Gems from the 90s

We had to clear out the oldest, dustiest storage area in my building this week to make room for some facilities work, and we unearthed a truly horrifying set of binders belonging to a long-retired staff member, including one just labelled "Delinquent Patrons." I flipped through it to take out anything that would jam the shredder and came across:

• A cassette tape taped to a page. The cassette tape had a barcode written on it but it was also labelled "not in catalog." Reading the attached sheet, which detailed the patron's failure to return the tape in a timely manner, did not make it at all clear why our 1990s predecessors had felt it necessary to keep the tape as evidence.
• A set of correspondence that went all the way up to the library director from a patron who had accidentally recorded over a library VHS tape and was being charged for a replacement. She was incensed that a security device to prevent this mistake had not been installed on the tape, and insisted that due to the library's negligence in not making that happen, she should not have to pay for the one she damaged.
• An incident report about a patron who got abusive when told of charges on his account. Attached to the report was a Post-It note on which was written, in different handwriting than the report: "I say we hire someone to break his kneecaps" and a set of initials.
• A packet of correspondence about a problem patron who had a habit of leaving lots of notes for staff in materials he returned. This patron, Mr. Jimmy Glen, was apparently told at some point by a staff member that he could not do whatever it was he wanted to do unless he provided either his library card or an ID. Instead, Mr. Glen showed the staff a hole-punched piece of paper attached to his keychain that had been carefully 'laminated' with tape and which said "Jimmy Glen: All Access Pass."
  

She needs to study hard

At this branch, if a patron wants to use a study room they check it out at the reference desk and then the staff member give them a little card showing they have the room checked out and then walks them over to the room and unlocks it.

I was helping a pair of patrons who wanted to check out a study room, and there was another patron standing in line behind them. Since she looked student-y, I asked "Do you need a study room too, by any chance?" so that I could check out one room to each group and then walk them over together. The patron looked at me like she was alarmed/confused that I was speaking to her and then said "no," so I said "Sorry, I'll be with you in just a minute." I checked out the study room the the couple in front of her, walked them over to the room, and came back to the desk. Then I asked "How can I help you?" and she said "I need to check out a study room."

Bonus: When I followed up with "Sure, can I please see your library card?" she only THEN began digging through her bag to pull it out (despite witnessing an entire study room transaction moments before) and told me "It's gonna be a minute."

Reasonable requests

 Things today's patrons want:

"I don't feel safe coming to the sewing program because of COVID, and I don't have a computer. Can I call at the time the class is happening and listen by phone?"

"Do you have a book about transitioning from orthopedics to cardiology?" 

Justified suspicion

One of the libraries in my new system has some high-tech locks on the study rooms. You hold your palm up to them to 'wake them up,' then enter a code to unlock the door. Holding up your palm to the lock again locks the door. I was showing this to a patron when I was on the desk this evening in case she wanted to go out to the bathroom without having to take her backpack with her. When I opened the door for her with a flourish, she looked at me hesitantly.so I said "Do you have a question?" She said "So...that lock recognizes hands?" "Oh!" I said, "No, it's not that high-tech. It doesn't know that it's your hand or my hand, it just knows that there's a hand in front of it." The patron sighed and said, "Okay, good. I wasn't sure I wanted to go into a room that was smarter than I am."

Disappointment

 I spent 30 minutes searching for the third book in the Spanish translation of a Debbie Macomber series this weekend, in which both the series and the individual books were dramatically re-titled, only to find out that apparently the translations weren't sufficiently profitable and the publisher had dropped the project after the first two books in the series. It's a toss-up whether I or the patron was more disappointed.

How I can tell my team isn't as overworked as I was afraid they were

Overheard in the staff office: "...that's what you get when you do a Google image search for 'fearsome wallaby.'"