Frustrating reference

I think Jumpsuit Man (always wears the same brown coveralls/jumpsuit) aka Automobile Quarterly Guy aka the man who brought a portable urinal into the library on more than one occasion is making up requests just to make the staff do work. We already get old issues of Automobile Quarterly out of storage for him every day, but he is expanding his horizons. In the last couple of weeks, he has also asked for ancient books on the Civil Service exams, ancient books on industrial chemistry, some movie from the 80s, and the Automobile Quarterly issues that are in the glass display case. Then today we had this conversation.


JM: Do you have an illustrated world atlas?
Me: Let me check. Is that the title, or would you just like any?
JM: Just any.
Me: Well, this is the children's section (as you well know), so this is a children's one, but is this the kind of thing you are looking for?
JM (with a big sigh): That's not the one I was thinking of.
Me (going to put it away): I'm sorry. Can you tell me anything more about the one you are looking for?
JM: Never mind, I'll just take this one.




Some other noteworthy questions from today:


A couple of d...ecades ago, you had a paperback book about buying stocks. I wanted to know if you still had that.
Do you remember anything else about it?
No, that's all I remember.
Well, let me show you the investing section. If we still have it and it's checked it, that's almost certainly where it would be.
Thanks. Gotta do something with all this free time.


Can you help me with the microfilm machine? (He doesn't want the initial help I want to give him, which involves totally removing the microfilm and replacing it correctly on the machine.)


Can you give me the number for the retirement home that's owned by the Holiday Inn?