Lovely Patrons

This week's fun included but was not limited to:

He started yelling at me, waving printouts in my face, totally out of the blue. What was he upset about? He bought something online with his debit card. He had an email receipt for said purchase. His bank claims the transaction never took place. Somehow that's the library's problem because he used our computers to make his purchase. Then because we wouldn't fix it for him, for the rest of the day he refused to speak with us and just stood at the desk waving his arms around angrily whenever he wanted something.

She told me she needed me to do her homework for her. Why? Because she's partially deaf, has a learning disability, has had several strokes, cannot use a computer, and works 50-60 hours/week. It doesn't help that her assignment states that she should go to the public library for help accessing course materials online.

He's been a regular for years. He comes to the library every day at opening and leaves at closing. He photocopies numerous newspaper articles and prints out gazillions of weather and climate maps. He's friendly and polite and always pays for his printouts. It's weird that he spends so much time here, but we've never had any problems with him. Until this week when he started making sexual comments to another patron and showing her sexually explicit cartoons.

But my husband's got me beat for loveliest customer of the week (he owns a small specialty shop several blocks away from the library):

They call him "The Genius" because he's told them the professors at Big State University say he is one. He's got very long hair, which he wraps around his head like a ball of yarn and sticks a baseball cap on top of to keep it in place. He says Stalin's daughter used to live in this city. Her name is Stalina. She was causing all of the crime in the neighborhood she lived in by using her psychic powers on people. The Genius told the police this, but they didn't believe him. They only started listening to him after he saved the police chief's life. But Stalina moved out of the city and now lives in a neighboring county. She's still using her psychic powers, but now she's causing car crashes. She can no longer cause crime here because the KGB is located in Expensive City Neighborhood, and they also have psychic powers, which cancel out Stalina's now that she lives outside of the city.

It's hard to believe The Genius isn't a known library patron!