This week

Bathroom issues: A man wants to permission to use the women's restroom because whoever is in the single stall in the men's room is taking ages. "If you don't let me in, I'm going to pee on myself right here!"

Later the same day a woman complains that another woman threatened her in the bathroom because she thought she was trying to look through the stall at her. The accuser is a known stirrer-upper-of-drama so I offer her the phone to call the police to report the threat. Surprisingly, police come, and speak to and calm down both ladies involved.

When is there going to be tax help at the library? times 20.

While picking up trash outside the library (I failed to escape this responsibility by transferring to Walnut Bluff) I find two empty beer cans and an empty full-size wine bottle. Yikes.

I fill in for a sick coworker at a kids' craft program. I tried bribing my other staff members (most of whom are very afraid of children) by saying that anyone who sat through the program with me as a sort of exposure therapy could go home an hour early, but no one took me up on it.

A kid at the craft program has a stuffed dog in a Superman costume.
Me: Wow, is that Superdog?
Kid: No, it's Dinodog.
Kid's mom: He has dinosaur pajamas on under the Superman outfit. It's complicated.

A Hispanic guy comes in, sees my white self and my black coworker at the desk, and immediately looks away and pretends he doesn't see us.
Me: Hi, how can we help you?
Him: Uh...no English.
Me: Oh, como podemos ayudar a usted? [Oh, how can we help you?]
Him: Whoa...[I need to print something.]
Me: [Yeah, sure, we can do that!]

My colleague spots me as I am dusting the Spanish section--"Are you trying something, or is this a hint?" Kind of both.

Different colleague is trying and failing to pull out the first wipe in a canister of Lysol wipes, but he can't reach in far enough. He says, "I wonder if this is what t-rexs felt like" and I accidentally crack up loud enough that a patron glares at me.

Superstition

I am very far on one end of the superstition spectrum, which I think makes my personal life a bit easier, all things considered, but is actually kind of a problem at work since I often put my foot in my mouth by doing things like commenting on how easy and quiet the day has been, which seems to invariably make one of my coworkers go "Oh no! Why did you say that!? You jinxed it!"

However, my coworkers don't know how lucky they are that I was the one to find a mirror broken into pieces outside our front door this morning.

Things I've bought for Walnut Bluff

Now that I'm a branch manager, I've finally relaxed my rule of not buying things for the library with my own money. Here's what my library has needed since I started:
-Two bags of peppermint candies for a guessing jar 
-20 flyers printed in color from a local print shop
-A light-duty staple gun 
-A string of flags from around the world
-Lunch for everyone on staff from a local fast food place
-Two massive cases of Lysol wipes

She helps herself

We have two shelves for customer requests at my library--the books are out on the public floor and are self-service, but the media is behind the front desk because our media is in locking cases, and patrons used to come pick up their requests, check them out at the self-service checkout, leave without getting them unlocked, and then get mad when they got home and couldn't open them. Recently the staff decided that all book holds for a particular old lady had to be kept behind the counter with the media because she kept grabbing them off the self-service shelf and leaving without checking them out.

I asked one of the old-timers if she was maybe just confused about how holds worked, and the old-timer scowled darkly and said "Oh, believe me, she knows."

Not a service dog

I was working on next month's work schedule in my office when one of the staff members on the desk came to get me and said "I'm sorry to bother you, but a woman has tied her dog up inside the library and I don't know what to do."

Sure enough, I went out to the public floor and saw that there was a large golden retriever tied to a newspaper rack in the little vestibule between our lobby and the actual outside. I looked around and didn't see anyone who was obviously the dog's owner, so I went over to the dog, hoping that whoever was with the dog would notice and come and talk to me. As I was approaching the vestibule, another patron came up to the library doors from the outside, looked nervously at this 75-pound dog, and hesitated. As I was trying to figure out if I could maybe stand between the nervous patron and this dog so that the patron could come in, a woman about my age bustled up to me from inside the library and huffed irritably, as though she was incredibly put-upon: "Don't worry about it! I am taking him outside right now!" She unclipped his leash while giving a massive eye roll and stormed out with her golden retriever, turning to whine over her shoulder, "I was just going to print something really quick!"

Not fine fines

Reasons patrons have given me for why I should waive their fines (note that at my library system, we only charge overdue fines if someone else has requested the item--if there are no requests for an item that is late the fines are automatically waived):

"It wasn't me who checked out this book! It was my sister!"

"I didn't get the courtesy reminder that they were due!"

"I am a teacher and I left the book in my classroom over winter break."

 "That season of TV was missing disc 1 when I checked it out."

"I forgot to unlock the case, so I never got to watch it."

"Your automated reminder emails are too long, so I don't read them."

Honesty not the most effective policy

Patron: I want to make a complaint! She [points at staff member] was extremely rude to me on the phone! I told her that I wanted blah blah blah...then she said blah blah blah...then I screamed at her...
Me: Sorry, what? Did you just say you screamed at her?
Patron: Well, yes, I screamed at her. She upset me!
Me: Sir, you can't talk to the library staff like that. I'm afraid you need to leave the library for today. You can come back tomorrow after you have had a chance to calm down.