Friday on the West Side

These are just the highlights. things move too fast here generally to include every time I help someone with the printer.


A patron recommended the movie Hardball to me: "Did you know that's based on a true story? I think they did it in Chicago. You know, the Bronx." As a former resident of the South Side, I had trouble letting that one go.


A woman who couldn't get into her account because she was using the wrong password concluded: "I thought I was doing something wrong, but I guess it was the pipes. It needed to be pushed through the pipes."


"Did Kevin Hart and Ice Cube do any other movies together besides Ride Along?"


A mysterious "volunteer" hands my coworker a typewritten slip of paper with a panda sticker on it and a mint. The paper says: "To: Library staff. Enrich someone's life today with a warm word of praise. Both of you will be better for it. From: Robert (Volunteer)." His name and 'title' are typed onto the page with the rest of the message--only "Library staff" is handwritten.


I spend two minutes convincing a man who says he wants to borrow a scanner that I need to hold his ID or a set of keys for him to have it. Finally he agrees and hands me his keys, so I hand him the scanner. Then he says "This won't help me. I need to fax."


Man with some printed papers: "Is there a way to make these into a PDF?"
Me: "Sure. We can do that two ways. either we can scan the pages you have there with our scanner and save them as a PDF or we can go on the computer and see if we can save the files directly."
After thinking that over for about a full minute, he replies: "I think I'm just going to go to Kinko's."