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!