One of the blog tags is "Trouble Brothers" for a pair of kids who used to come into my original library and cause chaos. Since I don't work at that library anymore I thought maybe I could re-use the tag for two adults who I think are related and who take trouble to the next level. Hopefully this will be the only instance of the resurrected tag though, since I had to ban them...
There are two men about my age who I think are related (maybe they aren't actually brothers, but they do look alike) who have been coming in lately and have kind of taken over one of the alcoves with tables in it (who designs a public library with alcoves!? aargh!). They seem to be maybe schizophrenic, or otherwise unwell in a paranoid sort of way. I know that mental illness is really tough to deal with, especially in a state like Texas where there is basically no social safety net, so I've really been trying to give them every chance, but they've been bothering other patrons on a pretty regular basis. The problem is that since they are paranoid, other people's perfectly normal behavior, like walking past their table more than once, or browsing the shelves near them, or looking at them because they are constantly muttering fearfully is interpreted as 'stalking' them or 'staring' at them or 'harassing' them.
Today, one of our teen volunteers went to sit at a nearby table and play on his phone while he waited for his ride after his volunteer shift had ended. About 30 seconds later, he came back looking afraid and was like "There are two guys over there who say I am trying to start something with them! They were getting in my face!" I went over there and told the brothers that they were making other patrons uncomfortable and they needed to stop doing things that made other people afraid to be in the same space as them. Of course, instead of apologizing and changing their behavior, they got defensive and insisted that our teen volunteer, who is like 15 years old and about as intimidating as a rabbit, had been hassling them. I ended up having to call the police to make them leave. The entire time I was trying to hustle them out the door they were insisting that the teen volunteer had been stalking them for weeks and was part of a conspiracy against them--they only finally left when I told them that if they weren't gone by the time the police arrived, I would ask the police to cite them for trespassing since they were banned from the library.
After they finally left I went back to the teen volunteer to make sure he was okay. Fortunately he is tougher than he looks and he was fine. I asked if he had had trouble with them in the library before or maybe elsewhere in the neighborhood, since they had been claiming that he followed them around at the grocery store, and had thrown stuff at them out of his car (he doesn't drive) so I was worried maybe they had been a problem for him in the neighborhood too. He looked at me in confusion and said "I have literally never seen those guys before in my life."
Monday, February 25, 2019
Monday, February 18, 2019
Even faster than I thought
A very generous relative sent me a gift card to an office supply store to buy stuff for Walnut Bluff. We had a program this Saturday that I knew was going to be big, and we only have custodial service Monday-Friday, once a day, and it's just not enough to keep our bathrooms non-gross on busy days. Our biggest problems are that the little trash cans overflow with paper towels and right now, because of our HVAC troubles, ventilation isn't very good. So I spent some of the gift card money on cans of spray air freshener and boxes of tissues (figuring people might be using bulky paper towels to blow their noses), and put one of each in both the men's and women's bathrooms.
The office supply store sold both tissues and air freshener in big office-sized multipacks, and a little starry-eyed part of me was like "These aren't very expensive. Maybe people won't steal them very often and I can actually make this a permanent thing!"
I put the tissues and air freshener out at about 10 a.m. on Saturday. At 4:00 p.m. Sunday, I specifically went to look at see what was still there. Only one of the four items remained. I told a coworker, who rolled her eyes and said "This is why we can't have nice things!"
The office supply store sold both tissues and air freshener in big office-sized multipacks, and a little starry-eyed part of me was like "These aren't very expensive. Maybe people won't steal them very often and I can actually make this a permanent thing!"
I put the tissues and air freshener out at about 10 a.m. on Saturday. At 4:00 p.m. Sunday, I specifically went to look at see what was still there. Only one of the four items remained. I told a coworker, who rolled her eyes and said "This is why we can't have nice things!"
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
A long bathroom break
The staff entrance to my library is set in a sort of alcove the opens off the alley that runs behind our building. Unfortunately, like with most libraries, it seems like the architecture firm that designed our building didn't think about how people really behave, and made this a nice little semi-enclosed area that offers the illusion of privacy and safety. Until recently, the library had a lot of trouble with people sleeping back there, peeing on the wall, or just dumping trash. One of my first acts as a new manager was to lobby library administration to spend the money to add an extra security camera to cover that area, and I am grateful that they chose to do so. Since then, the problems have stopped. Mostly.
At around 11:00 one of my coworkers arrived at work (she is on the evening shift) and reported that someone had left a shopping cart full of stuff in the alcove. We looked around the library property to see if we could find the owner, and then looked through the library, too, even though people who are homeless who want to use the library generally leave their stuff by the front entrance, not at the back. We didn't have any luck finding the person who the cart belonged to, so I decided we'd wait an hour to see if someone came back for it. No one did, so I put on some latex gloves and my best psychological armor and took some trash bags out to start bagging up everything in the cart and throwing it in our dumpster.
I have a very sensitive gag reflex and this person had a lot of smelly fabrics. It was probably the most miserable 45 minutes I've spent at work, at least since I escaped retail. I also felt super-guilty that I was throwing away all of someone's worldly goods, and was dreading when they would inevitably come back and yell at me.However, we can't have people just dumping things on city property, and it's not like the person had made an effort to contact us and enlist us as allies. Sometimes we have people who will be like "I know I have too much stuff, but I really need to come in and charge my phone--is it okay if I leave it outside the front door?" and we say yes, make sure it's not in the way of other patrons, and ensure they take it with them when they leave. No big deal, but they have to tell us.
I finally finished bagging up everything, but our dumpster was full and there was a bunch of scrap metal in the cart that wouldn't fit in the dumpster, so I left a couple of bags of stuff and the metal outside while I went inside to call someone for advice on what to do about getting the cart and the metal picked up, and to see if we could get sanitation to come do an extra pickup of trash.
While I was on the phone, the 'owner' of the cart came back, but not to get it! Instead, she came back and left new trash! One of my coworkers was leaving for lunch and caught her doing it, so she hurried back in to get me. The two of us ran back outside to see the patron rearranging the trash I had bagged up back onto her shopping cart. "Ma'am," I said, "I'm sorry, but you cannot leave your stuff here, especially if then you leave library property."
The woman rolled her eyes at me and said "I just left for a minute to go to the bathroom! Fine! I will take it away!" and she rolled away her cart of scrap metal and trash, not saying a word to us about the fact that 75% of her stuff had disappeared into the dumpster.
I checked the security cameras later, and they showed that the woman had been gone for a total of two and a half hours.
At around 11:00 one of my coworkers arrived at work (she is on the evening shift) and reported that someone had left a shopping cart full of stuff in the alcove. We looked around the library property to see if we could find the owner, and then looked through the library, too, even though people who are homeless who want to use the library generally leave their stuff by the front entrance, not at the back. We didn't have any luck finding the person who the cart belonged to, so I decided we'd wait an hour to see if someone came back for it. No one did, so I put on some latex gloves and my best psychological armor and took some trash bags out to start bagging up everything in the cart and throwing it in our dumpster.
I have a very sensitive gag reflex and this person had a lot of smelly fabrics. It was probably the most miserable 45 minutes I've spent at work, at least since I escaped retail. I also felt super-guilty that I was throwing away all of someone's worldly goods, and was dreading when they would inevitably come back and yell at me.However, we can't have people just dumping things on city property, and it's not like the person had made an effort to contact us and enlist us as allies. Sometimes we have people who will be like "I know I have too much stuff, but I really need to come in and charge my phone--is it okay if I leave it outside the front door?" and we say yes, make sure it's not in the way of other patrons, and ensure they take it with them when they leave. No big deal, but they have to tell us.
I finally finished bagging up everything, but our dumpster was full and there was a bunch of scrap metal in the cart that wouldn't fit in the dumpster, so I left a couple of bags of stuff and the metal outside while I went inside to call someone for advice on what to do about getting the cart and the metal picked up, and to see if we could get sanitation to come do an extra pickup of trash.
While I was on the phone, the 'owner' of the cart came back, but not to get it! Instead, she came back and left new trash! One of my coworkers was leaving for lunch and caught her doing it, so she hurried back in to get me. The two of us ran back outside to see the patron rearranging the trash I had bagged up back onto her shopping cart. "Ma'am," I said, "I'm sorry, but you cannot leave your stuff here, especially if then you leave library property."
The woman rolled her eyes at me and said "I just left for a minute to go to the bathroom! Fine! I will take it away!" and she rolled away her cart of scrap metal and trash, not saying a word to us about the fact that 75% of her stuff had disappeared into the dumpster.
I checked the security cameras later, and they showed that the woman had been gone for a total of two and a half hours.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
In better news
Some good/funny things happened at Walnut Bluff this week too:
We recently got a new paper towel dispenser in our women's bathroom--the lock broke on the old one and people kept stealing the roll of towels out of it. Our custodian normally refills the towels and toilet paper as the last thing she does in the morning before she leaves for the day. The first day with the new dispenser, she came to get me and said she could not for the life of her figure out how to put towels in the new dispenser--well, when I say "said," it was mostly communicated by gestures since she doesn't speak very much English and I don't speak very much Spanish that isn't library-specific. I went to take a look at it and, despite the pictorial instructions, was equally stumped. Finally we had to go get a third person, who doesn't speak any English, and he spent about 15 minutes wrestling with it, with the custodian and me looking over his shoulder and offering suggestions in two languages. As we triumphantly came back to the desk, the librarian who was waiting for patrons to come in raised her eyebrow and said "How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?"
I was pretty obviously having a rough day one day this week and was in my office working on something. One of my favorite coworkers knocked, handed me a Sandra Boynton board book called Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!, said "I bought this from the donations for you, you seemed like you could use it" and walked back out without another word.
Someone left their cake behind in the library. We kept it in the lost and found for the rest of the day, but no one came back for it. A fierce debate raged about whether to toss it or eat it, but in the end cautious, sensible heads prevailed and we threw it out untouched.
We recently got a new paper towel dispenser in our women's bathroom--the lock broke on the old one and people kept stealing the roll of towels out of it. Our custodian normally refills the towels and toilet paper as the last thing she does in the morning before she leaves for the day. The first day with the new dispenser, she came to get me and said she could not for the life of her figure out how to put towels in the new dispenser--well, when I say "said," it was mostly communicated by gestures since she doesn't speak very much English and I don't speak very much Spanish that isn't library-specific. I went to take a look at it and, despite the pictorial instructions, was equally stumped. Finally we had to go get a third person, who doesn't speak any English, and he spent about 15 minutes wrestling with it, with the custodian and me looking over his shoulder and offering suggestions in two languages. As we triumphantly came back to the desk, the librarian who was waiting for patrons to come in raised her eyebrow and said "How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?"
I was pretty obviously having a rough day one day this week and was in my office working on something. One of my favorite coworkers knocked, handed me a Sandra Boynton board book called Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!, said "I bought this from the donations for you, you seemed like you could use it" and walked back out without another word.
Someone left their cake behind in the library. We kept it in the lost and found for the rest of the day, but no one came back for it. A fierce debate raged about whether to toss it or eat it, but in the end cautious, sensible heads prevailed and we threw it out untouched.
February weirdness
I am originally from a much colder climate than Texas, and my mother used to celebrate getting through February, which always felt miserable in the wintry north. I was thinking that now I live in Texas I should have a similar celebration at the end of August, but if this month continues on the current course, I'm going to have to keep celebrating surviving February:
A volunteer who, despite being repeatedly offered the chance to lock her purse in the staff area, insists on keeping it with her while shelving, came to us distraught and asking us to call the police because, you guessed it, someone stole her purse. Fortunately, its absence was noted almost immediately, apparently before the person who took it had a chance to get away, and our security guard found it abandoned on a bottom shelf in the stacks. Not until police had already been called, though, and they were crabby when they arrived.
Our storytime has moved into our program room from the children's area because it's too big. The children's librarian likes to leave the door open to welcome the many families that come in fashionably late, so I am posted at the door for an hour as 'storytime assistant' and I spend 90% of my time redirecting a crabby toddler who keeps trying to escape into the rest of the library (I'm only free the last 10% of the time because his caregiver snaps and buckles him into his stroller for the last part of the program).
Instead of weeding damaged or outdated books, I swear all the other branches are sending them to us to "float" into our collection.
Our heating system has had some sort of catastrophic failure. While we wait for the replacement part to arrive, the library is heated by a series of loud, obnoxious fans that facilities services seems to have placed in order to maximize the number of patrons that their cables and noise will disrupt. Also, when I ask the facilities services techs if we can leave the system running at night, they say "Well, it will be cold in the morning. But better a library that's cold but still there than one that's burned down." So now it's 60 degrees when we arrive each morning, and the hour we have before patrons arrive is NOT long enough for things to heat up enough to keep them from complaining.
Everyone's kids have the flu, so I work a couple of 9-9 shifts to cover people who are out sick. That means I have half a day of comp time, and I plan to sleep through aaaaall of it.
We are un/fortunate enough to be hosting free tax help for patrons--it's a great service that people can't get many other places, but WOW is it a staff headache. One of the library assistants warns, "I know this is your first year and I don't want to stress you out, but you should probably know that the two volunteers who are in charge of tax help are enemies. They will always tell you contradictory things about what they need."
A patron cries at the desk because we can't accept the document she brought in as proof of city residency to sign her up for a library card. "I just wanted to get a booooooook!"
A volunteer who, despite being repeatedly offered the chance to lock her purse in the staff area, insists on keeping it with her while shelving, came to us distraught and asking us to call the police because, you guessed it, someone stole her purse. Fortunately, its absence was noted almost immediately, apparently before the person who took it had a chance to get away, and our security guard found it abandoned on a bottom shelf in the stacks. Not until police had already been called, though, and they were crabby when they arrived.
Our storytime has moved into our program room from the children's area because it's too big. The children's librarian likes to leave the door open to welcome the many families that come in fashionably late, so I am posted at the door for an hour as 'storytime assistant' and I spend 90% of my time redirecting a crabby toddler who keeps trying to escape into the rest of the library (I'm only free the last 10% of the time because his caregiver snaps and buckles him into his stroller for the last part of the program).
Instead of weeding damaged or outdated books, I swear all the other branches are sending them to us to "float" into our collection.
Our heating system has had some sort of catastrophic failure. While we wait for the replacement part to arrive, the library is heated by a series of loud, obnoxious fans that facilities services seems to have placed in order to maximize the number of patrons that their cables and noise will disrupt. Also, when I ask the facilities services techs if we can leave the system running at night, they say "Well, it will be cold in the morning. But better a library that's cold but still there than one that's burned down." So now it's 60 degrees when we arrive each morning, and the hour we have before patrons arrive is NOT long enough for things to heat up enough to keep them from complaining.
Everyone's kids have the flu, so I work a couple of 9-9 shifts to cover people who are out sick. That means I have half a day of comp time, and I plan to sleep through aaaaall of it.
We are un/fortunate enough to be hosting free tax help for patrons--it's a great service that people can't get many other places, but WOW is it a staff headache. One of the library assistants warns, "I know this is your first year and I don't want to stress you out, but you should probably know that the two volunteers who are in charge of tax help are enemies. They will always tell you contradictory things about what they need."
A patron cries at the desk because we can't accept the document she brought in as proof of city residency to sign her up for a library card. "I just wanted to get a booooooook!"
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Mystery of the lost scooters
Before we open in the morning someone has to go out and put up the U.S. and Texas flags and empty the book drop that is outside the front door of the library. It can be a pain because there are often patrons lurking in the lot trying to get you to help them before the library opens.
I was out emptying the drop this morning and two guys in hi-viz jackets inside a transit van pulled up next to me. The van was just white--no company markings. A pet peeve of mine is that city contractors often show up outside library opening hours and expect to be let in even though we haven't been notified by the city that they are coming, so I mentally rolled my eyes, expecting this to be that. They guys rolled down the window and we had this conversation:
Me: Hi, can I hep you?
Guys: Hi, we're from Uber and our app says there should be two Uber scooters here.
Me: Okay. We don't open until ten o'clock, but when people bring scooters we usually ask them to leave them on the bike rack right over there.
Guys: *Just stare at me from their truck*
Me: *Walks over to check the bike rack, hoping they'll get the hint* Well, it looks like there aren't any over here...
Guys: Well, our app says they are inside the building.
Me: Well, I don't think so, but you're welcome to come back at ten and check, just in case.
The guys drove away and I went back to emptying the drop. As I was finishing up, I heard someone calling "Miss? Miss? Could you come over here for just a second?" and looked up to see that the guys had parked across the alley, opposite the staff entrance to the library. I walked over there and prepared to tell them firmly that no, I would not let them into the staff area to look for their scooters, but then they pointed at our HVAC room, which has a separate entrance next to the staff door.
Uber guys: The app says the scooters are in there...
Me: I really don't think so. That is our HVAC room and the public isn't allowed in there.
Guys: *Stare at me expectantly*
Me: Later today I can check in there, just in case...on the off-chance that I find one, what do you want me to do with it?
Guys: Just, um, put it outside?
Me: Okay, I'll do that later.
And I stared at them until they finally drove away.
(I kind of kick myself for even doing this, but I really did check the HVAC room for scooters. Unsurprisingly, there weren't any in there.)
I was out emptying the drop this morning and two guys in hi-viz jackets inside a transit van pulled up next to me. The van was just white--no company markings. A pet peeve of mine is that city contractors often show up outside library opening hours and expect to be let in even though we haven't been notified by the city that they are coming, so I mentally rolled my eyes, expecting this to be that. They guys rolled down the window and we had this conversation:
Me: Hi, can I hep you?
Guys: Hi, we're from Uber and our app says there should be two Uber scooters here.
Me: Okay. We don't open until ten o'clock, but when people bring scooters we usually ask them to leave them on the bike rack right over there.
Guys: *Just stare at me from their truck*
Me: *Walks over to check the bike rack, hoping they'll get the hint* Well, it looks like there aren't any over here...
Guys: Well, our app says they are inside the building.
Me: Well, I don't think so, but you're welcome to come back at ten and check, just in case.
The guys drove away and I went back to emptying the drop. As I was finishing up, I heard someone calling "Miss? Miss? Could you come over here for just a second?" and looked up to see that the guys had parked across the alley, opposite the staff entrance to the library. I walked over there and prepared to tell them firmly that no, I would not let them into the staff area to look for their scooters, but then they pointed at our HVAC room, which has a separate entrance next to the staff door.
Uber guys: The app says the scooters are in there...
Me: I really don't think so. That is our HVAC room and the public isn't allowed in there.
Guys: *Stare at me expectantly*
Me: Later today I can check in there, just in case...on the off-chance that I find one, what do you want me to do with it?
Guys: Just, um, put it outside?
Me: Okay, I'll do that later.
And I stared at them until they finally drove away.
(I kind of kick myself for even doing this, but I really did check the HVAC room for scooters. Unsurprisingly, there weren't any in there.)
Saturday, February 2, 2019
In Walnut Bluff, 911 call YOU
We have a charging station behind the checkout desk at Walnut Bluff and we will take your phone and charge it for you while you use the computer or browse for books. I kind of hate that we take responsibility for patrons' phones, but before we had this system people were constantly plugging their phones into random outlets on the public floor, leaving their phones unattended, and then coming and freaking out to us when they got stolen, which happened pretty regularly.
There is supposed to be a whole process where we issue you a claim ticket, but some of our regulars will just kind of fling the phone at staff as they come in and try to skip the 'hassle' of establishing proof of ownership over their phones.
Earlier this week a man came up to one of my colleagues, looking kind of out of it, and shoved a phone in her face. She said, "Did you want me to charge this for you, sir?" and after a moment he said, "No! Talk!" Too surprised to do anything else, she put the phone to her ear. On the other end was a 911 dispatcher asking for the address. She gave them the library's address, helped the patron to an empty chair, and a few minutes later some EMTs arrived, talked to the guy, and took him away in an ambulance.
None of us knew what was wrong with him, but as I was checking with the EMTs to make sure they didn't need anything from the library, I saw another patron talking to the clerk at the front desk and gesturing dramatically in our direction. After everyone left, the clerk said "That patron said he saw the other guy huffing paint thinner outside in the parking lot. Want me to go take a look for the can?"
(I went out, collected the empty can, and threw it away.)
There is supposed to be a whole process where we issue you a claim ticket, but some of our regulars will just kind of fling the phone at staff as they come in and try to skip the 'hassle' of establishing proof of ownership over their phones.
Earlier this week a man came up to one of my colleagues, looking kind of out of it, and shoved a phone in her face. She said, "Did you want me to charge this for you, sir?" and after a moment he said, "No! Talk!" Too surprised to do anything else, she put the phone to her ear. On the other end was a 911 dispatcher asking for the address. She gave them the library's address, helped the patron to an empty chair, and a few minutes later some EMTs arrived, talked to the guy, and took him away in an ambulance.
None of us knew what was wrong with him, but as I was checking with the EMTs to make sure they didn't need anything from the library, I saw another patron talking to the clerk at the front desk and gesturing dramatically in our direction. After everyone left, the clerk said "That patron said he saw the other guy huffing paint thinner outside in the parking lot. Want me to go take a look for the can?"
(I went out, collected the empty can, and threw it away.)
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