Wacky Wednesday refgrunt

First patron in the door: Is the copier on?


There is one voicemail from while we were closed, but it is either a pocket dial or the worst-quality connection I have ever experienced.


Can I please use a computer?


Oh, but the printer server is down. Call upstairs to IT and beg them to reboot it.


Circ clerk approaches with picture of the assailant from last week's assault: Can you put this somewhere visible but not too obvious? He threatened to come back today. If you see him, call the police.


Patron who asked about the copier is copying the crossword puzzle from the New York Times, asks for help and if he has to go upstairs to do the same thing with The Wall Street Journal.

Woman at computer: Excuse me!...Never mind, I got it.

Eccentric older man and non-eccentric (or at least, not visibly) younger man come un and ask to use a meeting room. The older man fills out the application, but stops to answer his cell phone when it rings (so much for "please silence your ringer in the library") and then rudely stands in front of the desk and talks so that no other patrons can approach, until I make him leave. He leaves his stuff on the desk and when I indicate to him that he has to move it too, he rudely gestures to the younger guy and the younger guy sheepishly moves it.


Woman at computer: Excuse me! What's going on with this website?
Me: I'm sorry, it looks like the page has crashed.
Woman: Well, can you un-crash it!?


A few minutes later she comes over to me at the desk: Gimme the number for the Italian National Guard.
First she is mad when I tell her there is no such thing, then she is mad when we agree to substitute to Italian National Police because I tell her the person who answers the phone won't necessarily speak English. "Can't you give me the English one?"


Then she wants the Hawaii National Guard instead.


Man at copier (different from first copier guy): Paper clip?
5 seconds later: Staple remover?
5 seconds later: Stapler? Sorry, you must hate me.


Copier Man, like many of the patrons who come in just to use the copier, has come from the courthouse down the street (where they charge two dollars a page to make copies!) and starts telling me about all his crazy legal problems and family drama. I've made a game of deciding in each of these cases who I think should win, and for once I take the patron's side on my imaginary jury. He actually seems like a nice, pretty sane guy, just stressed out.


See a regularly unpleasant patron who was banned for a month for watching porn on library computers enter the lobby. His ban is over, though, so there's nothing I can do.


What do you gotta do to get on a computer?


Weed The Idiot's Guide to Cigars and Majestic Mule Deer from the nonfiction collection.


Read an article about security in libraries and cringe over a story of a guard telling a woman that she either had to take off her hijab or leave the building (up there with the gender policing that our security guards just can't seem to stop) but turn a little green with envy over another story of a library which had such a close relationship wit the police that when the police were short of space, the library lend them an office, and in return they set up a small children's museum in the room next door.


Patron just walking in the door: Wow, it's peaceful in here.
Today, anyway, sir.