Surprise!

So today I taught a computer class on word processing to a group of five. It's a class that involves the "fun" stuff, like pretty borders and columns and clip art. We were doing an exercise to practice inserting a saved picture into a document, which was going just fine until the computers displayed the contents of the My Pictures folder, which is set to show thumbnails.

"There are some explicit photos here," said one of the five, a very sweet older lady and big supporter of the library. Well, crap. Sure enough, all but one of my students' computers were loaded with porn. Joy. The nice Russian man remarked on how it was good that we were all adults. Indeed. The crazy lady in the corner complained that all she had on her computer was pictures of sunsets. Crap.

I've seen patrons in tears because they found porn on the computer they were using and it was so traumatic for them. I apologized to my class, profusely, and everyone was able to laugh about it, but...oh dear Dewey...

What is perhaps even more surprising is that this is the first time it's happened, and I've been teaching the class for a couple years now.

Ah, Another Lovely Sunday

Yes, you did put quite a few decorative horizontal lines into your document, sir, but I have explained to you several different methods of removal and you, instead of performing the steps that I have laid out so nicely for you, are clicking in random sections of your document and pressing the Backspace key. Yes, I see how that erases parts of the story you were writing instead of the decorative horizontal lines. That just might have something to do with your apparent inability to listen to and follow very simple instructions. My dog can't even learn "sit" and I'd bet he could remove your decorative horizontal lines.

And no, I'm not just going to do it for you after you throw your mouse at me. Most of the other librarians here would not have been able to help you at all, given their lack of word processing skills. You, sir, have just squandered your good fortune in being here while I'm on duty. You will just have to live with your decorative horizontal lines and come to terms with their presence in your document.

More Libraries Own These Albums on Vinyl than on CD

Please please please please please don't tell me about how you ripped the CD I ordered from another state for you onto your computer. And about how you returned it yesterday and you asked upstairs and they said it had already been shipped back. And about how you listened to the ripped tracks today. And about how it skips. And about how you need the CD again to recopy it. Because I just paid for postage back. And you've requested 44 other CDs so far this year, only 15 days in, from libraries in other states, and I'm dying inside a little each time I have to request an '80s hair metal CD from out-of-state for you to copy and, as you so proudly put it, "build [your] music collection."