It Could've Been A Lot Worse

Things have been quiet lately, but there was a bit of excitement the other day. I was helping patrons in the library's quiet area, when suddenly sounds of people having sex (moaning and groaning and screaming dirty things) started coming from the back corner of the nonfiction area. Now, because this occurred in the quiet area, said sounds could be heard loud and clear throughout. A poor old lady in a comfy chair in the back actually dropped her magazine and clasped her hands to her cheeks.

So I headed on back to where the sounds were coming from, while "ohshitohshitohshit" ran through my head as I tried to figure out the best way to discern what was going on back there without scarring myself for life. I mean, most of our patrons really shouldn't be seen in any sort of state of undress.

When I was about halfway there, the noises stopped.

It turns out some guy with a laptop forgot to turn the sound off and opened up a video a friend emailed him as a joke, without knowing what the video would be of. I don't know if I buy the story about him not knowing what the video was, but he was bright red and embarrassed enough that I let it go and just asked him to make sure he turns his sound off when he uses his laptop in the library.

So discovering patrons having sex in the library is, thankfully, still not something I can check off my "You Know You're a Public Librarian When..." list.

Excellent Parenting Skills

Who brings their child into the library, plops down at a computer, and surfs for porn while the child watches? That guy over there, apparently. Okay, maybe the kid isn't old enough not to understand what's going on when daddy is looking at nekkid Paris Hilton pics, not to mention the horse and cow sex websites, but...it's time to use my special powers to suddenly lose the Internet connection at that computer.

"Gosh, sir, I'm not sure what could be wrong with that station. Maybe it's a problem with the website you were viewing. Sometimes websites go down temporarily. Which site is giving you trouble?" That usually encourages them to leave, but if they insist that we fix the Internet right now (lives are on the line!), I can always very sweetly offer to take a look at the browser history to see what the problem might be, "because if our computers are having problems with a certain site, we might need to download a plug-in update to make it work."

I swear I didn't lie this much before becoming a librarian.

It's Snowing Outside and Everyone Feels the Need to Tell Me So

I'm not sure if this patron is doing genealogy research on John Glenn, as well as several former U.S. Presidents, because he thinks he's somehow related to them, or if he's doing it just for fun because he ran out of leads on his own family. Regardless, I hope Mr. Glenn's autobiography will give him the "elusive clues" he's hoping to find.

He has apparently been attempting to research my family too, as he emailed me some data about some people who happen to share my last name but are in no way related to me. This is what I get for using some of my ancestors as examples during the classes I teach about our genealogy databases. Darn my great-grandfather for being such a good example of showing up in census and military records with 5 different first names!

In other news, earlier I helped a guy respond to a message he got on an online dating website, because I guess the bright red Reply button wasn't obvious enough. I think it would be rather unappealing to know that the guy who sent you a message had to have a librarian help him do so. It's one thing to need help using a computer. It's quite another to need help composing the message so as to get the best response from the woman. Luckily it was busy enough that I could politely excuse myself from his attempts at virtual wooing.

Clarification Needed

I asked a patron to type ".gov" and she typed "dotgov." I need to be more specific, I guess.

Happy Halloween!

I'm placing ILL requests and OCLC is giving them request ID numbers that include "666." Spooky!

I'm So Confused

Patron: What is that thing over there?

Me: I'm sorry, which thing?

Patron: The one over there. [she waves her arms over to her right, in the general direction of the reference book shelves]

Me: Oh, that's our reference book collection. Is there something you're looking for?

Patron: I know that, but what's that thing over there?

Me: I'm sorry, but I'm not sure. Could you show me which thing you're asking about?

Patron: Nevermind. [and she walks away]

Now I really want to know what "that thing" is!

Woohoo!

Mr. Paranoia complained to multiple staff repeatedly about other patrons stealing his printouts, even after I gave him a quick tutorial on print preview and looking for printable view links, which I know is the source of his "stolen" Yahoo! Mail printouts. And then he started complaining to staff about how other staff weren't taking his complaints seriously. He was really making the rounds, and the incident reports were piling up.

He had even started to harass other patrons, demanding that they hand over their printouts to him so he could make sure they hadn't taken his. Lovely man, isn't he?

Completely fed up with Mr. Paranoia's behavior, our director hauled him into his office and laid the smack down: "This nonsense about people stealing your copies must end. If it continues, you will lose your library privileges." Yay Director!

Unusual Request

A patron called and launched into a mile-a-minute diatribe about computers. Apparently hers wasn't working, and she was quite devastated. No one else was waiting for my help, so I sympathized and let her rant. At great length. And most of it didn't make any logical sense; her computer clearly wasn't the only thing not working.

She finally gets to her question, which was: "Can you go to the website of the doggie daycare I use and look at the webcam to see what my dog is doing?" Um, yeah, that's what librarians are here for! Like I'd be able to recognize a dog I've never met in a small, fuzzy (ha!) webcam feed anyway. It turns out her computer was just fine, but the webcam was down. Yeah, I checked.

Paranoia

He thinks that someone is stealing his print jobs, and he wants us to do something about it. It is not possible, he says, that someone accidentally grabbed them when they picked up their own print jobs. And it is not even remotely possible that the print jobs in question never actually came out of the printer. Apparently this "has been a problem for years," and he "has heard other people complain about it too." He is very agitated about this and thinks that he's being specifically targeted for such thefts. It is a conspiracy!

He wants us to put up a sign telling people they can't take other people's print jobs. Like that will have any effect whatsoever, given that no one reads the other two signs by the printer.

Thanks a lot, buddy, for making me fill out an incident report about these "thefts" 5 minutes to closing.

I could tell him about the printer gremlins, who secret away the print jobs of the bad people who habitually don't pay for their extra pages, but he's paranoid enough that he might actually believe me.

A Saturday: 7.5 Hours at the Reference Desk and I Didn't Even Get a Lousy T-Shirt

It's great that you're making use of our pencil sharpener, but do you have to stand where you impede other patrons' access to the printer while sharpening your rather massive amount of pencils? Are you sharpening enough to last you a year or what?

There is a recycling bin right next to the printer. Why do you walk past that bin, past the sign that says "staff only beyond this point," and behind the reference desk to deposit your unwanted printouts in the staff recycling bin?

You're setting a great example when you shout at your child, "You have to be quiet! This is a library!"

I know you know you're not supposed to talk on your cell phone in here, otherwise you wouldn't be making me chase you through the stacks to ask you to take your conversation about your most recent (and a bit disturbing) medical problems to the lobby.

Sorry, we don't proofread documents. No, not even if you pay me "extra." I'm not that desperate yet, and you're spending too much time staring at my chest.

I'm very sorry you forgot to bring with you the papers you need to complete your project. I sympathize, but please cease shouting profanities as you rummage through your bag. "Shit" and "goddammit" are not part of the magic spell that makes lost papers reappear.

No sir, we don't allow people to cut classified ads out of the paper. Yes, I realize that someone else might see the ad and call about that room for rent before you do, but there are a whole lot of other copies of the paper out there, and you can't just cut the competition out of each one.

Lucky Me

Yesterday the patron mentioned in a previous post regarding his complete and utter stinkiness arrived at the beginning of my four-hour desk shift and left at the end of said four-hour desk shift. I was forced to gag on his wafting-throughout-the-entire-floor stench for four straight, hellish hours. (Actually, a sulfurous Hell would've been preferable.)

He comes in every day, and rarely a day goes by that his odor is not forced upon me. But yesterday the library gods must have been crapping all over me, because his four hours of being here corresponded exactly to my four hours of helping the public enter online contests for free waffles.

Okay, so he stinks. As if that's not bad enough, he's highly irritating in other ways as well. During these four hours, he came up to me several times to tell me about breakthroughs in his genealogy research (making me regret greatly ever having taught classes on how to use our genealogy databases); several times to complain that he sometimes doesn't get more than the one hour he's entitled to in a study room; once to complain that we charge for printing after the first 10 free pages; and once to complain about how I do my job because I don't give him special treatment.

Oh, he's special all right. Special in that "ewwww those leftovers got shoved to the back of the fridge and turned all fuzzy and green and I'm just going to throw the whole tupperware away because I can't stand to open it to clean it" way.

Poor Liar

Me: Oh, I'm sorry, but the only food or drink we allow in the library is bottled water. I can keep your coffee behind the desk until you're ready to leave if you would like.

Poor Liar: There's nothing in this cup.

Me: I can see the line of liquid through the side of the cup.

Poor Liar: Oh, I'll just drink it quickly then.

Learn How to Date Online @ Your Library!

He wants to sign up for an online dating website, but he can't sign up without submitting a photo of himself. He goes home to get one. It's a print of his wedding photo. He asks if that's acceptable. I tell him as long as it's a photo of him, it should work. He says he'll have to crop the photo so he's the only one in it. I agree.

He has no concept of how to get from print photo to uploaded photo. That's okay, most people who come here don't. I help him scan the photo and crop it for him. Then comes the much-feared Saving of the File. Although not as problematic as the Creating of a Username, the Saving of a File is often a difficult concept to teach the non-computer-savvy.

Me: Okay, now you need to type in a name for the photo so you can find it when you upload it.

Him: Type in what?

Me: A name, something to call the photo. It doesn't matter what it is, just something that you'll remember so you can find it again. Maybe a description of the photo?

Him: [blank stare]

Me: It really doesn't matter what you call it.

Him: So...uh...I could use my name?

Me: Sure, that would be easy to remember.

Him: Um, what do I do?

Me: [points] Just type your name into this box.

Him: [hesitates for a moment, presumably deep in thought, types in his name, then erases all but the first letter: "E"] Will that work?

Me: Yep, that's just fine.

(I have to admit to shortening my transcription of this exchange due to repetition.)

Then he asks what comes next, completely bewildered and lost by that point. I tell him he needs to go to the website he's trying to upload the photo to and explain what must be done to find the saved photo. He says okay, he can do that, so I leave him to it.

Later, he tells me he couldn't figure it out, so he'll have to come back another day. "Will someone here help me do this again?" Yes, I suppose we will. I make sure to tell my coworkers the file name and location of the photo.

I hope he's divorced.

Lesson Not Learned

Last week's monkey spanker came back today after a week's suspension from the library for his previous excursion into the realm of pleasing oneself publicly. Once again, he was caught beating it. Same computer station and everything. Lab full of people. Probably the same hentai anime video too. This time we called the police and they hauled him over to the police station to have a nice little chat and to make that call all parents dread: "I have some bad news. Little Johnny can't keep his hands out of his pants, and he's got a thing for drawings of chicks with big boobs."

I guess last week's lecture from a librarian didn't scare him (gosh, why not?). We need to work on the whole being scary thing, because we're just not getting through to the horny teen demographic.

It was suggested that he would be too ashamed to come back, but they always come back. Always.

Real Life Is Scarier than Ghost Stories

A patron who has been banned from the library previously for harassing people via the Internet has signed up for our adult Halloween program. Her email address's username includes the words "die," "kill," and "hell." I can't help wondering if the haunted locations that will be discussed in the program mirror the haunted locations in her head. I guess I don't really want to know, as long as she keeps what's in her head to herself, but I'm glad that our adult programming offers something for everyone. Go outreach!

You Foul, Foul Man

You managed to stink up the computer lab during my class, a class that you already took twice before and really didn't need to take again. By your own admission, you didn't learn anything new. Then you managed to stink up the study room you used after the class to the point where no one else can use it until it has been properly fumigated. Others are canceling their reservations! I can barely approach the public printer, because the cloud of stench you left there while waiting for your printouts is still hovering around it like a swarm of gnats by a lake. Every time you walk by to get a drink of water, a cloud of foulness follows in your wake.

For the love of Dewey, please don't stop and talk to me about your genealogy research or complain about the pencil you found on the floor (and how someone might slip on said pencil and injure themselves and the world would come to a horrific end) or how the Internet changes too quickly or any other thing that I couldn't care less about, as next time I just might pass out from your funk.

And really, it doesn't help that every time you put your right foot down, your shoe farts.

Surprise Presents

Found in a book sent to us from a university library to fill an interlibrary loan request:

• One checkout slip from a patron who checked out the book at the university library.
• One receipt from a fast food restaurant.
• One trial-size package of Dove conditioner with Weightless Moisturizers(TM) for softer, smoother, more naturally vibrant hair.

Wait Until You Get to the Bathroom Like Everyone Else

One of my coworkers just discovered a teen patron spanking the monkey while looking at porn in the computer lab among 13 other patrons. Lovely. When confronted, he cried like a baby.

The Printer-Paper Connection

What is it with the people who tell you, usually just by shouting the single word "paper" at your back, that the printer needs more paper, but then stand directly in front of the printer so that you cannot open the paper drawer and insert the stack of paper without asking them to move? Do they think the paper will magically teleport into the printer? That it will disappear from your hands and the print jobs will start coming out?

If only! I would love it if I could just mentally will the paper into the printer from the shelf upon which it is stored. How nice would that be when you're on the phone with a patron and you've got another patron at the printer shouting at you that it's out of paper and demanding immediate service? It would be sweet.

I would like to give the printer blockers the benefit of the doubt and think that perhaps, just maybe, they think the paper doesn't go into the front of the printer, but the back or side. But these people are invariably the ones who have made sure the printer is out of paper by pulling out the paper drawer.

I Didn't Need to Know That

He calls up to book a time next week to use one of the library's study rooms, then informs me that he might be a little late because he'll be coming over directly from his anger management session.

User Error

I realize that you don't want to print more than 6 pages, but if you type "6" into the page range section of the Print dialog box and there are only 4 pages total in the print job, nothing will print. Yes, I realize you think you've done it that way "for the last 10 years" and I'm full of crap, but I selected "all" for the page range and it printed just fine. No, I'm not going to try it your way to prove you're right, because I just watched you do it your way and It. Didn't. Work. That's why you asked for my help, lady!

Go Away!

This is a 32,000 square foot facility. Why can't you two flies find someplace other than the reference desk to buzz about? Try the music audiocassette section, where you won't bother anyone.

A Lack of Understanding

This is a new one: I was just asked how to obtain a paper copy of an online video. You know, a way to print out all of the pictures and the voices, so I can enjoy it at home?

Okay, so very occasionally there is a link to a transcript, but...

"Are You Oriental?"

A guy walked by the reference desk on his way out of the building...

Guy: Are you Oriental?

Me: Ah, no I'm not. [I'm most definitely a white chick.]

Guy: Oh...well, you look nice anyway.

Me: Um, thanks. Have a nice day.

Guy: Thanks, bye.

The guy headed up the stairs and left. The girl over at the Internet station next to the desk was trying not to laugh. Then an Asian guy (yes, he's actually Asian) who was working at one of our other computers nearby came up and asked me if he had overheard that correctly. Yes, yes he did.

One coworker thinks that perhaps he was trying a (very bad) pickup line on me. Ew.