Things patrons brought to the library with them today

•  A full-size bottle of ketchup
• A bottle of A1 steak sauce (seemingly unrelated!)
• Their own space heater

Mrs. Claus

A woman walked up to me on the checkout desk and said," I'm looking for Santa. Did he leave?" I froze for a second and then offered "I'm sorry, I haven't seen anyone matching that description."

As soon as the patron walked away, my coworker and I argued heatedly over whether the woman was 1) Talking about a friend/family member who resembled common depictions of Santa Claus, 2) Attempting to joke with us, or 3) dead serious.

Study room demands

 All four branches of New Library have 4 study rooms each. Patrons love them and I hate them. 

 During a single hour on desk earlier this week:

Patron #1: Do you have a study area?

Me: Yes, sir. We have two study rooms available right now that you can check out with your library card, or we also have two different quiet rooms, one behind me to the left here and one over by the magazines.

Patron #1: Is that all?

As I said, patrons love our study rooms. For the other incident, it's important to know that how we handle the high demand is that each user gets two hours of guaranteed time. After that, they can stay as long as no one else asks for a room. If someone does, whoever has been there longest is asked to leave. We keep a little laminated card with a barcode on it for each room, and write down the end of the two hours on the card so that if all the rooms are full, we can see at a glance who we need to ask to wind down. It's also worth mentioning that the study rooms are basically identical.

Patron #2: Is there a study room?

Me: Right now we have 3 and 4 available, sir. Do you have a preference?

Patron: Doesn't that card say room 1 will be free in 10 minutes?

Me: Well, sir, everyone gets two hours guaranteed in the room, but then they can stay past that as long as no one else is waiting for a room. This just shows when they will hit their two hours, they won't necessarily be done at that time.

Patron: But I'M waiting.

Me: We have rooms 3 and 4 available right now, so you don't have to wait.

Patron: But I want room 1.

Me: I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not going to ask people to leave when there are other rooms open.

Patron: You're going to make this difficult, aren't you?

Me: ...

Patron: Fine, I'll take room 3.

As my friend who used to manage this branch used to say: I'm sorry there's not enough PRIVATE space at this PUBLIC library for you.