Emergency!

While I was at the reference desk this morning, I answered a call from the partner of one of my coworkers. She told me she had been trying to call my coworker for 20 minutes, but her direct line was busy. She asked me to go to my coworker's office and tell her to hang up and call her partner's cell phone because it's really important. Well, okay. I can't make her to hang up, but I can pass on the message. So I wrote it down, walked back to my coworker's office, and handed the message to her with a shrug to indicate that I hadn't been told what exactly was so time-sensitive. She promptly called her partner and settled the very important matter that required immediate attention: which salad dressing to buy.

My head hurts.

There Are No Stupid Questions

"Will you be closed tomorrow because it's snowing a lot today?"

"The roads were really bad on my way here. They haven't plowed yet. Why are you open?"

"I'm supposed to attach my resume, but I don't have one. What should I do?"

"What do you put in to send an email to heaven?"

...And It Gets Worse

The stinky patron who confessed his feelings for me via email sent me a second email, even more disturbing than the first. Most of it made no sense, which is never, ever a good sign, but it's clear that he wants to have a sexual relationship with me ("stripped naked") and doesn't care if he gets in trouble for saying so ("make it public"). The rest is pretty much gibberish.

My director, being the fantastic director that he is (how dare he retire this summer!), emailed him a response, telling him the emails he had sent me were inappropriate and any further emails would be forwarded to the police. Dewey willing, that will put an end to this and he will never email me or enter the library again.

Thinking about how often I am the only staff member on my level of the library and how many times it's been just the two of us there when he's slow gathering his stuff together at closing...

Oh Dear Dewey, No!

A patron I have previously complained about due to his stinkiness and annoying-ness has declared his love for me via email.

Let me back up. I went off to Vegas to get married a couple weeks ago. Prior to my leaving for my spectacular, superfun Elvis wedding, said patron came into the library nearly every day. I have not seen him since I've been back, just over a week now. I did find it odd, but awfully pleasant and stench-free. And then today I get this email, this totally disturbing and unwelcome confession, in which I am apparently Batgirl and he's Robin. He attached a comic of them kissing, and titled his email "Comic Book Heroine."

I'm so disturbed.

Poor Campaign Technique

Hey, I voted for Obama. I like him. I support him. But I really don't want to be peeling his stickers off of my books! What gives? What is wrong with you that you think you should be going through the library stacks and placing impossible-to-remove-without-chemicals-and-a-razor-blade "Obama '08" stickers over our spine labels? Go stick flyers in people's doors or something!

You Know It's a Good Day When the Cops Show Up

We had a domestic disturbance in the library yesterday. It started in the computer lab, then moved to the lobby, where the wife/girlfriend/whatever decided to call the police. I thought that was mighty nice of her. It saved us the hassle. I didn't get to witness the fight, but I've been told it included a great deal of swearing and threats. I guess the fact that the guy was holding their daughter prevented it from getting physical, although I wouldn't put it past this couple. They have quite the history of disrupting the peace and quiet (*snicker*) of our facility. Awhile ago, the guy threatened to complain about me to the director when his article about Marilyn Manson got cut off when printed, never mind that I wasn't anywhere near his computer or the printer when said travesty occurred.

According to the police officer, the fight started when the guy wanted to go home, but his wife/girlfriend/whatever wanted to stay and play on the computers, doing mission critical work on her MySpace page. Somehow that escalated into threats of bodily harm. I think they were meant for each other. It's too bad Cops has never been filmed here, because you know how much I enjoy seeing my patrons outside of the library.

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.