Shoe saws

 A patron comes up to the front desk: Hi, do you have a lost and found?

Me: Yes, we do. What are you missing?

Patron: Some shoe saws.

Me: I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Could you repeat that?

Patron: Some SHOE SAWS.

Me [trying and failing to Google what I think I'm hearing]: ... All right, can you describe them?

Patron [mumble mumble] gray [mumble mumble] Watson logo.

Me: I'll go check for you. While I do that, would you like to write down your name, number, and what you lost? That way if it's not in the lost and found but we find it later, we can call you.

Unsurprisingly, I don't find anything matching the patron's description in the lost and found. When I come back, he's written down his name and phone number, but no description. Darn. When I tell him that unfortunately I couldn't find his items, he wanders forlornly away.

A couple hours later, the phone rings.

Me: Checkout desk, this is Emma, how can I help you?

Librarian at the ref desk: Hey Emma. Do you remember the incident report from last week about the guy who tried to convince the janitorial staff to let him go on the roof?

Me: Yeah...

Librarian: That guy you just checked the lost and found for, that was the guy! Did you get his information?

I wonder if the roof is where is shoe saws are.

Dog in the library (again)

I was working at the front desk at one of the branches last week. This branch has a long lobby/breezeway thing between the front doors and the 'real' library entrance. The desk is sort of around the corner so you can't see the exterior doors.

 Since I am a sub at this branch, they usually put me on the desk with someone experienced, but today one of the shelvers sat down at the other desk and said "Hi, not to worry you, but this is literally my second shift on desk. Will you help me if I get in over my head?"

 So of course, this was the day a patron came and told us that "A giant dog is coming in and out of the front doors of the library. He doesn't seem aggressive, but he's making people nervous to come in."

 The sweet-seeming Great Pyrenees was Gone When Police (or rather Animal Control) arrived.

Modern library problems

 Shelver: Hey Emma, you're the librarian in charge right now, right?

Me (cautiously): Yes...

Shelver: An UberEats driver just delivered some food to the front desk. We have no clue who it belongs to? What do we do?

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."
  

Seems fitting

Caller: Hi, I got a call from you that I returned a DVD case without the DVD inside it?
Me: I'm sorry to hear that. How can I help you?
Caller: Was it 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'
Me: Yes, it looks like that's what the note on your account says. Don't worry, you have plenty of time to look for it before we charge you for anything, we just like to let people know as soon as--
Caller: Oh, I know where it is. It's stuck inside our DVD player. We have a pet rabbit and he chewed through the cord and now it won't open.
Me: Oh no! I'm sorry to hear that! Well, I don't know if that's fixable, but is there anything I can do to help?
Caller: Nah, it's okay. I'm gonna take it apart.
Me: Okay, thanks for calling! All the best to your rabbit!

Minimal overlap

Things I have to say to patrons:
"Excuse me, sir, is that your saw blade?"
"It doesn't matter if that's you in the picture, it's still not okay to look at pictures of naked people on the library computers."
"I'm sorry, but if I have to ask you to put your shoes back on again, I am going to have to ask you to leave the library for the day."
"Is that your son trying to run out the front door?" 
"I'm sorry, you really can't go in the restroom right now. I promise the plumbers are working on it."
"Sorry, I'm not going to ask kids to leave the library because they are laughing. This is the children's area." 
"I'm just trying to do my job."

Things I have to say to staff:
"No, please don't 'introduce termites' onto the dead tree outside as a solution. I'm sure the city will come cut it down soon."
"I know that email looks like a scam, but I swear it really is from I.T. and you really do have to do that cybersecurity training. Yes, I know it's ironic."
"If this graphic novel makes you uncomfortable, you can fill out the same complaint form a patron would fill out. Please don't just hide it at your desk without checking it out."
"Sorry, you can't have book cart races."
"The library will be FINE. Please, just go home and take some cold medicine."
"I'm just trying to do my job."

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!
 

Even faster than I thought

A very generous relative sent me a gift card to an office supply store to buy stuff for Walnut Bluff. We had a program this Saturday that I knew was going to be big, and we only have custodial service Monday-Friday, once a day, and it's just not enough to keep our bathrooms non-gross on busy days. Our biggest problems are that the little trash cans overflow with paper towels and right now, because of our HVAC troubles, ventilation isn't very good. So I spent some of the gift card money on cans of spray air freshener and boxes of tissues (figuring people might be using bulky paper towels to blow their noses), and put one of each in both the men's and women's bathrooms.

The office supply store sold both tissues and air freshener in big office-sized multipacks, and a little starry-eyed part of me was like "These aren't very expensive. Maybe people won't steal them very often and I can actually make this a permanent thing!"

I put the tissues and air freshener out at about 10 a.m. on Saturday. At 4:00 p.m. Sunday, I specifically went to look at see what was still there. Only one of the four items remained. I told a coworker, who rolled her eyes and said "This is why we can't have nice things!"

In better news

Some good/funny things happened at Walnut Bluff this week too:

We recently got a new paper towel dispenser in our women's bathroom--the lock broke on the old one and people kept stealing the roll of towels out of it. Our custodian normally refills the towels and toilet paper as the last thing she does in the morning before she leaves for the day. The first day with the new dispenser, she came to get me and said she could not for the life of her figure out how to put towels in the new dispenser--well, when I say "said," it was mostly communicated by gestures since she doesn't speak very much English and I don't speak very much Spanish that isn't library-specific. I went to take a look at it and, despite the pictorial instructions, was equally stumped. Finally we had to go get a third person, who doesn't speak any English, and he spent about 15 minutes wrestling with it, with the custodian and me looking over his shoulder and offering suggestions in two languages. As we triumphantly came back to the desk, the librarian who was waiting for patrons to come in raised her eyebrow and said "How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?"

I was pretty obviously having a rough day one day this week and was in my office working on something. One of my favorite coworkers knocked, handed me a Sandra Boynton board book called Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!, said "I bought this from the donations for you, you seemed like you could use it" and walked back out without another word.

Someone left their cake behind in the library. We kept it in the lost and found for the rest of the day, but no one came back for it. A fierce debate raged about whether to toss it or eat it, but in the end cautious, sensible heads prevailed and we threw it out untouched.

February weirdness

I am originally from a much colder climate than Texas, and my mother used to celebrate getting through February, which always felt miserable in the wintry north. I was thinking that now I live in Texas I should have a similar celebration at the end of August, but if this month continues on the current course, I'm going to have to keep celebrating surviving February:

A volunteer who, despite being repeatedly offered the chance to lock her purse in the staff area, insists on keeping it with her while shelving, came to us distraught and asking us to call the police because, you guessed it, someone stole her purse. Fortunately, its absence was noted almost immediately, apparently before the person who took it had a chance to get away, and our security guard found it abandoned on a bottom shelf in the stacks. Not until police had already been called, though, and they were crabby when they arrived.

Our storytime has moved into our program room from the children's area because it's too big. The children's librarian likes to leave the door open to welcome the many families that come in fashionably late, so I am posted at the door for an hour as 'storytime assistant' and I spend 90% of my time redirecting a crabby toddler who keeps trying to escape into the rest of the library (I'm only free the last 10% of the time because his caregiver snaps and buckles him into his stroller for the last part of the program).

Instead of weeding damaged or outdated books, I swear all the other branches are sending them to us to "float" into our collection.

Our heating system has had some sort of catastrophic failure. While we wait for the replacement part to arrive, the library is heated by a series of loud, obnoxious fans that facilities services seems to have placed in order to maximize the number of patrons that their cables and noise will disrupt. Also, when I ask the facilities services techs if we can leave the system running at night, they say "Well, it will be cold in the morning. But better a library that's cold but still there than one that's burned down." So now it's 60 degrees when we arrive each morning, and the hour we have before patrons arrive is NOT long enough for things to heat up enough to keep them from complaining.

Everyone's kids have the flu, so I work a couple of 9-9 shifts to cover people who are out sick. That means I have half a day of comp time, and I plan to sleep through aaaaall of it.

We are un/fortunate enough to be hosting free tax help for patrons--it's a great service that people can't get many other places, but WOW is it a staff headache. One of the library assistants warns, "I know this is your first year and I don't want to stress you out, but you should probably know that the two volunteers who are in charge of tax help are enemies. They will always tell you contradictory things about what they need."

A patron cries at the desk because we can't accept the document she brought in as proof of city residency to sign her up for a library card. "I just wanted to get a booooooook!"

Mystery of the lost scooters

Before we open in the morning someone has to go out and put up the U.S. and Texas flags and empty the book drop that is outside the front door of the library. It can be a pain because there are often patrons lurking in the lot trying to get you to help them before the library opens.

I was out emptying the drop this morning and two guys in hi-viz jackets inside a transit van pulled up next to me. The van was just white--no company markings. A pet peeve of mine is that city contractors often show up outside library opening hours and expect to be let in even though we haven't been notified by the city that they are coming, so I mentally rolled my  eyes, expecting this to be that. They guys rolled down the window and we had this conversation:

Me: Hi, can I hep you?
Guys: Hi, we're from Uber and our app says there should be two Uber scooters here.
Me: Okay. We don't open until ten o'clock, but when people bring scooters we usually ask them to leave them on the bike rack right over there.
Guys: *Just stare at me from their truck*
Me: *Walks over to check the bike rack, hoping they'll get the hint* Well, it looks like there aren't any over here...
Guys: Well, our app says they are inside the building. 
Me: Well, I don't think so, but you're welcome to come back at ten and check, just in case. 

The guys drove away and I went back to emptying the drop. As I was finishing up, I heard someone calling "Miss? Miss? Could you come over here for just a second?" and looked up to see that the guys had parked across the alley, opposite the staff entrance to the library. I walked over there and prepared to tell them firmly that no, I would not let them into the staff area to look for their scooters, but then they pointed at our HVAC room, which has a separate entrance next to the staff door.

Uber guys: The app says the scooters are in there...
Me: I really don't think so. That is our HVAC room and the public isn't allowed in there.
Guys: *Stare at me expectantly*
Me: Later today I can check in there, just in case...on the off-chance that I find one, what do you want me to do with it?
Guys: Just, um, put it outside?
Me: Okay, I'll do that later.

And I stared at them until they finally drove away.

(I kind of kick myself for even doing this, but I really did check the HVAC room for scooters. Unsurprisingly, there weren't any in there.)

Talking trash

Today it was again my turn to pick up trash around the library grounds. I did not find any cereal, but I did find:

• 32 cigarette butts
• An empty bottle of motor oil, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the auto repair shops on either side of us
• The label for a can of fat-free refried beans
• (Presumably) a can of refried beans, about 5 yards away from the above label
• Two of my nemesis' daily cigarillo packets, since no one picked up the trash yesterday
• A long lock from someone's extension, or so I like to think.
• The largest bottle of Smirnoff I've ever seen outside a liquor store (empty)

Without eyewitness

Unnoticed, someone went through our entire collection and pulled out all the Eyewitness books, then 'shelved' them all together in an empty shelf.

Where are the fish and chips?

Someone left behind a gallon jug of vinegar in the library. It's been sitting in our lost and found for a week with a sign saying "[Children's library assistant] wants this if no one claims!"

A fortune

As I was tidying the library before closing recently I found a stray fortune from a fortune cookie. It said "The respect of influential people will soon be yours."


I hope that means "Your boss will say yes to the ambitious re-organization of the adult fiction and non-fiction that you are planning to propose."


Not holding my breath, though.

Just Google it!

This Wednesday morning desk shift gave me a small headache:


My Circulation counterpart is still shelving holds when we open; I check out a few patrons' items on her behalf.


Phone call: I left a flash drive there. Can you connect me to the people by the computers to check if they have it?


ESL teacher: Do you have a key to open the room in the basement? Seamus from Security usually opens it for us.


Another phone call re: lost and found.


A huge mob of kids in matching shirts comes in and lines up at the front desk. I am massively relieved to find out they are here for a program with our children's librarian, and they don't need me to award them all summer reading prizes.


Do you have a phone book?
For Our City?
Yeah.
No, sorry, you'll have to go up to the second floor. All we have hear is one for northern Michigan, for some reason.
Can I just look at that one, then?
(Wtf!)


Phone call: I have some movies that are due back today. Can you renew them? Also, can you put Ghostrider on hold for me? Oh, not that one. The second one.


I just returned Law & Order seasons 2 and 3 and I would like 4 and 5, please.


The self-check says there's a problem with my account.
Don't worry, it's just expired. We just need to check your contact info and you're good to go.


Do I bring my returns to you or put them in this slot here?


Can I sign her up for summer reading? Do you have the paper thing? We don't want to do anything on the computer.


Man from the daycare/mob of kids/whatever is here for the children's librarian's program: I just need to take these friends to the bathroom. Is it right here?


Can I sign up for some kind of temporary card to use the computer?
No, but you can sign up for a permanent one for free.


Another man, as I'm signing that man up for a card: I just need to know where the bathroom is.


Can you let me into the bathroom?


There used to be a citizenship class here where they helped you fill out forms. Do you still have that?


He needs to wash his hands. Could you let us into the bathroom again?


Another library card sign-up. If I'm making systematic mistakes, Circulation is going to be sorry about how hard I worked today.


Phone: My father needs to come in and use a computer and a scanner, but he doesn't have a library card. Is that okay?


My mom says can you please add more time to her computer?


Do you have an outlet back there behind your desk where I can plug in my phone?


This computer refuses to pull up a book that I know exists!


Is there someone I can talk to? I'd like to make the comment that there are some titles in the new nonfiction area that children shouldn't be running past.


Phone: I returned a book to you a couple of weeks ago, but it's still showing up on my account.


I'm here to see if I can get a Consumer Reports. Can you check those out?


Can I return this? I thought it was Descendants 2, but it's the first one.


Phone: I need the number for two hair salons on Martin Luther King Drive.
Me: Do you know their names?
Phone: Just Google it! We're a small city, we don't have that many.

You can't make this up

Today a grandmother called because her granddaughter had returned a pile of library books to the book drop and accidentally included one of her own books. We searched through our returns and found the granddaughter's book. The little girl had carefully written her name inside the front cover. Her name? "Paige Turner."

To do list

Today I found a list with the heading "Library" in the recycling bin next to the printer. Here's what was on it:

• Budget
• Golden Corral locations
• Touchless car wash
• First pass on photos
• Backup to HD

Sometime in May

Longtime readers will know that I especially like working with older patrons (maybe I will be a decent Senior Services Librarian someday) in part because they tend to be in less of a rush, but mainly because I think they are hilarious. A lot of older couples come into Small Town Library and I love eavesdropping on both their reactions to the renovations we are doing and just general conversation.

Today a couple came in and were marveling at how different things looked. The man stopped to check in with the clerk at the circulation desk, as our patrons often do, and then asked her "If we don't come back in half an hour, will you send a search party out?" Fortunately they did return. After checking out their books and movies, they left the library. I could hear the woman ask the man "What day is it today?" and he responded "Oh, sometime in May."

Friday reference questions

A man in an electric wheelchair was stuck waiting for his chair to recharge. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him and he said, "Could you maybe bring me something to read? Except I don't know what." Then he spotted the picture books in the children's section across the room. He wasn't going to be waiting long so he said, "Could you bring me one of those kid's books? What do you recommend?" So now he is over by the plug reading The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle.




A different man is really mad that he left his umbrella in the library and how he can't find it. Security tape shows that actually he didn't have it when he entered the library. Helpful information, but awkward.




I offer to help a couple in the Fiction section find what they are looking for, but it turns out they have a whole book devoted to lists of books they want to read. The wife knows how to use the catalog and she looks up the call numbers and adds them to each entry. Then she crosses them off after she checks them out. How cool!


Mr. Timmons stops by, says "My homegirl Emma!" and gives me a lollipop. I give him a fistbump and (after he is gone of course) guiltily throw the lollipop away.




A patron complains that he has hundred dollar bills and no stores will take them. We'll take them! But un/fortunately he has no fines. He does give his daughter a dollar to print some things out, though.




I help a patron with the self-check machine and then neither of us can find her library card for like 5 minutes. It turns out it's... right on the pad where you are supposed to scan it, disguised as the dummy library card that is supposed to show you where to put your card and how to orient it. Not my best work.




Help a patron print. I have it down to, I kid you not, a word for word spiel. In case your library has Envisionware (Are you at a U.S. public library? If so the odds are extremely good.) and you want to use it, it goes: "So now we are going to go over to the print release station, which is the computer right next to the printer over there. You can actually do a couple of things from this computer, so the first thing you want to do is tell it that you want to release a print job. Now go ahead and enter your library card number. That's how it tells which printouts are yours. If you want to print everything just hit this "select all" button right here. It will tell you your total cost up in the right hand corner here. Okay, go ahead and put your money in the machine. It takes coins, ones, and fives and it does make change. Now all you need to do is hit the 'print' button up here on the left and here are your print jobs. If you're printing something private, just make sure you hit this 'exit' button when you are done so no one could print another copy of your documents." Self service, my left foot!




A man turns in his DVDs to me.




A woman wants to get on the computer but has too many fines. She's looking for a job so I put her on one of our guest PCs with more than the allotted 20 minutes.


Help with wifi. Ugh.


A member of the IT staff comes to take a look at a weird thing my laptop has been doing lately, but of course when he's there it behaves perfectly normally.


We moved a couple of things post-renovation after finding that they weren't where patrons expected them to be or weren't where it was most convenient for patrons. For example, we had grouped all of our new items together, but that meant that new movies were on a completely different floor from all the rest of the movies, so we brought our new movies back near the main movie collection. Apparently people had just figured that out, because while last week I was constantly being asked near the main movies "where are the new movies?" now I am at the desk that's near the other new items and I'm constantly being asked "where did you move the new movies!?"


I help a sweet kid with the self-check machine, then put a book on hold for her to come back and check out later because she's reached her card limit.

Excuse me, it says I have a hold available but I can't find it on the shelf.


Do you have, like, a guide for all the summer activities?


A woman is mad because her trial-and-error approach to using the copier has been kind of expensive. If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about the library, it would be how often people wait until they are already angry before asking for help.


Can I pay my library bill by credit card over the phone?


Phone number lookup for a lovely lady who says "Always a pleasure to talk to our library"!


Today's Ms. Opp rant is about legal advice.


Why do people keep giving me things to check in?


I talk for 10 minutes by phone to a patron who is mad because her mom keeps checking out movies on her account so she's at her 10-movie limit. She insists her mom isn't borrowing the physical library card but that's the only possible explanation. My head hurts.


Can you help me find the customer service phone number for Delta Airlines? They charged me for my bag and I don't think they should have.


Mrs. Opp has reached her limit of 5 calls/day and is cut off. I really hope I won't have to be the one to tell her.


Someone wants to check out but can't because both cards she tries to use have too many fines on them.

I screw up 3 circ transactions in a row. Bingo!


Worst bingo ever.