And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"

A patron wandered up to the desk and announced "I need to save a document on my drive." Seeing as she was holding a flash drive in her hand, I walked her back to her computer and guided her through plugging the drive in and locating the "save" function on Microsoft Word. When we finally got to the correct folder to save it in she said that she wanted to change the document's name from the default. I showed her how to do that. She typed "[Patron] resume" and then: "What year is it?...Oh, right, 2019...What month is it?" I just said "It's May, ma'am. Good luck with your job search!"

Library mode

I was passing through the front desk area and saw that a patron with a small stack of books was standing there looking frustrated while both my colleagues were helping other people, so I approached her and said "Hi, ma'am, is there anything I can help you with?" The patron responded, "No, you can't help me. Every time I ask you a question, you just go into library mode and I can't understand. You people need to understand that other people aren't in that mode."

Me: "I'm so sorry about that, are you sure I can't try to help you?"

Patron (continuing as though she hasn't heard me): Everywhere I go, they go into grocery store mode, or bank mode, or library mode...it's no good, I am not in that mode.

Me:...

Patron: [leaves her stuff on the counter and walks out of the building, still muttering in frustration.]

Me to coworker: Did you help that lady? Do you know what she was upset about?

Coworker: Yeah, she said she wanted to take those books home so I said 'Okay, you want to check them out? I can help you with that in just a minute' and that's when she got mad.

Apparently "check out" was too jargon-y for this patron.

Whale of a dream

The same patron who wanted to know if Mike Wazowski blinks or winks stopped by the desk to tell me he hasn't been in lately because he's had a cold and it's taking him a long time to recover, maybe because he doesn't want to take medicine: "I don't want to take Nyquil, I don't like the weird dreams it gives me...[in an absolutely horrified tone of voice] I had a dream I was making friends with a baby whale. A whale!"

I thought about it all day

Patron on his way out of the library: Have you seen the movie "Monsters, Inc."?
Me: Yes.
Patron: I have an important question for you. Can Mike Wazowski wink?
Me: ...

Plumbing the depths of bad patron behavior

It was a long week at Walnut Bluff this week. Our sewage system backed up twice, spewing gross contaminated water into both public bathrooms and the staff bathroom. The city plumbers were out working on it for a long time. When they finally got it working again, they insisted that I come outside and see what they had pulled out of the plumbing: It was a pair of pants!