Vote early, vote often!

Early voting is in full swing at my library and while I'm ecstatic that people are so passionate about voting for the candidate of their choice, it has been somewhat annoying at times.

For instance, there's the lady who called to ask if there was a line to vote - she wanted the person who answered the phone to leave customers waiting at the circulation desk and go all the way out into our lobby to check. Which is kind of silly - I mean, even if there wasn't a line when she called, that's no guarantee that there won't be a line when she arrives.

Then there was the man who thought he left his cane in the voting room and wanted the staff member to go look for it. Now, we've been told that voting security is crucial, and in fact staff members have been chided for coming into the voting room, so I can't imagine the voting people would look too kindly on a staff person rooting around the room looking for a cane. Plus, if the man was able to walk out of the voting room, out of the library, and out to his vehicle without his cane (without even realizing he didn't have it), does he really need it?

And let's not forget the voting people themselves. They scolded our custodian last week for coming into the room to empty the trash, but this week they complained that the trash hadn't been emptied! There's no pleasing these folks. They feel free to come back into OUR work area to use our copier and microwave, and even have gone so far as to take food (not their own) out of our staff refrigerator.

Plus, I'm amazed at the number of people who walk into the library, right past the open meeting room door with all the people milling about, not to mention signs all over the place, and come all the way in the library to the reference desk to ask, "Where is the voting?" I want to say, "You walked right by it on your way in - how could you have missed it?"

I will be SO happy when this election is over!

Ah, the sweet smell of tobacco, and other random thoughts

One of the clerks came to my office today to say that a woman was complaining because some guys were smoking cigars outside. Instead of saying "So what?" (which was of course my initial response), I said "Okay, I'll go check it out." Walking out into our lobby I noticed a slightly sweet smell and thought, "That smells good." I walked outside and saw no-one, but then noticed the woman who had complained coming out. I thought I could avoid her (sorry, this is the real me here - I do things like that now and then) by coming in the other door as she walked out the main exit but no, she had to come around and intercept me. Drat. She said "Do you smell that?" and I thought it would be better to say no than to admit that I thought it smelled good. She pointed out two young men who had just walked into the library and said they had been standing outside the exit smoking cigars and that was offensive to her. "I mean, there are children walking in and out of here!"

Now I am pretty much an anti-smoking fanatic - I hate being around people smoking cigarettes and go out of my way to avoid it wherever possible. But this woman was complaining about these guys smoking OUTSIDE, an area over which I really have no control. If they just HAD to smoke, at least they weren't trying to do it indoors - now that would have gotten a reaction from me. But as it was, there was little I could do but tell her I was very sorry about what had happened.

Why do I always have to apologize for everything anyone does that offends someone else? I'm getting mighty sick of these holier-than-thou people who think the world revolves around their preferences.

Today was pretty sucky from the get-go, though. Our accident-prone children's librarian (well, she always seems to have something wrong) called in to say she couldn't come to work because she was on medication for a pulled muscle. I didn't say to her, "Now what were you doing that caused you to pull a muscle?" No, I was polite and thanked her for letting me know, then hung up and cursed her with all my might. We were already short-staffed due to someone on vacation, so I had to re-work the schedule to fill in at the children's desk. I ended up being on the desk nearly the whole day. Which is totally exhausting at my library (remember, we get at least 30,000 people coming in this building on a monthly basis - sometimes more).

Add to that, the issue that I talked about in an earlier post about our renewal limits has reached the attention of the director, who wants to FORM A TASK FORCE to look into it!! Rather than just making a decision, she wants to form a committee that will endlessly argue about this issue (oh, a recap - some staff have taken our 2-renewal policy a step further and will not allow customers to check items out again or transfer them to another card when the renewal limit is reached because "it's not fair - other people should have a chance at finding this material on the shelf." It's my position that as long as nobody has placed a hold request, who gives a crap - let 'em have it! I don't understand why some staff want to argue with customers about something this inconsequential - I just want the circs!), and then make a recommendation to the two circulation-related committees WE ALREADY HAVE!! And guess who she was hoping would be the chair of the committee - me!

Luckily I am not being forced to chair the committee and it's a good thing because I don't really believe it's necessary. Just make a freakin' decision already. She keeps talking about getting "buy-in" from the staff, but I don't believe she's serious about doing whatever the staff would actually recommend, so the buy-in is just a sham. I guess it would depend on who is selected to serve on the committee - I mean, if it's all people who already agree with what she wants to do, then I guess she can pretend she's getting buy-in, but what if the committee recommends something that she doesn't want? Will she go with what they say? I seriously doubt it. In this case, I don't think buy-in is necessary - the current practice at many libraries is causing a great deal of customer dissatisfaction, so the administration just needs to clarify the policy regarding renewals so staff won't keep making up their own procedures.

There's of course a larger issue that somehow this tiny controversy has gotten linked to, and that is the serious divide between the librarians and the clerks, to which I have alluded before. In this particular controversy, most of the librarians tend to be fairly flexible about allowing people to have a new checkout of materials they've already renewed twice, and most clerks are adamant about NOT allowing the new checkout. So it's becoming a divisive issue and this task force is supposed to be some kind of an attempt to start somewhere in addressing this issue.

Which makes me even less inclined to want to chair it. I'm no negotiator and have no wish to mediate between the two groups. I just want to do my job, get my work done, and go home when I'm done for the day. Now I wish I had never opened my big mouth and brought it up with the circulation manager in the first place. Crap.

Hate sucks

Every Tuesday a big stack of our local free newspaper is delivered to my library. It's a popular publication containing local entertainment news and commentary. This morning we discovered that someone had placed hate literature associating presidential candidate Barack Obama with extremist black militant groups into random copies of the newspaper. The flyer includes quotes such as, "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

What kind of person would do such a thing? This is defamation of character at best, and in my opinion constitutes the worst kind of hate-mongering that frightened, small-minded people are capable of. We are sickened.

We went through the papers and pulled out (and SHREDDED!) all of the flyers we could find, hoping and praying we don't find any more. Between now and the election I am sure we will have to check these papers regularly for more of this political terrorism.

This sucks.

California dreamin' is over - now it's Kentucky woman!

Here's an update on a customer I blogged about in a recent post: he came up to the reference desk the other night and told me that he had indeed gone to California but decided not to stay. Seems his father (who must be pretty old, as this guy has to be at least in his late 50s or early 60s) and he didn't get along, and his father told him to "just go!"

So now he's back. He still hates it here, though, so his new plan is to move to Kentucky to stay with his girlfriend, who lives in Glasgow, a small town in south-central Kentucky not too far from Bowling Green (which is itself a fairly small town, most notably known as the hometown of Western Kentucky University).

It's interesting what customers will tell you about their personal lives. I'm not sure why he decided to talk to me in the first place - to my recollection, I have never helped him with a reference question or had any customer service type of interaction with him - but now it seems he feels obligated to update me on his plans whenever something changes.

I'm not sure when he's actually going to Kentucky, but I have a feeling he will tell me when he does.

Defending the regular

We have a regular customer (actually, he's here so much he practically lives at the library) named Jim (AKA Hairy Legs). I've blogged about him in an earlier post. He's annoying but harmless. He drives a battered old pickup truck stuffed full of his belongings, with everything but the kitchen sink strapped onto it. I'm not kidding - this man has a rubber raft, six coolers, a bike, a kayak, a surfboard, a trash can and god knows what else strapped to the roof and back of his truck. I don't honestly know how he keeps it all from falling off! The staff and I have often wondered whether his truck is his home - seems pretty likely.

The other day a snooty-looking woman came in and conspiratorially said to me, "What's the story on that truck out there?" I knew perfectly well what truck she was talking about but played dumb, not wanting to get into any kind of gossip with this totally unknown person. She said, "You know, the one with all that stuff strapped to it!" I admitted I recognized the truck she was talking about, but then she asked "Do you know who drives it?" Suspicious of her motives, I lied and said "No, I have no idea. Why do you need to know?" She said, "Well, I was just curious. I mean, it's RIDICULOUS!! Is that person homeless? Who would carry that kind of crap around with them? Honestly, it's really disgusting."

Now, I don't really care for Jim - he's a pain in our ass - but this woman just pissed me off with her snooty, holier-than-thou attitude. What a snob. I actually felt very defensive of him - in a way, he's one of our own. Weird.

So I basically continued to play dumb and she wandered away.

Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart

About a month ago one of our regular customers (kinda crazy but pretty nice) was leaving at closing time and told me, "This is the last time you'll see me - I'm moving to California tomorrow. I don't like it here." I wished him well and said goodnight.

The next night he was back again and said his plans got delayed for a couple of days but that he wouldn't be back after that. "Good luck to you," I said, "Hope things go well for you in California!"

I sort of forgot about him until the other night, when I saw him sitting at his accustomed spot at one of the computers. He wouldn't look at me and didn't say anything so I figured I'd leave him alone, but I do wonder what happened. Did he go and find out he didn't like California either? Did something happen that prevented him from going? Is he just so crazy that he made the whole thing up in the first place?

It does make me curious...