Some (ir)regulars

"Can you write down how to spell 'Sabrina' for me on a piece of paper?"
"Sabrina?"
"As in the teenage witch."


A sound from the 600s like someone is throwing up. Coworker: "As much as I don't want to, I'm gonna go investigate that."


'Sabrina' patron: Do you have a pen I can borrow?
Me: Sure, just bring it back when you're done.
Patron: Hmmmmm....no. 
Me: I'll pretend I didn't hear that.
Patron: Come on, you should know me by now! I'm just kidding.




I have my arms so far inside the jammed printer it feels like I'm doing surgery.


Patron who is always picking fights with the staff: Personally I don't mind that she is on her phone, but when I've been on my phone I've always been told to get off.
Jaded staff member: We changed the rule.
Patron: I guess rules are changing every day now.
JSM: Yep, I guess they are.


Guy who came up and introduced himself and shook my hand once stops by just to chat, no questions.

There is a guy who has recently made it into my Top 5 Most Disliked Patrons list because he insists that the public computers have all sorts of problems. Every time he comes in (which is most days) he stops by the desk and says something like "I just hope the computers don't have any problems today." I always tell him to show me as soon as he sees a problem so that I can see the error message, but until today he's never actually been willing to do that. He just vaguely describes the problem on his way out. Today for the first time ever he actually shows me an error message! However, he claims that he didn't do anything, it just popped up, and that there is no pattern to when/how frequently the message appears. Two steps forward, one step back.


Do you have a movie...um, gosh. This is going to be hard. I don't know the name. It's with Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, it's set in Detroit. It doesn't have 'vampire' in the name, but it's kind of about vampires?"
Only Lovers Left Alive, 2013, she knows a LOT more than your average patron who doesn't know the title of the item he wants.


Walk past a guy reading the newspaper. He makes eye contact and says hello to me. I say "Hi, did you need some help?" and he responds belligerently with "Help with what?" Sorry sir, usually people don't talk to me as I'm walking around unless they want something.


Get two books out of storage for one of our regulars (he likes a lot of the same books as I do so he's one of my favorites). He points to the two titles he wants on a themed "Great Stand-Alone Sci-Fi" bookmark and it somehow comes out that I created that bookmark. He wants to know, "Oh wow, are you the book sleuth!?"


And, the toughest question of the night: A little girl points to a big cutout of Superman (which we have in keeping with our Every Hero Has a Story summer reading theme)--"Is he real?"










I said most people don't think so, they just like to tell stories about him. Did I do right?