprocity years ago when the funding was organized differently and there weren’t so many people and books going back and forth between libraries.  The times they are a-changin’ I guess.  Now that libraries are funded county-by-county, it would make no sense to allow someone three counties away to come use our library, check out books, return them at their normal library and expect them to be part of a quick, efficient delivery system.  Taxes aren’t fun to talk about, so I’m going to stop talking about how libraries are run now, at least where I work.

So, we informed this man that his library card was not good at our library, but he could simply apply for a card in our county and be granted access to all of our stuff. What it really comes down to is our computer systems.  His county doesn’t own or recognize anything we have on our shelves in their computer system, so I could scan his card all day and nothing would happen.  So, he just needed to get one of our cards, free of charge.  How did he react to this news?  By getting upset and telling us that someone told him he could use his card, not our cards.

“Sir, you could just get a card in this county and check out.  We just can’t use your card here.  It won’t work”

“Well, my friend is on the board and he told me I could use it here!”

After this dialogue repeated a few times, he stormed out.  Later on, he called and complained about my fellow employee who helped him, saying they were rude.  My boss may have actually taken this complaint seriously, but the guy came back and did the same thing again yesterday.  He came in, wanted to use his card (not ours) and even forced us to pull my boss out of a meeting to yell at him about it.  My boss calmly informed him (just like everyone else already had) that he could just get a free card to our library and check things out.  This guy didn’t like to hear that and once again stormed out.

So, let me summarize:  He brought in his card, he was told it was not valid, he was offered a FREE card at our library and got angry and then he stormed out.  I’ve never seen anyone get angry at being offered free stuff before.  This is why I have a hard time accepting that most of the public is “with it”.  Who turns down free access to thousands upon thousands of books and movies?  Especially in an angry fashion?  This winner does, that’s who.

-Xerox